Hey, Ellen DeGeneres! Check out this Pittsburgh rapping principal!

Dr. Margaret Starkes was walking through the cafeteria of Miller African-Centered Academy when she noticed a group of students pounding out beats on a table. When the kids saw the principal approaching they stopped, sure they would be admonished for making too much noise.

Instead, Starkes challenged the students to a rap battle, in which emcees compete by creating spontaneous boastful rhymes.

“They were like, ‘Oooh, Dr. Starkes, you can’t rhyme,’ ” she says, laughing. “I said, ‘Which one of you at the table believes that? Which one wants to challenge me?’ ”

Little did the students know they were about to match skills against a former wunderkind from the 1980s Pittsburgh hip-hop scene. As Jazzi Love, a student at Peabody High School, Starkes performed across the country and in Canada, once sharing a stage with Roxanne Shante of “Roxanne’s Revenge” fame.

In the cafeteria that day three years ago, Starkes’ former persona emerged as the Rapping Principal.

“This was the way I unveiled to my school community that I was a rapper,” Starkes says. “Before that, I was just sticking to the script.”

Starkes grew up in a musical family. Her father was an alto saxophonist and her mother a gospel singer. Her cousin is Roger Humphries, the renowned jazz drummer. When Starkes was 15, she became enchanted by emerging rap stars, such as Queen Latifah, Salt-N-Pepa, and MC Lyte. As Jazzi Love, Starkes released a 12-inch single, “The Real Queen (of Rap),” but put aside her musical career to study at California University of Pennsylvania.

Now, after 25 years as an educator in the Pittsburgh Public School District, Starkes believes she’s found a way to reach students that meshes with their innate connection to rhythm and rhyme.

“I do think children have an authentic ear for rhythm and rhyme,” she says. “You are able to communicate with them in a way that will catch them, whether it’s a beat or a rhyme or a certain number of bars that are catchy. I like to write rap over popular songs as covers because I know the children already know that beat and it will already have their ear.”

That’s the hook. The real trick is to disseminate a message within the song that grabs kids’ attention. Starkes has rapped about Pennsylvania’s standardized tests (the PSSAs) and the first day of school (#ExpectGreatThings). Her latest video, In My Feelings, celebrates the start of the 2018-19 school year.

Last year, Starkes rolled out a red carpet on the first day of school and encouraged students, parents and teachers to dance through the front entrance.

“We put a really big effort toward ensuring that our students feel welcome,” she says. “That they feel prepared, that they feel excitement about getting better, and that the energy that is displayed at that moment is translated to a focus on learning. We want to get better – and not just have a good time – at reading, at mathematics and science and writing. But we want to do it from a perspective of putting black and brown children right at the center of their learning, and this is the way that catches their attention.”

While Starkes has found a way to draw the focus of her students, there’s one person she wants to reach beyond Pittsburgh: Ellen DeGeneres. DeGeneres, she feels, might be enchanted by the school’s mission, not to mention a former rap prodigy now making a difference in kids’ lives.

“The reason I talk so much about her is I know the work she’s done for children and schools and urban communities and her love of the arts,” Starkes says. “I would just love to have her here, to show her the gem that lives here in the Hill District … and this raw talent that our children have.”