Lil Wayne's music teaches teacher to relate to students

ODavid Ramsey writes in the current issue of Oxford American about how the rapper Lil Wayne helped him survive his first year teaching in New Orleans in the article, "I Will Forever Remain Faithful".

We get the typical white guy comes into the inner-city malaise, such as trying to relate to his students, working to keep them in school, and understanding their world of negligence, violence and illiteracy.

But Ramsey not only gets the dialect right, but he infuses the language and the culture, without the least bit awkwardness.

Ramsey tells about the student who always got in trouble for leaving class to go to the bathroom without permission until the day he revealed his colostomy bag as a result of a gang-shooting.

There's one section that just quotes Wayne the rapper: "Wayne on making it: 'When your rich, then asparagus is yummy.'"

The most powerful writing in Ramsey's piece is how he mixes the innocence of these kids with the very adult situations they face daily.

When he went to visit a student he was trying to keep from dropping out of school, who was the biggest drug dealer in his neighborhood, but also Ramsey best student. Ramsey gave him a New Yorker article about Lil Wayne, to which Michael responded, "Actually, that was good. You teach me to right like that?"

The real power of the writing is that Ramsey gets at this complex topic without cliche's or over-wrought sentiment.