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A review by rbruehlman
For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education by Christopher Emdin
3.0
Rating this 3 stars partially based on what I got out of it, which is to say it wasn't transformative in part because I am not a teacher.
Emdin posits urban minority children have their own distinct culture, separate from mainstream white culture, that requires a totally different teaching approach--one that gives autonomy to students, accepts traditionally unacceptable behavior as part of engaged learning (e.g., getting out of one's seat, speaking out of turn), and integrates urban culture into the classroom.
I don't think I disagreed per se with anything Emdin suggests. Some of it I felt was actually a little obvious--kids are of course going to connect better with teachers and respect them more if the teacher puts a genuine effort into getting to know kids' worlds. I thought a lot of what Emdin posits as good teaching wasn't even specific to neoindigenous (as he calls them) kids, but just flat-out good teaching, for kids of any background. I suspect mediocre teachers can get by in wealthy school districts without horrible test scores or behavior management issues, whereas they won't do as well in poorer urban districts. Doing well as an urban teacher means you actually have to be really good at your job.
Still, if it were so easy to do these things, teaching in poorer urban school districts wouldn't be so hard. I think it's probably a good reminder for teachers in urban schools to remember that connecting personally with their kids goes a long way, and not to "other" students or label them bad. I doubt anyone goes into teaching intending to do that, but it's probably very easy to start doing. This book serves as a good reminder not to fall into that trap, even if it does seem "no duh."
I think where the wheels came off the bus from me in this book, though, was on implementation. I'm not a teacher, and my brief stint in college teaching the SAT to low-income high school students at a CUNY school very quickly disabused me of the notion that teaching well is easy without extensive training. So I'm sure some of my "well, that idea sounds nice, but how do you implement that?" confusion is due to not even being in a field. Still, I think even if I was a teacher, I'd be a bit lost. Emdin talks a lot about the concept of cogens, or groups of 4 students that meet with the teacher to discuss classroom issues regularly. What do cogens talk about?How do they actually talk about anything meaningful if the meeting is only supposed to be for a few minutes? The average high school teacher has 6-8 classes a day; how does he manage to have so many cogens on top of teaching? How much impact can a cogen actually have if they meet only 3 times for a few moments? It felt very theoretical to me and I just couldn't figure it out.
I'm not saying the idea is bad, but if I were a teacher and wanted to implement the idea, I would have to find videos or a mentor teacher or something to figure out how it is done.
The final parts of the book felt more actionable to me by comparison. Care about your students, immerse yourself in their culture, and value said culture.. I think caring about your students is just flat-out necessary to be a good teacher, irrespective of school environment, so the first part is kind of imperative in general. For the latter two, there is absolutely a power dynamic between teachers and poor minority students, especially if the teacher is white; the teacher can't live in an ivory tower and expect to be successful. The cogen stuff felt theoretical to me, but Emdin gives some really concrete suggestions on how to embed oneself in the community and win students' trust.
Emdin posits urban minority children have their own distinct culture, separate from mainstream white culture, that requires a totally different teaching approach--one that gives autonomy to students, accepts traditionally unacceptable behavior as part of engaged learning (e.g., getting out of one's seat, speaking out of turn), and integrates urban culture into the classroom.
I don't think I disagreed per se with anything Emdin suggests. Some of it I felt was actually a little obvious--kids are of course going to connect better with teachers and respect them more if the teacher puts a genuine effort into getting to know kids' worlds. I thought a lot of what Emdin posits as good teaching wasn't even specific to neoindigenous (as he calls them) kids, but just flat-out good teaching, for kids of any background. I suspect mediocre teachers can get by in wealthy school districts without horrible test scores or behavior management issues, whereas they won't do as well in poorer urban districts. Doing well as an urban teacher means you actually have to be really good at your job.
Still, if it were so easy to do these things, teaching in poorer urban school districts wouldn't be so hard. I think it's probably a good reminder for teachers in urban schools to remember that connecting personally with their kids goes a long way, and not to "other" students or label them bad. I doubt anyone goes into teaching intending to do that, but it's probably very easy to start doing. This book serves as a good reminder not to fall into that trap, even if it does seem "no duh."
I think where the wheels came off the bus from me in this book, though, was on implementation. I'm not a teacher, and my brief stint in college teaching the SAT to low-income high school students at a CUNY school very quickly disabused me of the notion that teaching well is easy without extensive training. So I'm sure some of my "well, that idea sounds nice, but how do you implement that?" confusion is due to not even being in a field. Still, I think even if I was a teacher, I'd be a bit lost. Emdin talks a lot about the concept of cogens, or groups of 4 students that meet with the teacher to discuss classroom issues regularly. What do cogens talk about?How do they actually talk about anything meaningful if the meeting is only supposed to be for a few minutes? The average high school teacher has 6-8 classes a day; how does he manage to have so many cogens on top of teaching? How much impact can a cogen actually have if they meet only 3 times for a few moments? It felt very theoretical to me and I just couldn't figure it out.
I'm not saying the idea is bad, but if I were a teacher and wanted to implement the idea, I would have to find videos or a mentor teacher or something to figure out how it is done.
The final parts of the book felt more actionable to me by comparison. Care about your students, immerse yourself in their culture, and value said culture.. I think caring about your students is just flat-out necessary to be a good teacher, irrespective of school environment, so the first part is kind of imperative in general. For the latter two, there is absolutely a power dynamic between teachers and poor minority students, especially if the teacher is white; the teacher can't live in an ivory tower and expect to be successful. The cogen stuff felt theoretical to me, but Emdin gives some really concrete suggestions on how to embed oneself in the community and win students' trust.