blog
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Mastermind Street Jam – My Complete Collection
Mastermind Street Jam was a radio show on Energy 108 (107.9fm) that served the Hamilton, Burlington, and Toronto areas in the mid to late 1990s. This hip-hop mixshow was required listening. It was unique because it was on commercial radio. Originally on Saturdays from 5:00 to 7:00 pm, it moved to Monday and Tuesday nights from Midnight to…
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Happy Fool Dayz from Hip Hop HeadUcatorz
Happy Fool Dayz! This song is special as it showcases Wizekrak on production. The guest feature from Lefspek also marks our first time collaborating with an MC outside of the educational realm. The playful song contains verses by Wizekrak and Jon Corbin and DJ cuts by Chase March. It explores different student personalities such as scholars, pranksters and class clowns. Overall, it…
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Teach Like Your Hair Is On Fire!
Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56 by Rafe Esquith This book is inspiring and reminds me why I love teaching. I took so many notes that I won’t be able to share them all in one post. If you teach, I highly recommend reading it! Here are a…
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My Reading Log of 2022
This will be my eleventh year of keeping a detailed reading log and I have to tell you, it is a lot of work. Not only do I read on average a book a week, I also take notes on what I read. Sometimes I have pages of notes to type at the end of…
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The Final Tape – Mastermind Street Jam #112 (Oct 22, 1996)
Say it ain’t so. This can’t be the final tape of the Mastermind Street Jam, can it? Unfortunately, it is the last tape in my collection. I found it after I had digitized all the others. That is why it is not in chronological order. Mastermind did shows before an after this 112 tape run…
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Naomi Season One (Just Read the Book)
Okay, this is confusing. This graphic novel is called “Season One” but it predates the television series that premiered this year. I saw it at the library this week and thought it was worth a shot. It had to be better than the tv show, but that wasn’t saying much. The first episode of Naomi…
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Nobody Cries at Bingo (Or Reading This Book)
Nobody Cries at Bingo by Dawn Dumont This is a work of fiction set on the Okanese First Nation but it had some interesting things to say about public education. Here is a particularly poignant passage . . . “Walking through the playground one day, I observed the other clusters of students and noticed the…
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Mastermind Street Jam – Rap Essentials
We’ve almost reached the end of my collection. I only have one tape left. This is a good penultimate episode though. Beat Factory Music was in the house to talk about Rap Essentials 2, the second volume of the incredible Canadian Hip Hop compilation. Several artists and groups were in the house too including .…
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Hip Hop HeadUcatorz on the Charts
We dropped our debut album on March 11th and have been getting radio spins in three different countries. We are even on the charts of 94.9 fm Radio Western this week. This isn’t even the Hip Hop chart. It is the regular chart for all of the different genres this campus radio station plays. Thank…
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Mastermind Street Jam with Puff Daddy
Tape 110 of my collection of Mastermind Street Jam features an interview with Puff Daddy and great music by . . . A.G., Alkaholikz, Big L, Big Noyd, Big Pun, EPMD, The Firm, Foxy Brown, Goodie Mob, Jay-Z, Keith Murray, Lauryn Hill, Lox, Ma$e, Mobb Deep, Luniz, Organized Konfusion, Puff Daddy, Rakim, Rampage, Redlife, Too-Short,…