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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
informative
medium-paced
challenging
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
This book challenged my thinking and gave me so much hope for starting my second year of teaching. I only wish I had more details about how to implement some of these techniques, especially as a literal white folk.
AH-MAY-ZING!! Even if you don’t work in education.
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
This is a great book for anybody interested in urban education. Emdin provides some powerful anecdotes along his journey to improve his teaching. He introduces the idea of reality pedagogy, which is meant to meet "each student on his or her own cultural and emotional turf" (27). Emdin provides useful teaching methods that reconstructs the traditional classroom so that teacher and students are collaborating together to build the classroom. Some of these methods draw from important cultural places of learning, such as barbershops and pentecostal churches. Emdin also discusses cogenerative dialogues, coercing, cosmopolitanism, context, and code switching in the classroom. At the very end, he makes some great points about bringing things that students value- clothing, social media, current local events, rap music- to the forefront of the classroom. Overall a great read and super informative for "white folks" who are teaching in urban schools.
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Teachers are taught to use evidence-supported pedagogy. Unfortunately, much of teacher education is based on unsupported flashy-idea pedagogy and catchphrases that change rapidly. If you are looking for pedagogy supported by evidence or quantitative or even deep qualitative research, this is simply not the book. For a book with 210 pages, five pages of notes or one piece of research per chapter is simply not enough.
What is unfortunate is that Dr. Emdin scratches the surface of ideas that have potential to be developed into more complete academic work. He starts the book out with a thunderous and enticing entrance with a Carlisle School comparison, but he lets his ideas float away or disappear without evidence or thoughtful development in to an soft thud of a conclusion.
An analysis of the conclusion chapter captures how this work falls short. First, it is not a conclusion of the book as much as it is a completely different set of suggestions. Like the rest of the book, it is unsupported by evidence of any substantial sort while still full of claims. Emdin offers eight generic suggestions to support teachers (pg.207-8):
1. The way a teacher teaches can be traced back to the way a teacher has been taught.
2. The longer teachers teach, the better they are at their practice.
3. The effectiveness of the teacher can be traced directly back to what that teacher thinks of the student.
4. How successful the teacher is in the classroom is directly related to how successful the teacher thinks the students can be.
5. You cannot teach someone you do not believe in.
6. Planning for your lesson is valuable, but being willing to let go of the plan is even more so.
7. Continued effort in teaching more effectively inevitably results in more effective teaching.
8. The kind of teacher you will become is directly related to the kind of teacher you associate with.
I will let you draw your own conclusions on his advice but for me it is just as empty as an after school professional development run by the department of education. Emdin's book has interesting ideas, he has some compelling thoughts, he starts some interesting conversations, but the book finishes a confused mess of jargon and unsupported claims that left me more confused and frustrated than supported.
What is unfortunate is that Dr. Emdin scratches the surface of ideas that have potential to be developed into more complete academic work. He starts the book out with a thunderous and enticing entrance with a Carlisle School comparison, but he lets his ideas float away or disappear without evidence or thoughtful development in to an soft thud of a conclusion.
An analysis of the conclusion chapter captures how this work falls short. First, it is not a conclusion of the book as much as it is a completely different set of suggestions. Like the rest of the book, it is unsupported by evidence of any substantial sort while still full of claims. Emdin offers eight generic suggestions to support teachers (pg.207-8):
1. The way a teacher teaches can be traced back to the way a teacher has been taught.
2. The longer teachers teach, the better they are at their practice.
3. The effectiveness of the teacher can be traced directly back to what that teacher thinks of the student.
4. How successful the teacher is in the classroom is directly related to how successful the teacher thinks the students can be.
5. You cannot teach someone you do not believe in.
6. Planning for your lesson is valuable, but being willing to let go of the plan is even more so.
7. Continued effort in teaching more effectively inevitably results in more effective teaching.
8. The kind of teacher you will become is directly related to the kind of teacher you associate with.
I will let you draw your own conclusions on his advice but for me it is just as empty as an after school professional development run by the department of education. Emdin's book has interesting ideas, he has some compelling thoughts, he starts some interesting conversations, but the book finishes a confused mess of jargon and unsupported claims that left me more confused and frustrated than supported.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Admittedly I’m not a fan of theory because it’s so repetitive by nature but definitely something I’ll hold in reference and In reverence.
challenging
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
informative
The book was very interesting and important, especially for educators. The main idea being (I think even without the consideration of race - though that is relevant in this context) your students are people. They have lives outside school. That life impacts how they are in school, how they act, what they think, how they can learn better, and so much more. Instead of sticking to the right/traditional/whatever way, you can try to engage them in more creative ways. This will also help in not just teaching them the curriculum but creating a lifelong love of learning.
But could the book have been shorter? Definitely. The idea is good and the examples were good but some parts really felt unnecessarily stretched out.
But could the book have been shorter? Definitely. The idea is good and the examples were good but some parts really felt unnecessarily stretched out.