Emery teaches courses on language, literacy, and culture; writing pedagogies; urban education; hip-hop literature and aesthetics; participatory research; and young adult literature. His courses regularly collaborate with artists, classroom teachers, and community organizers. Moving across disciplinary norms, his courses activate social design, performance, hacking, sound design, and art making. Antiracism, education justice, and ethical community partnerships are common themes in his courses. Emery has received teaching awards as a high school English teacher and college professor, including the Board of Trustees Distinguished Teaching Award at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the first historically Black university in the United States.
Before joining the faculty at Teachers College, Columbia University, Emery spent eight years as a tenured professor at Michigan State University, where he also served as coordinator of the English Education program.
As a consultant, Emery has designed antiracist learning programs for statewide instructional coaching networks, academic departments, and school districts. He has carried out participatory evaluations for million-dollar racial equity grants in the nonprofit sector. Emery does not work alone in these capacities. He applies principles of cooperativism to his consulting work, which he learned through four life-changing years as a worker-owner with Derute, a majority Black and women owned cooperative.