Teach teachers how to create magic

What do rap shows, barbershop banter and Sunday services have in common? As Christopher Emdin says, they all hold the secret magic to enthrall and teach at the same time — and it’s a skill we often don't teach to educators. The science advocate (and cofounder of Science Genius B.A.T.T.L.E.S. with the GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan) offers a vision to make the classroom come alive.

Right now

there is an aspiring teacher

who is working on a 60-page paper

based on some age-old education theory

developed by some dead education professor

wondering to herself what this task

that she's engaging in

has to do with what she wants to do with her life,

which is be an educator,

change lives, and spark magic.

Right now there is an aspiring teacher

in a graduate school of education

who is watching a professor babble on and on

about engagement

in the most disengaging way possible.

Right now

there's a first-year teacher at home

who is pouring through lesson plans

trying to make sense of standards,

who is trying to make sense of how
to grade students appropriately,

while at the same time saying to herself

over and over again,

"Don't smile till November,"

because that's what she was taught

in her teacher education program.

Right now there's a student

who is coming up with a way

to convince his mom or dad

that he's very, very sick

and can't make it to school tomorrow.

On the other hand, right now

there are amazing educators

that are sharing information,

information that is shared in such a beautiful way

that the students are sitting
at the edge of their seats

just waiting for a bead of sweat

to drop off the face of this person

so they can soak up all that knowledge.

Right now there is also a person

who has an entire audience rapt with attention,

a person that is weaving a powerful narrative

about a world

that the people who are listening

have never imagined or seen before,

but if they close their eyes tightly enough,

they can envision that world

because the storytelling is so compelling.

Right now there's a person who can tell an audience

to put their hands up in the air

and they will stay there till he says,

"Put them down."

Right now.

So people will then say,

"Well, Chris, you describe the guy

who is going through some awful training

but you're also describing these powerful educators.

If you're thinking about the world of education

or urban education in particular,

these guys will probably cancel each other out,

and then we'll be okay."

The reality is, the folks I described

as the master teachers,

the master narrative builders,

the master storytellers

are far removed from classrooms.

The folks who know the skills about how to teach

and engage an audience

don't even know what teacher certification means.

They may not even have the degrees

to be able to have anything

to call an education.

And that to me is sad.

It's sad because the people who I described,

they were very disinterested in the learning process,

want to be effective teachers,

but they have no models.

I'm going to paraphrase Mark Twain.

Mark Twain says that proper preparation,

or teaching,

is so powerful that it can turn bad morals to good,

it can turn awful practices into powerful ones,

it can change men and transform them

into angels.

The folks who I described earlier

got proper preparation in teaching,

not in any college or university,

but by virtue of just being in the
same spaces of those who engage.

Guess where those places are?

Barber shops,

rap concerts, and most importantly,

in the black church.

And I've been framing this idea
called Pentecostal pedagogy.

Who here has been to a black church?

We got a couple of hands.

You go to a black church,

their preacher starts off

and he realizes that he has to engage the audience,

so he starts off with this sort of wordplay

in the beginning oftentimes,

and then he takes a pause,

and he says, "Oh my gosh, they're
not quite paying attention."

So he says, "Can I get an amen?"

Audience: Amen.

Chris Emdin: So I can I get an amen?
Audience: Amen.

CE: And all of a sudden, everybody's reawoken.

That preacher bangs on the pulpit for attention.

He drops his voice at a very, very low volume

when he wants people to key into him,

and those things are the skills that we need

for the most engaging teachers.

So why does teacher education

only give you theory and theory

and tell you about standards and tell you about

all of these things that have nothing to do

with the basic skills, that magic that you need

to engage an audience, to engage a student?

So I make the argument that
we reframe teacher education,

that we could focus on content, and that's fine,

and we could focus on theories, and that's fine,

but content and theories

with the absence of the magic

of teaching and learning means nothing.

Now people oftentimes say,
"Well, magic is just magic."

There are teachers who,

despite all their challenges, who have those skills,

get into those schools and are
able to engage an audience,

and the administrator walks by and says,

"Wow, he's so good, I wish all
my teachers could be that good."

And when they try to describe what that is,

they just say, "He has that magic."

But I'm here to tell you

that magic can be taught.

Magic can be taught.

Magic can be taught.

Now, how do you teach it?

You teach it by allowing people

to go into those spaces

where the magic is happening.

If you want to be an aspiring
teacher in urban education,

you've got to leave the confines of that university

and go into the hood.

You've got to go in there and
hang out at the barbershop,

you've got to attend that black church,

and you've got to view those folks

that have the power to engage

and just take notes on what they do.

At our teacher education classes at my university,

I've started a project where every single student

that comes in there sits and watches rap concerts.

They watch the way that the rappers move

and talk with their hands.

They study the way that he
walks proudly across that stage.

They listen to his metaphors and analogies,

and they start learning these little things

that if they practice enough

becomes the key to magic.

They learn that if you just stare at a student

and raise your eyebrow about a quarter of an inch,

you don't have to say a word

because they know that that
means that you want more.

And if we could transform teacher education

to focus on teaching teachers

how to create that magic

then poof! we could make dead classes come alive,

we could reignite imaginations,

and we can change education.

Thank you.

(Applause)