Mar 28, 2025
There’s infinite innovation, experimentation, and creativity happening everyday through people who challenge mainstream culture and push the boundaries of what’s possible—but many of these stories aren’t being told. We’re making space for new voices, highlighting creatives at the heart of our communities who are shaking up the status quo in the world of art, style, sport, and social impact.
Sometimes the best way to do something new is to start with what you know. Co Founder and CEO of Educational Entertainment and Reading with a Rapper, Jarren Small, remixed English Language Arts (ELA) by incorporating his own cultural cues– specifically, hip hop.
“With 54% of the US reading at a fifth grade level, we decided to create Reading with a Rapper to challenge the status quo of education by bringing culture to the classroom. It’s an eight-week edutainment experience that will transform you through content, music, and technology.”
While the non-profit was founded in 2013, its story began while Small attended Hightower High School. He was recruited to play basketball, along with learning radio, print, broadcast, music production, and editing at the school’s Media Academy. Those skills would lead him through majoring in mass communication at Prairie View A&M University, to his first company, Legends Do Live.
His Houston-based team would interview friends, council members, artists, and more about what made them legendary and show the interviews to high school students for inspiration. During an interview with some 2018 freshmen, it was shared that academic environments weren’t always welcoming, the curriculum wasn’t engaging, and many students didn’t feel heard. While reflecting on this, Jarren happened to see a video of a rap group reading a Dr. Seuss book in their classic cadence. Light bulb moment!
From there, he and his business partner, Douglas Johnson, began to experiment with core curriculum developed by artists and ELA specialists. Eventually, a few notes jotted down in composition books would turn into a full-out classroom cypher by the end of each course, raising the students’ emotional, social, and literal literacy– as well as their confidence.
“With innovation, you can't talk about it. You can only show it. So we're showing you the experimentation…and the culture in real time by renovating a classroom, changing the teacher's lounge, throwing a concert in the library, just breaking rules and being disruptive for ultimate impact.”
Jarren’s vision for the future of education is bright and full of innovative changes that will impact generations of young minds to come. It revolves around “culturally balanced school pedagogy” where entertainment, and even sports, become ways to meet kids where they are in order to give them what they need to reach their goals.
“You got to put the work in to get results. Sports and education both drive that. You have to push and challenge yourself. And you have to be able to work with different people collaboratively to win... I think we've positioned ourselves to do that when it comes to literacy because it's a human problem, and it's going to take everyone to solve it.”
Changing the education system, one lyric at a time– that’s just another Dn8 in the Life for culture-challenging creatives like Jarren Small.
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