Épinay-sur-Seine (AFP)

In his clips, "no kalachnikov" or violence, but compasses, statistics and Pythagoras. Professor in Seine-Saint-Denis, Radouane Abassi, aka "GTI" or "Great Teacher Issaba", rapped his math lessons by taking over Rhoff, NLP or Kaaris.

"If today I take the + cromi + (micro) is not to make the croma (mackerel) / This is the time to talk about probas / Even on Jul, I speak of Maths, it's too much, guys. "

The phrasing is there - the autotune too -, the gesture, the decor of the bars of buildings: GTI takes again the traditional codes of rap in its writing as in its videos hosted on its YouTube channel which records hundreds of thousands of views.

Jul, Soprano, Kery James, Sofiane, or 113, the teacher of 32 years rappe on probabilities, diameters, Thales or statistics.

The child of Seine-Saint-Denis, born in Figuig in Morocco and raised in Montreuil, did not leave his lands of the 93. Bras crossed, determined look, convex chest, in polo and sneakers, it lends itself to the game of usual photos in front of the Jean-Vigo College in Epinay-sur-Seine, a priority education network.

With a submachine gun, Radouane Abassi can be easily told: "I have always rapped on things I live in. No fiction or storytelling, but my daily teacher".

The first time was in Saint-Denis, in 2015. He stunned his students by correcting their test in music. "I started the rap instrument, they all stopped, and in the end it was euphoria."

The method is not complicated: "In class, you can spit sound, there is a computer in each room, it can also be done a capella".

He says his pedagogy is "not based" on rap. "It's an additional tool, if it helps 2% of students, so much the better". "These pieces are more for revisions, reinvestment".

- Not "boloss" -

We must at all costs avoid falling into ridicule and caricature: "Rapper on Pythagoras, it's jester, it's + boloss + But as the codes are well done - there's no guy with a cap on the side who makes yo yo - it goes on They would have been the first to carve me, the little ones They know the subject ".

Radouane Abassi was eager to "take them out of rap kalash, cities, rap pretty trash, rough".

Music as a teaching tool, the idea is not new, but for Alain Bernard, his trainer at the Higher School of Teaching and Education in Créteil, "more than the question of memorization, at home there is has a reflection on what makes it possible to reconcile these children with the school universe thanks to a culture of their own ". In particular "by defeating stereotypes, making fun of references to violence".

"He's a real teacher and a real rapper," he says. "It's clear that he could multiply his salary by I do not know how much if he went on stage, but he has a real sense of public service".

Djilali, one of his students of the third, confirms: "In class, there is nothing that changes".

No GTI holding in class "With the students, I'm still a teacher before being a rapper.It's very square: they call me sir, m'empre", insists Radouane Abassi.

A piece on the vectors should see the day soon. "Written but not yet clipped". His videos are licked, the professional rendering: GTI self-produces, writes himself the scenarios of his clips and realizes them with friends.

He would like this year to set up a new exercise with his students: ask them for a rhyme, a play on words, a sentence once the lesson is over. "I keep the best and make a sound, it forces them to open their notebooks, it's a pretext".

As he says in his song "The Circle": "If the head you lose is that you have not followed in class / Too bad for you this rap will not be enough for you to assimilate the whole lesson / But there I'm not finished, so do not cut the sound.

© 2019 AFP