[Music]
CHRIS EMDIN: One cannot teach if they're not willing to learn and the learner has to have
the opportunity to teach.
[Music]
My work is problematizing urban education and urban science education and describing
but offering solutions.
The first thing for me is that there are a bevy of urban educators.
These are the folks who tell us about all that's wrong with education.
Only 33% of students will be successful in STEM and declarative science majors, they
tell us that the US ranks 27 out of 29th in developing nations, but they are a group of
folks who tell us everything that's wrong like we don't know things are wrong!
My tool for solutions is entitled reality pedagogy.
Reality pedagogy is teaching based on the reality of a young person's experience.
For me, reality pedagogy has what I call five Cs.
The first C is called the cypher.
The cypher of the cogenerative dialogue is conversations with young people about their
experiences in the classroom.
A teacher does not come into a classroom and say, hey kids tell me what your reality is.
A teacher does identify for students in the classroom that represent different demographics.
A student who's like always getting a hundred.
A kid who's always getting a 20.
A kid who's always raising their hand to answer a question and the kid who's always passive
and you say, you know what, I wanna talk to you for two minutes after school about the
class.
You've positioned them outside the classroom like they will be positioned in the rap cypher.
The idea is that we're stealing from hip hop and so if you say we're having a cypher, to
a kid who's from the Bronx or is from Oakland or is from Houston, once they hear the word
cypher, they know what it is.
The know they need to stand up and position themselves in a circle.
They know they stand equidistant from each other.
They know there's equal turns at talk.
It's just a part of the mode of communication of hip hop.
The conversation starts with the social and slowly immerse into the scientific.
The second is co-teaching which really is essentially having students teach.
One cannot teach if they're not willing to learn and the learner has to have the opportunity
to teach, so with co-teaching we say give young people all the tools that a teacher
would use to teach a lesson and have their homework assignment be creating a lesson plan.
Have them come up to the front of the classroom and teach the lesson and have the teacher
sit where the student would have sat and have the teacher take notes on how that young person
teaches.
The third C is cosmopolitanism, which essentially is making sure that every young person has
an opportunity to feel like they have a part of the class and that they are responsible
for each other.
This cosmopolitan ethos is the same thing that every drug dealer uses to recruit young
people.
It's the same thing that gangs use to recruit young people.
It's making people who feel like they are in a broken family structure or in a destructive
environment like—feel like they are part of something powerful.
And so for me, if you want to educate young people who have been marginalized and make
them feel like they are part of something.
So how do you do that?
Teach teachers that in hip hop culture, the handshake is significant.
If I go up to somebody and I go give them a pound and they don't give one back, it's
such utter disrespect.
If I give somebody a regular handshake versus one of these, it signifies how close they
are with me or the culture and so I've been teaching teachers how to understand how to
develop cosmopolitanism in classrooms.
How you give kids handshakes.
Having roles for everybody in the classroom.
You're the equipment distributor.
We cannot distribute equipment in this class unless you are here.
You are integral to how this works, y'know, you're the person who gives out the copies.
If you're not here, y'know, copies won't be given out.
I have to share this story.
I remember three years ago, I'm in the back of a class working with a teacher and a young
lady comes into the classroom and she's like, Dr. E, I'm so excited y'know, my dad's coming
and he's taking us to Disney World.
And I was like, wow that's great.
And she's like I haven't seen this guy in ten years and he just showed back up and he's
gonna take us here and I was so excited for her.
She comes in on Tuesday and she shares the exact same story and so I know she's really
excited, right?
Wednesday.
Similar story and I'm like, okay, I get it.
He's coming, right?
Friday, I'm in the class, I'm sitting there teaching the lesson and she walks into the
class.
And my heart breaks.
Like this guy disappointed her, she's hurt, she's probably got so much going on, but she
walks in the classroom and she's absolutely normal.
She's answering questions, she's participating.
I'm like oh my gosh, she's deflecting, it's really, really bad!
I'm like, do I give her a hug, do I not?
This goes on, the class leaves for the day and at the end of the day, she walks back
into the classroom, so I say, Meryl, what's goin' on?
Are you okay with the fact that your dad didn't come?
Oh, dad?
I had to cancel on that dude.
I was like, you had to cancel on that dude?
What are you talking about?
She's like, well I forgot today was Friday and it's a lab day and if I wasn't here, who's
gonna give out the microscopes?
We've created a classroom where she feels like I have to—this is my real family.
This is whereI want to be.
The fourth C is context, meaning y'know you can't teach a class if you don't bring items,
issues, artifacts from the student's life worlds into the classroom and this will look
differently everywhere.
If I'm gonna teach about weathering I'm gonna use a rock from the neighborhood that the
kids bypass every day.
If I wanna teach equilibrium in physics I wanna use the sea saw from the park across
the street and teachers oftentimes teach using images from the textbook or show some things
from Google Images and I'm like, dude, there's science everywhere!
All around us!
To be able to do a graffiti tag on a bridge that is hundreds of feet up you have to think
deeply about, one, how do I get there, two, what the composition is of the spray paint,
three, the inverse square law of physics.
The idea is that we walk our neighborhoods with the science lens on and if a teacher
understands the science that exists in students' life worlds every day, they're a more effective
teacher.
And then the last C is content and this pisses people off.
Why is content last?
Because the reality is if you teach content first and you don't have conversations with
young people, they don't feel empowered to teach, they don't feel like they're a part
of the classroom, you will not be able to get the content across.
It scares me how much science misconception is taught to young people.
Where a student asks a question and the teacher doesn't' have the answer so the teacher makes
something up just so they don't seem like they don't have control or command of the
classroom, so under the umbrella of content we also teach teachers to know to say and
be okay with what they don't know and then put that idea, that question, as a young person
saying let's discover together, because after all, that's what science is—discovery.
I'm Christopher Emdin, you need to subscribe to THNKR like yesterday!