On the face of it there seems to be an irony that Jacob Mitchell, who left school at 16 with one GCSE, is now teaching the nation’s children how to learn and read. But if Mitchell – better known to his millions of fans as MC Grammar – hadn’t felt “a failure” at secondary school, his passion to inspire “left behind” children wouldn’t be so strong.
He’s the country’s most wholesome rapper, putting everything from grammar rules to the Vikings and Tudors to music. For children who access his videos on YouTube, Sky Kids or social media, he’s making facts memorable and learning cool. “I’ve been a kid that was lost, I didn’t feel I had a voice,” he says. “I really care about these kids.”
I was relieved to find his musical times tables set to different beats: they give me faith that my eldest daughter, who learns through listening and music, won’t feel so frustrated when she needs to commit maths patterns to memory. As he puts it: “If kids are jumping up and down to Taylor Swift and know every single lyric but can’t remember seven times seven, put it on a Taylor Swift song – then they might.”
I meet Mitchell at the O2 arena in east London where he’s about to perform with thousands of primary school children as part of Young Voices. “When you see 8,000 kids shouting ‘readers are leaders’ at the top of their lungs, it’s electric,” he says.
As part of his quest to get children reading, Mitchell’s first novel The Adventures of Rap Kid is published this week. My eldest two children, aged seven and five, love it. I was struck by its cool (or, more truthfully, how uncool I am: nothing like checking the handy glossary for slang meanings to realise you’re dated), enjoyed the humour and was moved by Mitchell’s depiction of divorce from a child’s point of view, with the protagonist believing his “fun mum” turned into “glum mum”, rather than focusing on his dad’s departure. I’m not surprised when he tells me, “I come from a single-parent family.”
While he’s created Rap Kid “for all children”, he says, “maybe there’s a focus on the ones that don’t usually connect, that haven’t found themselves in a book, that haven’t felt like a book has been written for them.”
It’s an impressive career trajectory for the 40-year-old north Londoner who, at 16, spent the first year of his career writing raps in his head while working for his dad’s party business and in B&Q.
“I hated [the final years of] school. Then I discovered books, not just for critical thinking, but that self-identity and connection – being talked to through books – how empowering they were.”
He re-sat his GCSEs, then took A-Levels, writing raps so he could remember the facts to pass his exams. He studied his PGCE, following in his mum’s footsteps: she taught for more than 40 years. “She got me into the PGCE,” he explains. “My dad always says: ‘You grow from what you go through.’”
His early failure led to incredible teaching success. Thanks to a progressive headteacher at Church Hill School in north London who told him to do what he wanted as long as the children learnt what was needed, he focused on engaging students. So to teach newspaper report writing he took children to football games, for crime reports, he taped the outline of a body, sprinkled ketchup, left lipstick evidence and told his students a murder had taken place in his classroom.
He also created a YouTube channel for his students. “It started in the classroom – the inception of MC Grammar was to help the kids pass a grammar test,” he says. “There was also the noun clown, the verb bird and agent adjective.” Class engagement was so astounding that Church Hill School made it to the top 50 primaries in the country.
After five years of teaching, Mitchell became a consultant in his local borough and after seven years, he was supporting 81 schools with English teaching. He started doing live shows, and when his wife posted a video of his Gruffalo rap on social media in 2019 and it got millions of views, television offers started flooding in.
He’s received occasional criticism for using rap music. “Some say rap isn’t positive with its profanity and negative lyrics, but I’m rapping to get kids excited about books,” he explains. By contrast, he’s also had parents of non-verbal children let him know their child has spoken their first words after watching him.
Mitchell’s perseverance through failure is something he’s passing on to his four children. “It’s very important to teach kids resilience and let them know they’re not defined by a grade,” he says. Reading is woven into the fabric of homelife.
“Books are not just for bedtime,” he says. “Get caught reading as a parent.”Reading is woven into the fabric of home life with his four children, Ellie, nine, Chloe, seven, Tia, three and Nico, two. Sometimes he turns down the television volume so his children read subtitles.
His children also enjoy video games. “We have tablets on Sunday, that’s our deal, after their football match. I used to play Game Boy. It’s about moderation. Technology opens up opportunities for children like online library access for the million kids in the UK that don’t have a book.” But he’s concerned about phones and social media access. “Kids need to be kids for longer. When they get a phone, it can speed things up. So it’s good to be mindful.”
Mitchell’s got his sights firmly fixed on spreading reading enthusiasm further. He’d love to get involved nationally in developing the English curriculum.He also wants to broaden the subjects he tackles.
“I want to make a song about being kind, a song about acceptance. I have a really good influence over children, and it would be sad if I didn’t use that responsibility.”
Musically, he’s hoping more celebrities will sing with him – and doesn’t rule out rappers whose lyrics are more usually age-inappropriate. “Look at Snoop Dogg, he’s got a whole album of mantras for kids. These rappers grow up in a system that is definitely not equal. A lot of the time it’s art captured and expressed.”
And like so many musicians, he hopes to conquer America. “We can reach a lot of kids there,” he says.
Once he’s convinced the world to read, Mitchell hopes he might return to the classroom. “I remember after [finishing] my first year teaching a Year 5 class, crying that night, and my wife was like, ‘You’ll get over it’. And I thought, ‘I’m not getting over this. I don’t think you understand: I’ve had those kids for a year for six hours a day.’
“You really know the students. Develop a relationship. You understand their quirks, establish a rapport, there’s trust, connection. For a lot of those kids, that’s one of the safest places in the world for them. This journey is fantastic and I know I’m reaching more children all over the world, but I really miss being in the classroom, calling a register, moments when kids say they can’t do it and you show them their way through. Hopefully, one day when I retire as MC Grammar, I can be a school teacher again.”
Five ways to encourage your kids to read at home
‘The Adventures of Rap Kid’ by MC Grammar is published by Simon and Schuster Children’s Books on Thursday 27 February.
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