Smart Shorties

A locally produced album that teaches kids about multiplication facts is adding up big time.

Christine Smith, a former teacher at Paul Laurence Dunbar Academy, Alex Nesmith, record producer, and students are leaving to begin a film adaptation of the educational CD in New York City.

Smith and Nesmith call their edutainment venture “Spark the Mind.” The Maumee-based company released a CD in April called “Smart Shorties: Hip Hop Multiplication,” which features more than 40 students ages 11 to 15 from Toledo rapping and singing about multiplication facts over the beats of popular hip-hop tracks.

Most of the students who will be starring in the film appeared on the CD and are students in Toledo, but some outside auditions were hosted for the film.

Nesmith describes the film as an urban “High School Musical” and said the story is about the “Shorties” and a rival group that they are competing against in a math contest.

Marc Calixte, who wrote the screenplay for “The Perfect Holiday” starring Gabrielle Union, Morris Chestnut and Queen Latifah wrote the script.

Rappers Mims and Soulja Boy, whose music is sampled on the CD, have already been confirmed to appear in the film, with more celebrity cameos expected, Nesmith said.

Mike Moon, 13, has acted in some local plays before, but this will be his first time acting in front of a film crew.

“I'm excited,” Moon said. “It should be fun.”

All the kids in the film and on the CD have contracts and will receive royalties from their work, Nesmith said.

The film will be distributed by Scholastic to schools nationwide, and a distribution deal with retailers is in the works to get the film carried in stores like Toys “R” Us and Barnes & Noble, Nesmith said.

Smith said she was inspired to try music when no one in her class of sixth graders passed the math portion of the Ohio Achievement Test. She bought different learning CDs to help her students, but none of them was feeling it.

“They were all kind of corny and they didn't like them at all, but all the students would come into class singing a hip-hop song word for word,” Smith said. “I wanted to use a cool song that they already liked, so I contacted Alex about one song about memorizing multiplication facts.”

That song went over so well with her class that they created a whole CD, and her class the following year reached a 48 percent passing mark on the math portion.

Nesmith, who has worked with artists such as OutKast, Keith Sweat, Akon and Ronald Isley, uses his connections in the music business to obtain instrumentals of the popular songs, but the songwriting is almost entirely up to the students.

“The basis of ‘Spark the Mind' is to include the children in the creative process,” Nesmith said. “They know what they like more than anyone else.”

Smith and Nesmith make a list of popular songs on the radio and present them to the students to see what songs they want to write lyrics for. The rule with the songwriting is it has to be about math, “nothing about money, cars and girls.”

When Smith was teaching at Paul Laurence Dunbar Academy, she would give the students a break with the hip-hop math.

“We would take a break every 20 minutes and put a song on and then get back to the regular curriculum,” Smith said. “The kids won't resist it that way.”

If a teacher is just rambling for hours without a break, it is difficult to pay attention, Moon said.

“I get bored and tired and can't focus anymore,” Moon said.

Moon said creating the CD has helped him with his math skills.

“It is amazing,” Nesmith said. “These kids are so good and talented. As long as they keep good grades, they have potential in the music industry. I'm amazed how comfortable they are in the recording studio, they do better than a lot of adults.”

When something that helps kids catches on, it’s a good thing. When something that helps kids turns into a phenomenon, all the better! Now “Smart Shorties Hip Hop Multiplication” is yielding a movie – set to go into production in July in Brooklyn. Smart Shorties creators Christine Smith and Alex Nesmith tell us they’re hoping some of the talents whose beats are used in their fun math tunes will cameo in the movie – names such as T-Pain and Rich Boy

Smith, a Toledo, Ohio schoolteacher when she started searching for a better way to get her 4th to 7th graders cued into math, joined forces with Atlanta, Ga., music producer Nesmith on the project just a couple of years ago. They knew they were onto something huge when their Twelve’s Tables song was featured on local news, then picked up by “Good Morning America” – and then the website Smith had set up for her students was suddenly inundated with “109,000 views, and people writing in, ‘How can we get this?’” she recalls. The requests came from as far as Australia.

Nesmith, who’s worked with a number of leading acts, sounds as if he’s found his calling with Smart Shorties, “a great new challenge for me. I fell in love with the kids right away.”

Smart Shorties (smartshorties.com) comic books, Spanish language raps and other projects are now also in the works – along with compilations of improved test scores for students learning with the songs.