School bored Jacob Miller. At 16 he dropped out to work for his father’s party business. But he also started to write his own music, mostly rap. Then he discovered self-help books, returned to school, and started using rhythm to help him learn. He traded silent memorization for writing raps about his school subjects. His grades soared. 

After he graduated at the top of his class he took a job teaching and loved it. According to one of his early colleagues “At lunchtime, he’d be playing football with the kids. He was running stuff after school. Teaching was a way of life for Jacob.” When asked to help prepare some 10- and 11-year-olds for a standardized test he said:  “I was like, you know what, I’m not going to waste any time on teaching this rote examination just for the sake of it. I don’t want kids to be looking at their writing and squeezing in an adverbial phrase.” So he wrote a four-minute song that covered the material, and set it to a beat.

That was then. Today his YouTube channel has 48,800 subscribers, and he has 212,000 followers on Instagram. He filled theaters during a solo national tour, and was a headliner for a 30-city tour focused on performances for children. He has two television shows, “Wonder Raps” and “Rap Tales.” And next spring, Simon & Schuster UK will publish “The Adventures of Rap Kid,” the first of three books Mitchell described as “similar to ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ but slightly more street.”

Article: He Raps About Kids’ Books and Grammar, and He Has Fans