This book examines the maligned students who populate urban schools and finds a talented group of resilient young people who deserve the support of the larger society. The editors and authors explore the ways such students are undermined, in the process developing new ways of teaching based on an understanding and appreciation of them. Contemporary political leaders have used the fear of the poor, non-white, and immigrant "city kids" studied here to push racist and class-biased social and educational agendas. This book challenges these tactics, while laying out a pedagogy of respect and hope. Following an introduction, this book is divided into four parts. Part I, Introduction, presents: (1) City Kids--Not the Kind of Students You'd Want to Teach (Joe L. Kincheloe). Part II, Understanding City Kids, continues with: (2) Latinas in Single-Sex Schools: An Historical Overview (Rosalina Diaz); (3) How Multicultural Curriculum Development Often Misses the Mark (Pepi Leistyna); (4) Urban Youth and Biographical Projects: Notes on Educational and Employment Transitions (Richard D. Lakes); (5) De Facto Zero Tolerance: An Exploratory Study of Race and Safe School Violations (Victor Goode and Jennifer D. Goode); (6) Who You Think I Am Is Not Necessarily Who I Think I Am: The Multiple Positionalities of Urban Student Identities (Rebecca A. Goldstein); and (7) Making a Way Out of No Way: Black Male Students at City High School (Garret Albert Duncan and Ryonnel Jackson). Part III, Appreciating City Kids, continues with: (8) Culturally Responsive Pedagogies: African American High School Students' Perspectives (Marguerite V. Wyngaard); (9) Spoken Word and Hip Hop: The Power of Urban Art and Culture (Priya Parmar and Bryonn Bain); (10) Urban Youth Engaging Poetry and Creating Learning Communities (Korina M. Jocson); (11) Urban African American Female Students and Educational Resiliency (Venus Evans-Winters); (12) "I Still Fear I'm Gonna Slip'': A Case Study of African American and Latino Males in an Urban College Preparation Program (Noel S. Anderson); and (13) Appreciating the Landscape That Urban Youth of Color Must Navigate to Become Effective Social Actors in Our Civil Society (Kecia Hayes). Part IV, Teaching City Kids, concludes with: (14) Race, Urban Schools, and Educational Reform: The Context, Utility, Pros, and Cons of the Magnet Example (Handel Kashope Wright and Sidonia Alenuma); (15) Becoming Whole Again through Critical Thought: A Recipe (Rochelle Brock); (16) Supporting Academic Achievement in Culturally Diverse and Academically Talented Urban Students (Sally M. Reis and Thomas P. Hebert); (17) Pedagogical Practices within the Prison Industrial Complex (L. A. Gabay); (18) Multicultural Story: Learning from the Experts in Urban Neighborhoods (Elizabeth Quintero); (19) Urban Students as Critical Ethnographers: Critical Textual Production through Community-Based Research (Ernest Morrell); and (20) Unplugged: Releasing the Creative Potentials of Urban Students (Winthrop R. Holder). An index is also included.