For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education (Race, Education, and Democracy)

by Christopher Emdin

Obasi Davis wrote the poem “Bored in 1st Period.”

I’m asking for you to understand our struggles and our hardships To understand that if we have to learn with each other we should also learn about each other so we can bring each other up

Immediately prior to the students’ teaching the lesson, perform a quick review of the students’ lesson plan to ensure that content is accurate. This step is purposeful, simple, and quick, and is intended to ensure that the content the students are teaching is correct. They may already have been graded for their lesson, encouraged for being willing to teach it, and supported by their peers in the design of the lesson. This is simply a final affirmation of the students’ work. It provides the teacher with the opportunity to give the students a final vote of confidence that conveys to them that the teacher is comfortable having them take the helm of the classroom. This step should not take more than a few minutes, and if there is something that is inaccurate in the students’ content, the teacher may mention it, but should not seek to correct it at this point. Rather, the teacher takes note of this piece of the lesson and prepares to address it from the perspective of a student while the lesson is being taught.

It is important for the teacher to prepare for ways to make his or her points without disrupting the student’s lesson and to do so respectfully—without undermining the student in her position as teacher of the lesson.

After the lesson, provide direct feedback to the coteacher(s). After any class where students have served as coteachers, it is critical that all students have an opportunity to reflect on the experience. This is accomplished by having all the students engage in a reflection on the lesson that gives direct feedback to the coteachers. This can be either a traditional written reflection or a “share out” where students discuss the experience and give each other feedback on the lesson. This dialogue is important because feedback from peers is essential for both the student coteachers and the traditional teacher, not only for improving future coteaching sessions but also for the teacher to learn about the most effective aspects of the coteachers’ instruction.

What part of the lesson struck you as most effective or memorable? What was said or done and how did it make you feel? If you were the person who was teaching, what is it about the lesson that you would do the same? What would you do differently and why? In what ways was this lesson similar to, or different from, previous lessons? These types of questions invoke a critical response to the coteaching experience and give the teacher an opportunity to gather powerful data on the type of teaching that works for their neoindigenous students.

cosmopolitanism is an approach to teaching that focuses on fostering socioemotional connections in the classroom with the goal of building students’ sense of responsibility to each other and to the learning environment.

During this process, students should be introduced to what cosmopolitanism means in the classroom. A working definition I have used in explaining the cosmopolitan classroom is that it is a space where each student is a full citizen, responsible for how well the class meets the collective academic, social, and emotional goals.

Cosmopolitanism calls for the recovery of humaneness in relationships among and within groups.

use context as a bridge to learning. Teaching more effectively requires embedding oneself into the contexts where the students are from, and developing weak ties with the community that will organically impact the classroom.