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For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education
by
A New York Times Best Seller
Merging real stories with theory, research, and practice, a prominent scholar offers a new approach to teaching and learning for every stakeholder in urban education.
Drawing on his own experience of feeling undervalued and invisible in classrooms as a young man of color and merging his experiences with more than a decade of teaching and research ...more
Merging real stories with theory, research, and practice, a prominent scholar offers a new approach to teaching and learning for every stakeholder in urban education.
Drawing on his own experience of feeling undervalued and invisible in classrooms as a young man of color and merging his experiences with more than a decade of teaching and research ...more
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Paperback, 232 pages
Published
January 3rd 2017
by Beacon Press
(first published March 1st 2016)
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Showing 1-30
Start your review of For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education
Handshakes? "Take 'em to church?" This book really and truly is for white folks that teach in the hood.
Here's the trick to effective teaching: see your students as individuals and recognize that they may have a different background or experiences than you. Work hard to reach them anyway and check your biases -- we all have them; don't disregard them, but be aware and acknowledge them.
I'm hesitant to give a harsh review of this book because for someone it may be beneficial. For me, I was waitin ...more
Here's the trick to effective teaching: see your students as individuals and recognize that they may have a different background or experiences than you. Work hard to reach them anyway and check your biases -- we all have them; don't disregard them, but be aware and acknowledge them.
I'm hesitant to give a harsh review of this book because for someone it may be beneficial. For me, I was waitin ...more
Excellent distillation of urban studies, race-gender oriented critical-theory, and education philosophy applied to the urban classroom, for a non-academic audience.
This book was written for me (And for you, too, especially if you teach or are interested in the education debates). A personal anecdote: Kids hang out in my room after school, including many I don't teach (they come with friends). Anyways, the other day, I had to kick everyone out due to a faculty morale-building activity (well so t ...more
This book was written for me (And for you, too, especially if you teach or are interested in the education debates). A personal anecdote: Kids hang out in my room after school, including many I don't teach (they come with friends). Anyways, the other day, I had to kick everyone out due to a faculty morale-building activity (well so t ...more
This style of teaching is unreal. The author makes it seem like urban children are hard-wired to rowdy, boisterous, and overly-social, and that we should accept that as part of black and brown culture and recalibrate our teaching to accommodate it. As a black man, I disagree with almost all that he has written....but the author would most likely say that I'm a traitor/sell-out who has stripped myself of my real true identity in order to appease white traditional America...
This man is insane...
If ...more
This man is insane...
If ...more
This review is lengthy and also gets quite personal, since I can’t help but examine For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood …and the Rest of Y’all Too in the light of my own experiences as a teacher.
TL;DR: Christopher Emdin is awesome, and this book is too. It’s short and accessible, but it has such staying power. I wish this were mandatory in teacher training everywhere. Also, minor spoilers for Anne of Green Gables in the next paragraph. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
When I was a wee boy, I read t ...more
TL;DR: Christopher Emdin is awesome, and this book is too. It’s short and accessible, but it has such staying power. I wish this were mandatory in teacher training everywhere. Also, minor spoilers for Anne of Green Gables in the next paragraph. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
When I was a wee boy, I read t ...more
For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood...and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Eduction, by Christopher Emdin, is a fascinating and exciting work that challenges teachers who work in urban environments "in the hood" as to how they approach their work, adapt their teaching practice to the needs and the strengths of their students, and reflect upon their own biases and willingness to change.
The book brought to the surface assumptions I was unaware that I even had which was, at times ...more
The book brought to the surface assumptions I was unaware that I even had which was, at times ...more
Emdin's main idea is solid: White teachers need to understand and value their students' culture. What is not solid is the practical conclusions for instructional practice that he draws based on this idea. Emdin's suggestions fall into 3 groups: (1) intriguing but WAY too complicated to implement in real life, (2) insultingly simple, and (3) good ideas but nothing new that research hasn't been saying for YEARS.
