This curriculum is a good example of the type of materials we create at Just Think - relevant, effective, and empowering for both youth and educators. Flipping the Script, which includes a 30-page guidebook, with lesson plans and activities, a companion video and DVD, and an extensive website, is geared towards 6-12 grade students and is aligned with state content standards.

It's structured for both in class and after school programs, with specific lesson plans and production activities in multiple subject areas: media literacy, language arts, social studies, math, and health.

The lessons, designed to accommodate a wide range of academic levels - from Advanced Placement to Special Ed - also incorporate an interdisciplinary approach so that students can make cross-curricular connections. In addition, the arts - visual, literary, and digital - are infused throughout the lesson plans and production activities.

By dissecting current lyrics and videos, as well as looking at the broader historical evolution of Hip-Hop culture, students will develop a new perspective on the music and images that surround them.

The curriculum also helps students look at media techniques, such as camera angles, lighting, and use of sound. Students examine messages depicted in various media representations of Hip-Hop and consider questions like:

• Who is the producer of the message?
• What is the purpose of the message?
• How are different people (and different races, sexes, ages, etc.) represented?
• How would different people interpret the message?
• How does this message relate to other cultures?

The curriculum then help students become media makers themselves. Using Hip-Hop as a focus for their own media projects, students are encouraged to create their own spoken word poems, raps, CD's, videos, websites, or digital artwork. This work fosters arts and technology career-building skills, including interview techniques, digital still and video photography, audio-taping, story-boarding, and digital editing.

Finally the curriculum shows students how to showcase their own media projects through school fairs, community exhibitions, film festivals, the Internet, and other forums. Sharing projects with a greater community creates a forum for youth voice, raises community awareness, fosters dialogue, and debunks stereotypes around Hip-Hop culture and other youth issues. Audiences will see Hip-Hop through the eyes of youth via media projects developed, designed, and produced by youth.

The Flipping the Script DVD and video were developed in conjunction with Corduroy Media.