Best Practices in Urban Teaching

The seven-school “What’s Right In Urban Teaching?” experience suggested a large number of best practices for urban teachers.

Big Picture

· Stay connected to your local teacher-training university! Urban teachers benefit from the infusion of fresh ideas from professionals who study best pedagogical practices for a living.

· Communities-within-communities at schools can be powerful energizers for teachers and students: “Houses” at Maple Avenue, “Academies” at University High, “Vertical Teams” at Franklin.

· Urban centers have strengths that suburban/rural environments do not have: museums, performing arts, sports, hospitals, media centers, corporate headquarters. They are often willing to participate in the education process in a variety of ways, and teachers must take affirmative action to tap into these resources.

· Parental involvement is a widespread disappointment in urban education. It’s important to remember that this does not necessarily mean that parents are indifferent to their children’s education. Urban teachers need to be sensitive to the possibilities that parents might be reluctant to engage schools because they feel inadequate due to language issues or their own lack of education, they may have to work multiple jobs, etc. Teachers can try personally reaching out to parents.

In the Classroom

(These best practices are obviously not unique to urban teachers.)

· Smile! Make your students feel welcome and safe. If they are not there, find out why not.

· Get to know each student as a unique individual. Plan on leaving time each September for this. Ask students to write autobiographies or construct “Who I Am” collages. Use this information to find ways to make lessons fun and relevant.

· Demand a lot. Students want to be held to a high expectation: it indicates that their teacher holds them in high esteem. “Strict does not mean not fun.”

· Organization is key. Your classroom might be an oasis of certainty in a world characterized by unexpected change. The more detailed you can make your syllabus, the better. Hand out lesson plan outlines. Post rubrics for what a student needs to do to excel in your class. Plot each student’s progress against expectations often, and discuss with the student.

· Document goodness. Have evidence to support the progress and excellence of individual students.

· Clearly articulated, well-supported points-of-view are gems that should be cultivated and recognized.

· Accommodate different learning styles by using multiple formats in lesson plans: lecturing, visuals, hand-outs.

· Let the students help out with the teaching.

· Continuously mix up groups and teams.

· Self-reflectively subject your own pedagogy to ongoing peer review: sit in classes taught by other teachers in your content area, find mentors, ask students what does and does not “work.”

· Don’t fight I-pod usage in high school classes: allow during individual work time, as long as the rest of the class can’t hear them.

· Some things you might want to consider making available in your classroom: paper, pens, ear plugs (for individual work times), Kleenex, headphones.