Church, Change, and Chris Emdin

By Megan Kizer, Supervising Improvement Partner

I have had the good fortune to see Chris Emdin, who is a professor at Teachers College at Columbia University, speak three times. The first time, right after he finished his address, I went straight to the vendor tables and bought his book, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood and the Rest of Y’all Too. Thumbing a few pages, I encountered a truth that woke me up – NO ONE is automatically included in a mythical sect of educators who are so like their students that they don’t need to examine themselves. That I, as an adult Black woman living in an urban center, was the “rest of y’all too.” I quickly read the cleverly organized text, with all chapter titles starting with the letter C. The book gave me a way forward with my coachees who were resistant – both educators of color who believed they didn’t have work to do because they shared identity with their students, and White educators who were often in denial that their identity had anything to do with why students weren’t achieving. 

The second time I heard him speak, I went out of my way to get there. He was the keynote for the teacher professional development in a neighboring county, and my principal colleague told me in passing that Emdin was going to be there. I told her it would be worth it. I asked her if she had been to church that weekend. She hadn’t. I told her we were about to go. 

Dr. Emdin spoke about cogenerative discussions (“cogens” for short), in which teachers and students reflect on the classroom experience and jointly construct a plan of action for improving classroom culture and instruction. It felt like this was such an incredible and accessible practice that would shift power dynamics between students and adults in schools AND co-create beloved community in the shared four walls of any class. Cogens have become one of the most transformational practices of my career in recent years. Conducting cogens within an improvement-science framework will meet the requirements of any monitoring process while getting true inside-out results for students.

The third time I heard him speak was in 2022. His book, Ratchetdemics: Reimagining Academic Success, had been published the year before, and for many of us, the event he was keynoting would be our first COVID-conscious conference. The distance, social. Masks were on. The keynote started. We laughed, gasped, clapped, cheered, encouraged -- we all connected during that session. Even with lights turned down, faces masked, and the audience spread throughout a large convention hall, his message moved through us. We could easily make out the glints in eyes, raised cheeks, and lifted chests contributing to the collective vibration. Dr. Emdin strengthened our resolve that we could still change outcomes in our contexts. He came off the stage and stood on a chair and told us that we need to believe our students. That the best way forward was to work with the greatest resource we have – our learners.  Those we serve. Whoever it is that we serve, we solve our problems together. 

I urge you to read Dr. Emdin’s work, and if you ever get the chance to hear him speak, you should absolutely go. I’ll see you there.