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February 21 - March 13, 2021
The point here is that there are both black and white people who can be classified as “white folks”—in that they maintain a system that doesn’t serve the needs of youth in the hood.
The community is often socioeconomically disadvantaged, achievement gaps are prevalent, and a very particular brand of pedagogy is normalized. In these communities, and particularly in urban schools, African American and Latino youth are most hard hit by poverty and its aftereffects.
The key to becoming an effective educator is acknowledging the differences between students and teacher and adjusting one’s teaching accordingly, which often requires nontraditional approaches to teaching and learning.
These studies confirm that employing indigenous and neoindigenous youth knowledge is the key to teaching neoindigenous people.
the optimal way for youth language and experience to be used as a teaching tool involves having the youth themselves do the teaching.
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.
may require positioning the traditional teacher as a student in the classroom.
it requires a redistribution of power in the classroom that returns to the essence of teaching—privileging the voice of the student.
One of the chief goals of coteaching in reality pedagogy is to train the teacher to teach in a way that reflects the needs of the student by creating classroom spaces where teachers are being trained by their students.
Look into "reality pedagogy'
focuses on creating opportunities for collaboration among experts.
two students or more are asked to not only teach the class but take on all the responsibilities that the teacher has for delivering the content effectively.
This includes writing a lesson plan, aligning it to standards, identifying examples to be used during the lesson, finding teaching resources, arranging the seats in the class, and fi...
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assesses their content knowledge through how they design and teach their lessons.
Coteaching in reality pedagogy requires that teachers acknowledge that they may be an expert in their content, or at teaching that content in another location/setting, but not at teaching it to the neoindigenous.
while students are teaching the class, it is important for the teacher to sit in a seat where a student normally does and not interrupt the teaching. While in the student’s seat, the teacher may takes notes on the ways that the students teach, document what they are doing differently from what the teacher would do, and pay attention to the content that is being delivered.
The goal here is for the teacher to incorporate what is observed from students’ teaching into their own instruction.
coteaching in reality pedagogy focuses on a willingness to share all the resources the teacher has with students who will be doing the coteaching.
When coteaching is enacted, students develop the agency or power to act in ways that challenge the oppression they are often conditioned to be silent about.
cogen sessions
The first consists of the preparation stage. The second involves the introduction of coteaching in the classroom. And the final one ensures that coteaching is incorporated into regular classroom practice.
Introduce coteaching during a cogen session to students who have already gone through a three-cogen cycle.
Select a volunteer or volunteers to be the coteacher(s) for an upcoming classroom lesson. Provide these students with the topic they will be coteaching and ask them to bring with them to the next cogen meeting the resources and teaching materials they will use to teach the lesson. The
The coplanning session should begin with the teacher sharing the materials he or she uses to teach, such as the teacher’s manual for the textbook, lesson plans from previous years, and Internet websites used for accessing data.
reality pedagogy requires moving beyond a superficial rendering of traditional coteaching that happens to include students for only a few minutes.
Coteaching in reality pedagogy not only focuses on having youth teach a class, but also includes creating a structure in the classroom where students are given ample opportunities to teach peers one-on-one and take the reins from the teacher if the instruction does not meet their needs in the moment.
The teacher that allows/encourages peer-to-peer teaching transforms the structure of the classroom.
In reality pedagogy, cosmopolitanism is an approach to teaching that focuses on fostering socioemotional connections in the classroom with the goal of building students’ sense of responsibility to each other and to the learning environment.
While cogens focus on developing plans of action for improving the classroom, and coteaching involves the expansion of the role of the student to include that of teacher, cosmopolitanism, as it is enacted in reality pedagogy, focuses on developing deep connections among students across differences such as race, ethnicity, gender, and academic ability as they work to ensure that they move collectively toward being socially, emotionally, and physically present and committed to the classroom they share.
identify the possible roles that everyone who comes into the classroom can take on to help it function properly.
Desks have to be arranged, the floors have to be swept, teaching materials have to be organized, and the technology has to function properly.
The “things that need to be done” are then taken on by students in their roles as equipment distributor, blackboard eraser, technology supervisor, desk arranger, assignment collector, guest greeter, seat arranger, floor sweeper,
process of assigning roles should allow for volunteers.
a space where each student is a full citizen, responsible for how well the class meets the collective academic, social, and emotional goals.
Students are to be assured that the roles they take on in the effective functioning of the classroom are just as significant as, if not more important than, doing well on classroom tests. They are graded on and receive academic credit for their performance in these roles.
in the acceptance of their vulnerability in these moments that teachers begin to move from place to the emotion-laden spaces that the students inhabit.
the teachers’ acceptance of their vulnerability connects them to students who are often vulnerable because of how they are positioned in society. It is this joint vulnerability that is the prerequisite for change.
The point is not to force everyone to be a part of the dominant culture, but rather to move everyone to be themselves together.
teachers are hardwired to look favorably upon students who remind them of themselves.
place. Students became conditioned to engaging in the classroom in a certain way, consistent with the teacher’s expectations.
As early as elementary school, students learn to associate certain behaviors with positive validation by the teacher. It is common practice in early education for the teacher to single out “model” students, saying things like, “I like the way that x student is performing x behavior,” encouraging other students to follow suit (and shaming those who do not or can not).
Those who perform smartness never truly engage in the learning process because they are too preoccupied with playing a role. Students who refuse to comply become so preoccupied with shattering the inauthenticity of the classroom that they lose the opportunity to be academically challenged.
The first practical tool of cosmopolitanism is the consistent use of language rooted in neoindigenous culture to support and reinforce the notion of a shared community.
The significance of call-and-response to the neoindigenous cannot be understated, since it is rooted in the ways they communicate within their communities.
classic hip-hop lyric like “Can I proceed?” followed by the response “Yes indeed” can positively transform classrooms.
All for one and One for all are used in cosmopolitan classrooms at times when a student is at the board solving a problem and feels like he or she needs help.
The student who is solving the problem yells out, “All for one,” and anyone in the classroom who is willing to help responds by saying, “One for all.” The student who is having a tough time at the board then enlists the support of his or her peer.
To extend this practice, and further welcome neoindigeneity in the classroom, the instrumental of the song “All for One” by Brand Nubian plays in the background as the students work together or come to the board to answer questions.
Have high-performing students partner up with lower-performing students, and create a space in the classroom where these groups can target their specific strengths and weaknesses.
this process runs most effectively when the teacher dedicates an entire classroom lesson to describing what a cosmopolitan classroom looks like.
Students are allowed to move their desks to different parts of the classroom, sit on the floor if they so choose, and even go into the hallway to confer with their new partners.