The thing that most distressed me about the book was Emdin's oversimplification of the ...more
The thing that most distressed me about the book was Emdin's oversimplification of the ...more
The introduction and conclusion should be required reading for any teacher, not just those who teach in urban schools. The chapters based around the "Seven C's" of reality pedagogy didn't feel as revelatory to me. There are good ideas for teachers, even teachers like me who don't teach in diverse/urban schools, but what I want to see from a book like this is how to change not just classroom instruction but the values education is built upon. Some ideas (like the cogen/cypher) I could see teacher
...more
Sep 26, 2017
Ivonne Rovira
rated it
it was ok
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
uh....
Recommended to Ivonne by:
Dr. DeLena Alexander
Shelves:
teaching
Christopher Emdin is no LouAnne Johnson. She’s best known for her book “My Posse Don't Do Homework”, which served as — very loosely — the basis for the movie Dangerous Minds, starring Michelle Pfeiffer. But her tour de force is her primer on teaching in urban schools, Two Parts Textbook, One Part Love: A Recipe for Successful Teaching — the greatest book I’ve ever read on teaching. Period!
It would be unfair to compare For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pe ...more
It would be unfair to compare For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pe ...more
I'm glad I read this. It has a lot of rich passages and chapters that reminded me of what a highly engaged classroom can look like for kids from "the hood". My overall take on the book, though, is that it would have been a good book for me to read 10 years ago, when I was still new to the profession of teaching--and new to teaching kids from "the hood". The *now* me would have liked to have seen Dr. Emdin use the phrase "cultural appropriation" just once. (Just once!!) So, white teachers, please
...more
Should be required reading in teacher education programs. I wish I had read a book like this when I was an undergrad education major. Twenty four years in the classroom later, all of this book rings true to me.
I really enjoyed this book! I’ve just recently accepted an offer with Teach For America in Tennessee and have been doing a lot of thinking about what it means to be a white woman from the Northeast entering a community that’s not my own, is majority POC, and declaring authority over knowledge and education.
After reading this, I’m not excited to teach- I’m excited to learn. I am feeling privileged to have the opportunity to enter this community and learn from students themselves about how the edu ...more
After reading this, I’m not excited to teach- I’m excited to learn. I am feeling privileged to have the opportunity to enter this community and learn from students themselves about how the edu ...more
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 p ...more
What is unfortunate is that Dr. Emdin scratches the surface of ideas that have p ...more
This book was hard to read as a "white folk who taught in the hood" because it made me very aware of the hundreds of things I did wrong and the privilege I did not check nearly enough during my time in the classroom. I think it's definitely, 100% worth reading if you plan to teach in a school that serves students of color.
That being said, this book focuses primarily on teaching black students, which made it less personally relevant to my own teaching experience; almost 100% of my students were L ...more
That being said, this book focuses primarily on teaching black students, which made it less personally relevant to my own teaching experience; almost 100% of my students were L ...more
A great topic to talk about but he repeats himself and rambles and takes too long to get his tips across. Maybe it's good for total newbies?? I feel like it could have been tightened up. Also, some of his tips aren't helpful for the average teachers. Who has time to play b-ball after work with kids(much less enough skill to be allowed to play with them?) or the flexibility to form rap sessions in class in a regular basis?
...more
Jun 17, 2016
Kathrina
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
african-american,
teaching
Great stuff. Scholarly, but also conscientious of real-world circumstances; very successful in reframing what it means to teach, what it means to be schooled. I'm teaching a course called Language & Learning this year, and I'm adding this title to the list of group book talks. I anticipate some great, mind-widening discussions.
...more
There are some really valuable pieces of knowledge in this book. However, I felt, at times, the author’s writings of his students, whom he classifies as “neoindigenous,” could lead readers to believe the students to be a monolith. I also think more attention to the ideas of cultural appreciation vs. appropriation would have been nice. Finally, the last thing I felt needed more attention was the author‘s ideas on code switching. I prefer the ideas posited by Dr. April Baker-Bell in Linguistic Jus
...more
I feel incredibly grateful to be working with educators who assigned this reading to our staff. This book is meant to be discussed, and I cannot wait to do so with my team and family. I would argue that this is not just a book about great teaching "in the hood", but a book about straight up great teaching -- which is educating in a way that validates and celebrates kids, people and communities (not standardized tests). I'm excited to implement many of the steps outlined right away, and am partic
...more
Emdin discusses the importance of engaging neoindigenous context as a pedagogical tool, particularly by teachers who don't share the cultural background of their students. Truly an average rating: I either loved a chapter or I hated it. There's a lot of anthro/soc, which I love, and the book certainly challenges what's comfortable/necessary/possible in the classroom. The thing that bothered me most was the arrogance in how one-sided the discussion of context was, which strikes me as unsustainabl
...more
Compelling, thought-provoking, and insightful. Disrespectful, condescending, and judgmental. All wrapped up in one book.
