For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education

by Christopher Emdin Narrated by JD Jackson

Overview

A New York Times Best Seller

"Essential reading for all adults who work with black and brown young people...Filled with exceptional intellectual sophistication and necessary wisdom for the future of education."-Imani Perry,*National Book Award Winner author of South To America

An award-winning educator offers a much-needed antidote to traditional top-down pedagogy and promises to radically reframe the landscape of urban education for the better

Drawing on his own experience of feeling undervalued and invisible in classrooms as a young man of color, Dr. Christopher Emdin has merged his experiences with more than a decade of teaching and researching in urban America. He takes to task the perception of urban youth of color as unteachable, and he challenges educators to embrace and respect each student's culture and to reimagine the classroom as a site where roles are reversed and students become the experts in their own learning.

Putting forth his theory of Reality Pedagogy, Emdin provides practical tools to unleash the brilliance and eagerness of youth and educators alike-both of whom have been typecast and stymied by outdated modes of thinking about urban education. With this fresh and engaging new pedagogical vision, Emdin demonstrates the importance of creating a family structure and building communities within the classroom, using culturally relevant strategies like hip-hop music and call-and-response, and connecting the experiences of urban youth to indigenous populations globally.

Merging real stories with theory, research, and practice, Emdin demonstrates how by implementing the “Seven Cs” of reality pedagogy in their own classrooms, urban youth of color benefit from truly transformative education.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

The most important work of pedagogy I’ve read in ten years...Dr. Emdin’s humane, and more importantly, effective practices, filled me with great hope and excitement to keep engaging with the community in which I teach.”
—John Warner, Inside Higher Ed

“Teaches the unlearned lesson that a hip-hop people’s critical perspective must matter in order for authentic teaching and learning to take place, but more importantly the book offers a bigger case for colleges to make room for other hip-hop scholars.”
—Dr. Andre Perry, The Hechinger Report

“Dr. Chris Emdin...inspired me to become fearless while teaching for social justice.”
—Bryan Mooney, contributor PBS NewsHour’s Education Lounge

“As the cries to recognize the relevance of Black lives in this country grow louder...Emdin’s advice about how to more effectively serve students (people) of color is a reminder that recognizing their humanity is a critical first step.”
—Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

"A brilliant, blistering, and bracing call to arms for those who teach and learn in urban America.…Emdin reminds us that the children and young people who throng our urban schools are worthy of every attempt to sharpen their minds and prepare them for a satisfying life far beyond the classroom. If you’re looking for the revolutionary meaning, and imaginative transformation, of teaching for the real America, you’re holding it in your hands! Christopher Emdin is Jonathan Kozol with swag!”
—Michael Eric Dyson, author of The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America

“Essential reading for all adults who work with black and brown young people...Filled with exceptional intellectual sophistication and necessary wisdom for the future of education.”
—Imani Perry, National Book Award Winner author of South To America

“A compelling and accessible road map for anyone (not just white folks!) teaching twenty-first-century urban youth. It also confirms Emdin’s reputation as one of the most important education scholars of our generation.”
—Marc Lamont Hill, author of Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life and Distinguished Professor of Africana Studies at Morehouse College

“This volume is a powerful dance of teaching and art. It engages both the art and science of what teachers must do to be successful with all students. It is simultaneously lyrical and analytic, scientific and humanistic, a work of the heart and the mind. It belongs in every teacher’s library!”
—Gloria Ladson-Billings, the Kellner Family Distinguished Chair in Urban Education, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Library Journal

11/01/2015
In this book for white people but about students of color, Emdin (mathematics, Columbia Univ. Teachers Coll.) reflects on his experience as a student of color and offers a new pedagogical vision.

Kirkus Reviews

2015-12-07
An award-winning educator proposes radical changes. Emdin (Mathematics, Science, and Technology/Teachers College, Columbia Univ.; Urban Science Education for the Hip-Hop Generation, 2010)—associate director of Columbia's Institute for Urban and Minority Education and recipient of a Multicultural Educator of the Year award from the National Association of Multicultural Educators—brings considerable expertise to his revisionist views on educating urban students. "Many urban youth of color," he writes, liken schools to jails, "oppressive places that have a primary goal of imposing rules and maintaining control." He blames educators who fail to recognize their students' "complex connections" and "particular way of looking at the world. Identifying urban youth of color as neoindigenous," he maintains, allows us to understand their feelings of "marginalization, displacement, and diaspora." For these neoindigenous students, he has devised a "reality pedagogy," drawn largely from Pentecostal churches and hip-hop culture, which aims to meet students on their own "cultural and emotional turf" and create ways to engage them in learning. Basic to his approach are the "Seven Cs," including the creation of "cogenerative dialogues," where students in groups of four become advisers to the teacher on classroom management and content; coteaching, where students take responsibility for imparting course material; cosmopolitanism, in which each student has responsibility for full citizenship in the classroom; awareness of students' contexts, the better to make connections between their lives and course content; and competition, where the hip-hop battle popular in urban communities is transformed into a Science Battle. Students need to understand, writes Emdin, "that the academic rap battle is not an attempt to co-opt their culture, but an opportunity to bring their culture into the classroom." That distinction blurs in some cases, such as when he advises one teacher to buy the sneakers her students proudly wear to generate a "rich dialogue" about fashion choices. An imaginative take on teaching sure to inspire controversy.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940191585383
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	02/13/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

From the Preface
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too"
by .
Copyright © 2016 Christopher Emdin.
Excerpted by permission of Beacon Press.
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