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

It requires an understanding of, and appreciation for, the unique cultural dimensions of neoindigeneity. It considers those aspects of their experience that connect urban youth to their indigenous counterparts and utilizes them to create the appropriate classroom space. It considers the language of the students, and incorporates it into the teaching by welcoming slang, colloquialisms, and “nonacademic” expressions, and then uses them to introduce new topics, knowledge, and conversations. It acknowledges and provides an escape from everyday oppression (which may come from interactions with the criminal justice system or schools) by creating a space to vent these frustrations and escape them even temporarily in a powerful learning space, and it considers the ties the student has to the outside world (neighborhood/community), reaching beyond the classroom (place) to a shared community experience.