Building a Bridge to Literacy for African American Male Youth

Building a Bridge to Literacy for African American Male Youth
Author: Sandra Hughes-Hassell
Publisher:
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2012
Genre: African American youth
ISBN:

A report summarizing the outcomes of the summit "Building a Bridge to Literacy for African American Male Youth : A Call to Action for the Library Community". The summit was held June 3-5, 2012 and was hosted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science and the North Carolina Central University School of Library and Information Sciences on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill .

Libraries, Literacy, and African American Youth

Libraries, Literacy, and African American Youth
Author: Sandra Hughes-Hassell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2016-10-31
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN:

This important book is a call to action for the library community to address the literacy and life outcome gaps impacting African American youth. It provides strategies that enable school and public librarians to transform their services, programs, and collections to be more responsive to the literacy strengths, experiences, and needs of African American youth. According to National Assessment of Educational Progress (NEAP), only 18 percent of African American fourth graders and 17 percent of African American eighth graders performed at or above proficiency in reading in 2013. This book draws on research from various academic fields to explore the issues surrounding African American literacy and to aid in developing culturally responsive school and library programs with the goal of helping to close the achievement gap and improve the quality of life for African American youth. The book merges the work of its three authors along with the findings of other researchers and practitioners, highlighting exemplary programs, such as the award-winning Pearl Bailey Library Program, the Maker Jawn initiative at the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the Blue Ribbon Mentor Advocate writing institute in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, among others. Readers will understand how these culturally responsive programs put theory and research-based best practices into local action and see how to adapt them to meet the needs of their communities.

Black Boys are Lit

Black Boys are Lit
Author: Brian L. Wright
Publisher: IAP
Total Pages: 125
Release: 2021-11-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1648027490

This book of matrices with Black boys as the main character is designed to help gifted and talented education teachers leverage Black boys’ identities to inform and shape how they plan and deliver curriculum and instruction and manage the multicultural, democratic, and culturally responsive classroom. Ford and colleagues (2005) spoke to the notion of and need for ‘self-reflective instruction.’ We argue that all teachers must want to and learn how to legitimize the “everyday” experiences that are learned and cultivated in the homes and communities of Black boys, and how these experiences shape their self-identities and contribute to agency (Wright, Counsell, & Tate 2015). We, therefore, advocate for the rethinking of literacies by repositioning White-centered texts that often reflect and represent power and privilege toward centering the brilliance of Black identities of Black children in general, Black boys in particular. Black boys (of all ages) want to and need to physically see positive images of themselves in books reflected at them. This representation, we argue, has the potential to become an example of a compelling counter-narrative to the history of the “all-White world” (Larrick, 1965) of children’s books that only presented Black characters as “objects of ridicule and generally inferior beings” (Sims Bishop 2012, p. 6). When Black boys see themselves portrayed visually, textually, and realistically in children’s books, vital messages of recognition, value, affirmation, and validation are conveyed. Recognition of the sociocultural contexts in which they live is celebrated. Books for and about Black boys must be rigorous, authentic, multicultural, and developmentally appropriate to allow them to synthesize what they have read, heard, and seen during literacy instruction in authentic and meaningful ways. Multicultural books must introduce children to information about the values of justice, fairness, and equity. Developmentally appropriate books should vary with and adapt to the age, experience, and interests of gifted and talented Black boys to allow them the opportunity to demonstrate critical thinking, textual analysis skills and convey conceptual knowledge. These stories must expose Black boys to culturally relevant counter stories -- stories that counteract the dominant discourse that has primarily depicted Black boys as “at risk” versus placed at risk; “without hope” versus hopeful; or “out of control and dangerous” (Tatum, 2005, p. 28) versus developing self-control like all other children (Wright et al., 2018).

The Brilliance of Black Boys

The Brilliance of Black Boys
Author: Brian L. Wright
Publisher: Teachers College Press
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2018-03-09
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0807758922

2018 NAME Philip C. Chinn Book Award Winner! This much-needed book will help schools and, by extension, society to better understand and identify the promise, potential, and possibilities of Black boys. Drawing from their wealth of experience in early childhood education, the authors present an asset- and strengths-based view of educating Black boys. This positive approach enables practitioners and school leaders to recognize, understand, and cultivate the diversity of social skills of Black boys in the early grades (pre-K–3rd grade). Each chapter begins with a vignette to illustrate what is lost when Black boys are prevented from participating freely in boyhood, having to instead attend to adult and peer interactions and attitudes that view them as “bad boys” and “troublemakers.” This accessible book provides teachers with classroom strategies to help young Black boys achieve their highest potential, along with other resources for supporting their social-emotional development, such as a reading list of authentic multicultural children’s books with Black boys as protagonists. Book Features: Challenges deficit views of Black boys in order to transform the way schools and society think, talk, and write about them. Provides culturally responsive strategies for engaging Black boys and fostering healthy self-identity and agency. Discusses the importance of critical self-reflection to examine attitudes and practices that inform how teachers engage with children and families. Examines how school officials, beginning in early childhood, can stop the adultification and criminalization of Black boys.

Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males

Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males
Author: Alfred W. Tatum
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2023-10-10
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1003843603

The racial achievement gap in literacy is one of the most difficult issues in education today, and nowhere does it manifest itself more perniciously than in the case of black adolescent males. Approaching the problem from the inside, author Alfred Tatum brings together his various experiences as a black male student, middle school teacher working with struggling black male readers, reading specialist in an urban elementary school, and staff developer in classrooms across the nation. His book, Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males: Closing the Achievement Gap' addresses the adolescent shift black males face and the societal experiences unique to them that can hinder academic progress. With an authentic and honest voice, Tatum bridges the connections among theory, instruction, and professional development to create a roadmap for better literacy achievement. He presents practical suggestions for providing reading strategy instruction and assessment that is explicit, meaningful, and culturally responsive, as well as guidelines for selecting and discussing nonfiction and fiction texts with black males. The author' s first-hand insights provide middle school and high school teachers, reading specialists, and administrators with new perspectives to help schools move collectively toward the essential goal of literacy achievement for all.

Reading for Their Life

Reading for Their Life
Author: Alfred W. Tatum
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780325026794

"Because African American adolescent males and face their own challenges, they must identify texts that mark their times and their lives. If we create opportunities for this to happen, they will not only begin to trust the texts, they will begin to trust us, too. Then maybe, we'll hear one of them say, Education is on our side, ' or, 'I used to keep it gutter, but now I am all good.' This is my hope." -Alfred Tatum No reading strategy, no literacy program, no remediation will close the achievement gap for adolescent African American males. These efforts will continue to fail our students, says Alfred Tatum, until reading instruction is anchored in meaningful texts that build academic and personal resiliency inside and outside school. In Reading for Their Life Tatum takes a bold step beyond Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males. He shows how teachers can encourage adolescent African American males to connect with reading by defining who they are through textual lineages-texts with significance, carefully chosen for instruction because they are useful to young black males and because they matter. With works ranging from Up from Slavery and Sounder to the contemporary Handbook for Boys, Tatum helps you: understand what adolescent African American male readers need select enabling texts that have worked in Tatum's own teaching build textual lineages by putting meaningful texts at the core of a challenging curriculum engage readers in the curriculum through essential questions, writing, and self-assessment. Click here to see Alfred talking about this book. "African American males are not engaged in a great conspiracy to fail themselves," writes Tatum. "They continue to underperform in school as they wait for educators to get it right." Join Alfred Tatum, use Reading for Their Life, and strive for "a way to squeeze enabling texts for every ounce of possibility they contain for advancing the literacy development of African American adolescent males." Get more information on the state of education for African American males, read Yes We Can: The 2010 Schott 50 State Report on Black Males in Public Education.

A Search Past Silence

A Search Past Silence
Author: David E. Kirkland
Publisher: Teachers College Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2015-04-24
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0807771791

This beautifully written book argues that educators need to understand the social worlds and complex literacy practices of African-American males in order to pay the increasing educational debt we owe all youth and break the school-to-prison pipeline. Moving portraits from the lives of six friends bring to life the structural characteristics and qualities of meaning-making practices, particularly practices that reveal the political tensions of defining who gets to be literate and who does not. Key chapters on language, literacy, race, and masculinity examine how the literacies, languages, and identities of these friends are shaped by the silences of societal denial. Ultimately, A Search Past Silence is a passionate call for educators to listen to the silenced voices of Black youth and to re-imagine the concept of being literate in a multicultural democratic society.

Fearless Voices

Fearless Voices
Author: Alfred W. Tatum
Publisher: Teaching Resources
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2013
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780545439299

Features educational strategies that help African American adolescent boys use writing as a tool for learning and personal development.

Cheated

Cheated
Author: Jay M. Smith
Publisher: Potomac Books
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2019-11-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 164012246X

In 2010 allegations of an utterly corrupt academic system for student-athletes emerged at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, home of the legendary Tar Heels. Written by UNC professor of history Jay Smith and UNC athletics department whistleblower Mary Willingham, Cheated recounts the story of academic fraud in UNC’s athletics department, even as university leaders focused on minimizing the damage in order to keep the billion-dollar college sports revenue machine functioning. Smith and Willingham make an impassioned argument that the “student-athletes” in these programs are being cheated out of what, after all, they are promised in the first place: a college education. Updated with a new epilogue, the paperback edition of Cheated carries the narrative through the defining events of 2017, including the landmark Wainstein report, the findings of which UNC leaders initially embraced only to push aside in an audacious strategy of denial with the NCAA, ultimately even escaping punishment for offering sham coursework. The ongoing fallout from this scandal—and the continuing spotlight on the failings of college athletics, which are hardly unique to UNC—has continued to inform the debate about how the $16 billion college sports industry operates and influences colleges and universities nationwide.