TC's Chris Emdin on "The Myth of the Hero Teacher"

Newswise — In an interview in The New York Times, TC's Chris Emdin responds to the story of Ed Boland, an executive at Prep for Prep, a nonprofit organization that places minority children in elite private schools, who quit to teach at a low-performing public school on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Boland had seen movies "in which heroic teachers reach into the lives of at-risk adolescents and make a difference," writes John Leland of the Times. "Mr. Boland believed he could be one of them," but soon quit teaching and returned to Prep for Prep. Boland wrote a book about his experience, “The Battle for Room 314: My Year of Hope and Despair in a New York City High School.

Emdin, the author of his own forthcoming book, “For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood … and the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education,” says "Boland’s book wrongly blames students for what is really a failure to train teachers, especially those working with students from backgrounds that are different from their own," Leland writes, quoting Emdin:

"Teaching minority students, especially from poor backgrounds, requires 'a particular skill set that you can develop,' Dr. Emdin said, emphasizing that those skills take time to emerge. 'But I would not have my internist performing heart surgery. And I would not have Ed Boland teach in an urban school. He’s not trained for it.' ”

To read the New York Times story by John Leland, click here.