Giving Compass' Take:

• Understanding students cultural background and meeting them where they live creates a welcoming classroom culture that fosters success. 

• How can classrooms be made more inclusive and customized for the students within them? What are the long-term benefits for all students of such cultural outreach? 

• Learn why teaching code-switching may boost African-American speakers academic scores.

Columbia University Associate Professor Chris Emdin’s New York Times bestselling book For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood…and the Rest of Y’a’ll Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education may cause unease in some readers. His argument is that it is within this place of discomfort that real transformation occurs.

Emdin proposes a reality pedagogy. “Reality pedagogy is an approach to teaching and learning that has a primary goal of meeting each student on his or her own cultural and emotional turf.” He invites teachers to really get to know their students’ communities and cultures. Every student has different realities from their teacher, but this is especially the case if the teacher is from another ethnic, racial, cultural and socioeconomic background. This uniqueness of each student’s experience is a fundamental, and often overlooked, piece of the teaching and learning puzzle.

Reality pedagogy is about knowing your students, knowing their worlds, being genuinely interested, and being prepared to be uncomfortable. It is all about the culture of the classroom. Teachers have to meet students where they are at. Understanding students’ backgrounds is essential to teach them well. If we are ignorant of cultural norms, we can’t tap in.

Read the full article on meeting students on their own cultural turf by Cameron Paterson at Getting Smart