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

In response to the broken version of coteaching in special education classrooms in particular and in classrooms generally, I propose a reality pedagogy–based version of coteaching. This version deconstructs the ways that we previously have viewed coteaching by identifying and focusing on the transformative power of having more than one classroom leader/teacher in the classroom, and then extending the role of teacher/leader to students. This may require positioning the traditional teacher as a student in the classroom. Coteaching within reality pedagogy involves the transfer of student/teacher roles so that everyone within the classroom can gain the opportunity to experience teaching and learning from the other’s perspective. Furthermore, it requires a redistribution of power in the classroom that returns to the essence of teaching—privileging the voice of the student. The Coteaching Classroom: Student as Expert