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202 reviews for:
For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'All Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education
Christopher Emdin
4.11 AVERAGE
202 reviews for:
For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'All Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education
Christopher Emdin
4.11 AVERAGE
This is one of the best books about education I have ever read and can be applied in classrooms for any race. The ideas put forth are revolutionary in the simple sense that they treat students as individuals and give them authority and agency in the classroom. I have been recommending this book to every teacher I know!!!!
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
I definitely recommend reading this! I finished the book with more questions than answers, but I think it’s very much worth reading. The overall message is fantastic. The overall arc of the book is really effective at showing:
– how to meet students where they are
– how to create a classroom environment where everyone is responsible for creating a community
– how to navigate the tensions that come from being from a different community than one’s students
I appreciate that the author shared both successes and failures. Still, the examples felt oversimplified. In one example, Dr. Emdin is concerned that one of his approaches to connecting the material to students’ cultures might be appropriative. He makes a passing reference to bringing in community members to work with students. This is huge though! It’s exactly the sort of thing that many teachers 1) should try to do; and 2) probably don’t know how to do. So it’s unfortunate that the book doesn’t go into details there.
Despite the title of the book, there are only a few instances where Dr. Emdin himself is not the focus. There are some cases of students talking to him, or students talking about other teachers, or him talking about other teachers. I have no doubt that Dr. Emdin has a strong connection to his school communities! I just wish the book had provided some richer storytelling around the communities where he works. This is also important because several of the book’s suggestions would be…problematic for white teachers to implement, potentially leading to situations like the “Gumboot Becky” episode of <i>Good Trouble.</i>
Dr. Emdin also makes passing references to grading. Grading based on behavior has a huge potential for harm if it’s done not thoughtfully – which I’m sure he did, but there isn’t enough information in the book for others to learn how to avoid doing it badly.
The book presents this “reality pedagogy”, but it’s not super clear whether the book is putting forward a philosophy, a collection of strategies, or both. One thing that would have helped a lot is if the book entered into more of a conversation with other scholars of pedagogy. I’m especially thinking of bell hooks’s collection of essays in “Teaching to Transgress”.
– how to meet students where they are
– how to create a classroom environment where everyone is responsible for creating a community
– how to navigate the tensions that come from being from a different community than one’s students
I appreciate that the author shared both successes and failures. Still, the examples felt oversimplified. In one example, Dr. Emdin is concerned that one of his approaches to connecting the material to students’ cultures might be appropriative. He makes a passing reference to bringing in community members to work with students. This is huge though! It’s exactly the sort of thing that many teachers 1) should try to do; and 2) probably don’t know how to do. So it’s unfortunate that the book doesn’t go into details there.
Despite the title of the book, there are only a few instances where Dr. Emdin himself is not the focus. There are some cases of students talking to him, or students talking about other teachers, or him talking about other teachers. I have no doubt that Dr. Emdin has a strong connection to his school communities! I just wish the book had provided some richer storytelling around the communities where he works. This is also important because several of the book’s suggestions would be…problematic for white teachers to implement, potentially leading to situations like the “Gumboot Becky” episode of <i>Good Trouble.</i>
Dr. Emdin also makes passing references to grading. Grading based on behavior has a huge potential for harm if it’s done not thoughtfully – which I’m sure he did, but there isn’t enough information in the book for others to learn how to avoid doing it badly.
The book presents this “reality pedagogy”, but it’s not super clear whether the book is putting forward a philosophy, a collection of strategies, or both. One thing that would have helped a lot is if the book entered into more of a conversation with other scholars of pedagogy. I’m especially thinking of bell hooks’s collection of essays in “Teaching to Transgress”.
Some interesting points made! May revisit when school calms down.
hopeful
informative
reflective
fast-paced
I had heard a lot about this book and given that I am a white teacher in a school that is 90% students of color, I thought I would take a look.
Note 1: Given the title, this book is somewhat more academic than I expected. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, since Emdin mixes in a lot of personal stories, but at times it’s a difficult read. Emdin uses the term neoindigenous to refer to populations of students who, while not indigenous themselves, face many of the same issues (labelling, invisibility in the classroom) that indigenous students do. For the most part, Emdin uses the term to refer to African American students with low socioeconomic status, but this is not just a simple change in nomenclature. Emdin uses the word (instead of something like disadvantaged) to emphasize the expertise these students have about their own culture (much like a Native American student would be more of an expert on her culture than a white teacher). By tapping in to that expertise, Emdin wants to drive student engagement and heightened contributions to the classroom.
