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A review by spb3
For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education by Christopher Emdin
1.0
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.