Madame Esme: Lifeguard of Inner City Education

Every teacher’s worst nightmare – that is the setting to which Madame Esme Raji Codell stepped into as her first job fresh out of college. In this sink or swim world Esme, unknowingly, became a lifeguard to thirty one youngsters, as she seemed the only one who could protect the children from the rough waters that are inner city Chicago. Through studying her very candid and personal diary, I am awe stricken by her extraordinary display of pedagogy as she exemplifies what it truly means to be a teacher. Esme’s proficiency in her dealings with situations surrounding equity, creating a safe, relaxed and positive classroom environment, expectations as a teacher, gender, diversity learning, multicultural competence and accommodation are, at times,

The sky is the limit, especially for young minds. We have discussed diversity, which plays a huge role in this particular book. Most, if not all, of Esme’s students were coming from, what some would call a “high risk” background. The ethnicity of her students is diverse, as she talks about having Black students, Indian students, Native American students and so on and so forth. There are some examples she talks about that would be considered culturally relevant pedagogy, for example, when her students have a “pow wow” and they researched authentic Native American garb and wore it for a day. She did this multiple times to try and incorporate as many of her students’ background as she possibly could. This, is a part of making sure your students feel as though they belong. She, in turn, used culturally responsive teaching to learn about her students and where they were coming from. She used that in her classroom and often took time to observe, empathize and reflect, often realizing that if she hadn’t, she would have ripped into one of her students for something they really could not control. She also says in the book that, “I must diagnose the roadblocks to learning.” This, to me, is something that is so important,

She constantly had cool idea that someday I am probably going to end up using. For example, when she realized her students were struggling with math problems, she made up a cha cha dance of all the steps, had them start learning it with their feet and then had them pretend their pencils were their feet. They could all remember the steps after something as simple as a cha cha dance! Although creativity in a classroom does take a good chunk of time, once they see and understand, it will stick! Her creativity and ability to draw in students, I believe, is what made her the effective teacher that she was. Her students, at home, were getting nothing. Most came from drugs and gang violence, and had poor role models probably for their whole