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

They both use call-and-response (e.g., asking the congregation the question “Can I get an amen?” and waiting for the audience to put their hands up and respond) to ensure the crowd is engaged, use the volume of their voice to elicit certain types of responses, actively work the room, and make references to contemporary issues or respond to cues in the immediate environment to enliven their planned/scripted sermons and performances. I argue that the use of these techniques, which fall under the umbrella of Pentecostal pedagogy, is necessary for teaching urban youth of color. Pentecostal pedagogy can be transferred into nonreligious or secular places by invoking the emotional responses that exist within the spaces that the neoindigenous inhabit together. If rappers can adopt the pedagogical approaches developed in the black church and use them to connect to audiences of young people, then teachers can and should do the same.