For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too

The introduction and conclusion should be required reading for any teacher, not just those who teach in urban schools. The chapters based around the “Seven C's” of reality pedagogy didn't feel as revelatory to me. There are good ideas for teachers, even teachers like me who don't teach in diverse/urban schools, but what I want to see from a book like this is how to change not just classroom instruction but the values education is built upon. Some ideas (like the cogen/cypher) I could see teachers easily make use of in the classroom, but many teachers don't work in an environment that allows for a great deal of pedagogical freedom. Like many educational books, a lot of this book seems directed toward the reflective teacher that wants to improve and is willing to “close the door” and teach. After having read a great many teaching books, I want educational books that focus on revolutionary change in education. How do we reach the teachers that are stuck in their ways? How do we change the culture of a school and not just a classroom? The intro and conclusion clearly establish that Emdin wants this sort of revolutionary change, but the chapters in between didn't fire me up in the same way.