Teaching and Pedagogy IDENTITY AS DIALECTIC: RE/MAKING SELF IN URBAN SCHOOLING

Good teachers know their students, for to prepare an appropriate curriculum, they have to address their emotional, motivational, and cognitive needs. Knowing students—for example, Shameer, the author of the introductory quote—poses questions. “Who are our students?” “How can we find out about them and what their needs are?” “How do students understand themselves today as compared to yesterday and tomorrow?” To understand her students, Joanne, a white, middle-class woman attending a teacher preparation program in a large U.S. city, interviews students during a yearlong internship in an urban school serving a largely poor neighborhood. Among other things, Joanne is interested in the differences between African-American and white experiences of schools and schooling. Joanne: Do you think there’s equal opportunity between blacks and whites?