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Grades level iconsGrades 9–12
Session time icon60+ Minutes
Genre information iconMemoir, Narrative
Video resource type iconVideos

Write With. . . Life Stories: Creative Influences with Fab 5 Freddy

by 826 National and Life Stories
Presented by: Life Stories
Who or what has shaped your creativity? In this lesson, you will reflect on the creative influences in your life and create a short piece inspired by one of those influences.
About the Author

Fred Brathwaite, more popularly known as Fab 5 Freddy, is a visual artist, filmmaker, and hip-hop revolutionary. Born in Bedford Stuyvesant and raised by jazz aficionados, he joined the graffiti crew “The Fabulous 5” as a teenager in the 1970s. He earned his name by persistently spraying it on the number 5 train on the IRT subway. He produced and starred in Wild Style in 1983, appeared in films like American Gangster, and directed music videos like Nas’s “One Love.” Freddy’s writing has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine.

What Your Students Will Learn

About Life Stories 

Life Stories is a 501(c)(3) non-profit media organization that creates and distributes documentaries, interviews, and educational resources about people whose lives inspire meaningful change. These stories address issues of civics, history, politics, the arts and culture by shining the spotlight on relatable human stories of purpose and meaning in times of change. They provide open access to all their content for communities and classrooms through their curated website and YouTube channel.

 

About The Thread 

The Thread is a documentary interview series exploring what it means to live a purpose-driven life through conversations with multi-faceted people who have helped shape our society. Each 30-minute episode takes viewers on a personal journey into the life of extraordinary people who candidly share their triumphs and failures. The Thread is available on the Life Stories website and YouTube channel, and as a podcast across all major platforms. Teaching The Thread brings the series into the classroom with episode lessons designed to strengthen social emotional learning and media literacy skills and expand the scope of subject matter in Social Studies and English Language Arts.

Common Core Standards
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3.C Common Core Standards Icon
Use a variety of techniques to sequence events so that they build on one another to create a coherent whole.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3.D Common Core Standards Icon
Use precise words and phrases, telling details, and sensory language to convey a vivid picture of the experiences, events, setting, and/or characters.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.3.C Common Core Standards Icon
Use a variety of techniques to sequence events so that they build on one another to create a coherent whole and build toward a particular tone and outcome (e.g., a sense of mystery, suspense, growth, or resolution).
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.3.D Common Core Standards Icon
Use precise words and phrases, telling details, and sensory language to convey a vivid picture of the experiences, events, setting, and/or characters.
What You Will Do

Content Notes:

  • In this video, Fab 5 Freddy recalls his childhood, growing up around his father’s friends who were artists and creatives. In the suggested interview clip, he briefly mentions how this group engaged with cannabis use.
  • If time allows, we recommend completing Write With. . . Life Stories: Your Creative Project with Suleika Jaouad before this lesson, to help students make space for their creative practice.
  • This lesson aligns with the following CASEL Compentency:
    • Self-Awareness
      • Developing interests and a sense of purpose

 

Introduction

One of rap and hip-hop’s earliest breakthrough artists, Fab 5 Freddy began dreaming of his own future as an artist at an early age. The son of an accountant and a nurse, his godfather, bebop pioneer drummer and composer Max Roach, turned young Freddy’s home into a gathering place for jazz greats like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis. To...

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