Note 2: Edmin does a superb job of describing how teachers fall into the trap of labelling students as teachable or not based on their compliance, not their abilities. He details experiences from his first two years of teaching where he applied what he calls the “Carlisle School” approach - if you want to learn, you must be passive (not active), silent (not passionate), and hewing to the teacher’s view of a successful student (instead of your culture’s view). He talks about he and his fellow teachers labelling students from the first day based on their walk and attitude, applying those labels for the rest of the year, and delighting in telling stories about those “horrible” students. I’ve seen it, and I’ve done it, and Emdin clearly points out the disservice we do to those students. If I were running a teacher education program, I’d make Chapters 1 and 2 required reading, especially for teachers who just entered the profession.
Note 3: Emdin’s solutions basically fall into one of three categories: use the tools of the neoindigenous culture (where he recommends watching church preachers to learn “Pentacostal pedagogy”), make connections to your students by learning from them about their culture, and provide as many opportunities as possible for students to take responsibility in the classroom for both management and content delivery. To the last point, Emdin uses “cogens” (small groups of student who meet outside of class with the teacher to discuss how the class should be run) and intensive coteaching experiences (to the extent that a group of students would carry out their own lesson plan for the day).
I’m not sure how comfortable I would be with all of Emdin’s suggestions --- the cogen in particular seems hard to manage with multiple classes --- but I like his overall emphasis and plan to use more coteaching in my class. I would highly recommend this for anyone described in the title.
Note 1: Given the title, this book is somewhat more academic than I expected. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, since Emdin mixes in a lot of personal stories, but at times it’s a difficult read. Emdin uses the term neoindigenous to refer to populations of students who, while not indigenous themselves, face many of the same issues (labelling, invisibility in the classroom) that indigenous students do. For the most part, Emdin uses the term to refer to African American students with low socioeconomic status, but this is not just a simple change in nomenclature. Emdin uses the word (instead of something like disadvantaged) to emphasize the expertise these students have about their own culture (much like a Native American student would be more of an expert on her culture than a white teacher). By tapping in to that expertise, Emdin wants to drive student engagement and heightened contributions to the classroom.
Note 2: Edmin does a superb job of describing how teachers fall into the trap of labelling students as teachable or not based on their compliance, not their abilities. He details experiences from his first two years of teaching where he applied what he calls the “Carlisle School” approach - if you want to learn, you must be passive (not active), silent (not passionate), and hewing to the teacher’s view of a successful student (instead of your culture’s view). He talks about he and his fellow teachers labelling students from the first day based on their walk and attitude, applying those labels for the rest of the year, and delighting in telling stories about those “horrible” students. I’ve seen it, and I’ve done it, and Emdin clearly points out the disservice we do to those students. If I were running a teacher education program, I’d make Chapters 1 and 2 required reading, especially for teachers who just entered the profession.
Note 3: Emdin’s solutions basically fall into one of three categories: use the tools of the neoindigenous culture (where he recommends watching church preachers to learn “Pentacostal pedagogy”), make connections to your students by learning from them about their culture, and provide as many opportunities as possible for students to take responsibility in the classroom for both management and content delivery. To the last point, Emdin uses “cogens” (small groups of student who meet outside of class with the teacher to discuss how the class should be run) and intensive coteaching experiences (to the extent that a group of students would carry out their own lesson plan for the day).
I’m not sure how comfortable I would be with all of Emdin’s suggestions --- the cogen in particular seems hard to manage with multiple classes --- but I like his overall emphasis and plan to use more coteaching in my class. I would highly recommend this for anyone described in the title.
This book definitely provided some food for thought on how to better reach kids. I hope to try a few of his ideas in the classroom.
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
slow-paced
informative
fast-paced
This book was very interesting, but a lot of it doesn't apply to me as an elementary music teacher. Many of the ideas are either too complex for elementary schoolers or don't fit into my content area/standards/goals/time constraints. I wish there were some concrete ideas that he had tailored for younger friends that I could use.
This book is filled with ideas for transforming an urban classroom for the benefit of students the author calls "neoindigenous" kids. I enjoyed the book and will be implementing his ideas in my own classroom.
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced