Quality Teaching in “The Hood”

For more than four decades, I taught predominantly African-American students in downtown Baltimore.  I also happen to be a white guy.  My students, who attended Baltimore City Community College (BCCC), were amongst the poorest in the state of Maryland.  Given my background, Christoher Emdin’s book, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood – and the Rest of Y’all Too, caught my interest when it came out earlier this year.

Emdin, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, strongly encourages white teachers and for that matter, all teachers, to become more diversity conscious.  The reason is simple.  Diversity conscious teaching is quality teaching.  Students learn more and are more successful when they are taught by teachers who can relate to their cultural realities.

For some time, there have been calls to make teaching at all levels of education more culturally relevant.  A decade ago, I presented a paper at the Oxford Round Table addressing this very thing.  The paper was titled, “Building Cultural Intelligence (CQ): Implications for Closing the Achievement Gap.”  Drawing on my book, Building Cultural Intelligence, I discussed a number of CQ competencies, including respect for students’ diverse backgrounds and abilities, awareness of cultural bias – including one’s own, intercultural communication, and ability to shift perspectives.  I argued that the intractable and well-documented achievement gap that leaves too many minority students lagging behind can be narrowed, in part, through culturally intelligent teaching.

Emdin talks about creating a sense of community.  To do this, teachers need to inhabit the worlds of their students; go to their churches, local schools, and even barbershops.  In other words, teachers need to do the personal growth work that allows them to reach out to all of their students and value their unique gifts.  One of my former students at BCCC made this very point.  He commented that instructors at BCCC tend to work on their subject matter, not on themselves.  At night, they retreat to their “safe havens.”

During a discussion with another BCCC student, I realized how little I knew about her hidden diversity.  “Struggling, trying to work, take care of a child, run the child to daycare.  The bus driver used to wait for me while I ran my child into the day care center so I could get back on the bus.  I caught the 19, 13, the 8, dropped my child off, and then caught the 8 to the 22 to school every day.  And that is the reality.”

Considering the demographic mismatch between students and teachers and concerns about minority achievement, Emdin’s concerns deserve our attention, regardless of where we teach, what we teach, or who we teach.  As our cultural landscape changes, diversity creates both educational challenges and opportunities, “in the hood” and throughout the U.S.

To find links to current events/thoughts/perspectives relating to diversity consciousness, go to Diversity Consciousness on FaceBook