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

Later that day, with another class, I decided to see what would happen if I gave students the opportunity to teach the same lesson. I invited two students to coteach the lesson I had previously taught. I handed them the materials I used to design my lesson, gave them a quick tutorial on the concept, and assigned them to write a lesson plan instead of completing a traditional homework assignment. The next day, after reviewing their lesson plan, I was astounded by the depth and detail in the lesson they had designed. I then invited the students to teach their lesson later in the day. As they stood in front of their peers, I became so enamored with their teaching style that I began to note how they engaged with their peers. The new coteachers gave everyone equal attention, walked around the classroom freely, and most importantly, instead of giving an example about marbles on a frictionless surface like I did, they used an example of someone riding a New York City subway, and what forces acted on the person’s body after someone pulled the emergency brake. Instead of the disinterest that came from my example the previous day, the student coteachers’ example sparked a powerful conversation about unbalanced forces, Newton’s laws of motion, and how they apply to everyday