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

The initial cogen group should meet at least three times so that the cogen is established as a ritual and so that students see the plans of action they cogenerated being implemented in the classroom. • During the third cogen with the original group of students, the teacher should ask one of the cogen participants to invite a friend from the class (outside of the initial group) to participate in the next cogen. • The fourth cogen should include members of the initial group (the original four students) and the newly invited student. The new student is introduced by the other students to the cogen process, and is reminded of the improvements in the classroom that have recently happened as a result of the previous cogens. The “secret” of how the teacher has improved or why the classroom is running better is revealed to the new student. • After this fourth cogen with five students, the student who invited the new member to the dialogue is asked to opt out of the next round of cogens and concurrently asked to take on an assigned role in the classroom (like video recorder). The teacher explains that this will help keep the cogen group small, and emphasizes the significance of the new role the student will be taking on. (See chapter 6 for further details on the roles a student can take on after opting out of the cogen group.) The next cogen will consist of student experts who are now in their fifth cogen and the new student invited by the former cogen group member. These studen...