Lavie Raven

English Language Arts and History Teacher, Grades 6-12

Adjunct Professor in Art Education

Minister of Education, University of Hip-Hop

Lavie Raven is a history and English language arts instructor at Oak Park River Forest HS, and the Prime-Minister of Education for the University of Hip-Hop. Lavie has taught in the Chicago public school system for twenty-two years, and has done community arts work since he was a teenager. He has created strategies for integrating hip-hop into community service projects and classroom education. Lavie has worked with youth on many community hip-hop arts programs and social justice projects across the nation and globe, for groups such as Habitat for Humanity, La Paz school (Costa Rica), Pogranizce (Borderlands Project, Poland), the US state Dept. (New Zealand and Germany), Alternatives community center, the Southwest Youth Collaborative, the Chicago Park District, the University of Chicago, the Chicago Public Schools, and numerous other organizations. Raven has done community mural projects in Sejny, Poland; Liberia, Costa Rica; Oakland, California; New Orleans, Louisiana; Alert Bay, British Columbia; and Pine Ridge, South Dakota. He is presently completing his doctorate in interdisciplinary studies at Teacher’s College at Columbia University, researching the impacts of hip-hop education and the integration of alternative arts on community development guided by youth centered curricula.

As one of the co-founders of the University of Hip-Hop, a multi-disciplinary school of the street arts, Raven helped to create a dozen charter branches that serve youth across the city of Chicago and throughout the nation. Raven is a certified teacher of social studies and English, grades 7-12, and he has taught courses in World Studies, African-American History, Argument and Debate, Popular Culture, and English, levels I-IV. In his experience as an educator Raven has assisted youth in addressing issues of social justice through the public arts and community service-learning projects. He was asked to co-develop the Youth Leaders in Race Equity course at his present school, meeting with student leaders to create a youth-centered curriculum. As a mural artist he has worked with youth to create culturally conscious murals that have been displayed at museums, cultural centers, and community organizations. He has taught Ethics and Pedagogy and Street Arts for Teens at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for the past decade. Raven believes in providing youth and students of all ages with a multi-disciplinary approach toward life that holistically engages their academic skills, celebrates their talents and artistic abilities, and empowers youth desires to bring positive change to society. In his work for local, national, and international communities, Lavie Raven continually strives to spearhead unconventional and prolific youth empowerment projects in and out of the classroom.