Christopher Emdin shares lessons he has learned through his experiences over the years of teaching in urban neighborhoods. These lessons have formed the basis for many strategies and theories he has formed about how to connect with his students, help them engage in school, and thus help them make progress. While I don't think some of his specific suggestions and strategies would necessarily apply in all circumstances (for example, I think some of his suggestions would come off as inauthentic or
...more
Dr. Emdin's book is a mix of Paulo Friere's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" and Ladson-Billings' "Dream Keepers: Successful teachers of African American children" contextualized to urban Hip Hop culture.
His strategies for including students in meaningful, power-sharing ways are helpful and I hope to use some form of his "Cogen groups" with my older elementary students. This book is definitely geared towards middle to high school students, but many strategies could be adapted to the elementary level. ...more
His strategies for including students in meaningful, power-sharing ways are helpful and I hope to use some form of his "Cogen groups" with my older elementary students. This book is definitely geared towards middle to high school students, but many strategies could be adapted to the elementary level. ...more
This is a very valuable book for anyone who is a teacher in urban areas, or is an educator looking for new ideas of what authentic teaching and learning can look like. The "reality pedogogy" that this author suggests reminds me a lot of Paulo Freire's advice in Pedogogy of the Oppressed.
One thing I wish the author would have addressed is the fact that he tried out all of the teaching techniques in the book as a black man teaching in the "hood," but he is writing for a mainly white audience of t ...more
One thing I wish the author would have addressed is the fact that he tried out all of the teaching techniques in the book as a black man teaching in the "hood," but he is writing for a mainly white audience of t ...more
Well...all this boils down to love your students, your neighbor as yourself. Lots of new speak for explaining the golden rule simple. Education rolls about and introduces new terms with a few reinventions hoping it will make for systemic change. And it’s just love. It’s always love.
A must-read for all educators.
Reality pedagogy will certainly be a goal of mine in the classroom. This book is already forming ideas for lessons and inspiring me to do research and continue the work of inviting the whole-student into the classroom in a honoring way.
Fresh perspective on teaching in the “hood” or any other lower income areas. The main thesis of the book is that educators ought to celebrate qualities in neo-indigenous people (people of color) that are not normal to mainstream culture, but that don’t deter from actual learning. This made me think of how I can incorporate new ways of communication, like instagram, or even slang into my class to deliver it in a more powerful way.
Anyone who is remotely interested in urban education should read this book. Administrators, educators, parents, policymakers, whatever. Emdin sheds true light on the darkened stereotypes of neo-indigenous urban youth and actively seeks to break the system through his reality pedagogy. The title made me feel uncomfortable, and it's supposed to.
...more
This is a very different kind of education book. Although it is theoretically based, it does not focus on theory, and although it contains very practical suggestions, it does not focus on instruction either. The main focus of this book is on how we teach across difference, how we bridge gaps between our own backgrounds and those of our students. Emdin refers to urban, black students as the neoindigenous and sets up a comparison with how indigenous students were miseducated in the infamous Indian
...more
I really wanted to love this book. The subject matter (how to not perpetuate the oppression of and violence against poor black and brown youth as an urban public school teacher) is near and dear to my heart and there aren't many books written for teachers that directly address it. I agree with the overarching message that schools privilege acting white and negate and devalue the cultures of urban kids of color causing significant violence in the process. To be more effective teachers we need to
...more
I seem to be the only person that didn't love this book. Maybe I have just been reading too many professional books lately, but I actually didn't finish it. I am worried I missed all of the good stuff. It isn't that I don't agree with many of the points in the book, I do, I just couldn't get into the writing style, I suspect. I will also comment that Emdin's suggestions are just good teaching, not necessarily particular to one group of students.
...more
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| Book Review | 1 | 2 | Dec 07, 2019 11:57AM |
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