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

For many teachers this is a challenge, because they have a flawed notion of the purpose of classroom assessments and grades. In a cosmopolitan classroom, the goal of the class is not for the students to be assessed so the teacher can discover who the top performer is. On the contrary, the goal of the cosmo duo is for all students to reach their academic and emotional potential. In this model, a student’s every incremental increase on conventional forms of assessment is valued and rewarded within the classroom structure, either via higher grades, extra credit, or some other form of classroom recognition.