For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood… and the Rest of Y’all Too, Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education

Abstract

Reality pedagogy draws on a culturally relevant framework to understand students’ realities in the communities. Thus, the paper discusses For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood… and the Rest of Y’all Too by Christopher Emdin, focusing on reality pedagogy as a culturally relevant teaching framework. It highlights Emdin’s exploration of cultural inclusivity, emphasizing the engagement of students of color through strategies like barbershops and church analogies. Emdin emphasizes barbershops, beauty shops, cultures in the hood, and students outside of classrooms as a learning strategy to enhance reality pedagogy. Reality pedagogy finds its seven C’s foundation in co-generative dialogues, co-teaching, cosmopolitanism, context, content, competition, and curation. Emdin’s learning strategies promote the reality pedagogy to foster relationships between teachers and students.