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

Consequently, I adopt an indigenous brand of cosmopolitanism that focuses on students getting an opportunity to feel as though they are valued and respected, a full active citizen of the immediate classroom place and space they occupy. This means that they are involved with every aspect of the operation of the classroom, and are responsible for ensuring that citizenship in the classroom is both enacted and extended to everyone who occupies the same place and space. The teacher is the facilitator of this process in identifying roles that the students can fulfill and tasks they can perform that connect them to the classroom. The teacher’s task is to let students know how important they are and how essential their jobs and roles are to the functioning of the classroom. This process involves making students aware of how each of them (through performing their tasks) becomes responsible for ensuring that the class runs well.