LISTENING TO AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERACY PERSPECTIVES

Jean M. Landis
Eastern University
U. S. A.

ABSTRACT: Mandates such as the No Child Left Behind legislation silence cultural and social issues when implementing curriculum, even though it is well established in the multicultural literature that culture is a key force in learning. This article focuses on the literacy perspectives of urban African American children during their literacy practices at school.  These literacy perspectives informed the curriculum by helping to disrupt stereotypes, demonstrating the importance of culture in the curriculum and raising questions about how schools define success. The student voices helped to expand the boundaries of the balanced literacy discourse as prescribed by the National Reading Panel Report (2000)

Introduction
African American Students' Home Literacies
Disrupting Gender Stereotypes
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
Race Matters
Conclusion
References

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Introduction

The literacy disparities facing African American students are well established in the literature.  Ladson-Billings (1994) argues that they “continue to lag significantly behind their white counter-parts on all standard measures of achievement” (p. 2).  Hilliard (2002) points out the  “invalid use of tests, and a sense of impotence to change the systems that serve those ends at the base of the problem of how to make the healthy and normal experiences of African Americans visible to investigators, without the typical retreat to assumptions of pathology among the children” (p. 91). In a similar vein, Delpit (1995) promotes the need for “visions of success” instead of “autopsies of failure (p.178)  for African American literacy learners.  Despite the multicultural literature that documents the importance of culture and culturally relevant pedagogy that centers race (Ladson-Billings,1994), the National Reading Panel Report (2000) silences both race and culture. [paragraph 1]

In this essay, I present my observations and reflections as a reading coach to literacy intern teachers in three schools in a large city serving low socio-economic status (SES), predominantly African American, students.  In this capacity, I mentored new teachers by visiting their classrooms, modeling lessons and helping to implement a particular form of balanced literacy practices modeled after the work of Fountas and Pinnell (1996).  As a participant observer, I "centered" student voices during their literacy experiences at school.  The data support the argument that much can be learned by teachers’ intentional questions to children during their literacy practices at school.  All names used in this essay are pseudonyms. The self reports of students concerning their enjoyment of reading were confirmed by their teachers’ claims and my fieldnotes from classroom observations over a two-year period.  A key finding was that when students talked about how they learned to read, they talked about their literacy events at home, sometimes blurring the boundaries between home and school.  They also helped to demonstrate that effective teaching can not be blind to race and culture in the curriculum.  Listening (Schultz, 2003) to African American children pointed to their intergenerational legacy that historically has valued literacy, persisting, against all odds, for quality education and group empowerment (Gadsden,1992; Anderson, 1988).  [paragraph 2]

African American Students' Home Literacies

During the course of my inquiry, it became increasingly evident that out-of -school literacy practices were important in the lives of children. Hull and Schultz  (2002) point out the need for “researchers and educators to reexamine the boundaries and dispositions that characterize the school/out-of-school divide and to reconfigure our taken-for-granted assumptions about what constitutes rich locations for literacy and learning” (p. 7).  When observing the reading competence of the students in classroom, it became evident that I was observing beyond school literacy.  For example,  as kindergarten students were engaged in their daily journal writing, I sat next to some students and talked about their writing. Then, I asked, “Shasha, how would you teach someone how to read?” I could not help but see the light in her eyes (Nieto, 1999).  Shasha said,

I would read to them and show them. I write when I go to my Dad’s house. He had a book, Mary Had a Little Lamb. He got some yarn and the hole-punch and I copied all the words and made my own book. I practice reading it. My dad said, ‘Now you can make your own story called, Cinderella.’  My Cinderella went to the ball with her Grandmother. They danced. Her sister saw she and her boy friend kissing. She ran up the steps and dropped her shoe. Then she turned to a girl again who had to clean up (Fieldnotes, 3/22/01). [paragraph 3]

Shasha leaned over my shoulder and eagerly watched me etch her words on paper with her permission. She automatically adjusted her speaking to match one-to-one correspondence, as though she was reading my cursive handwriting. It was interesting that I had asked this kindergartener about reading, and she automatically made the connection to her own writing. This student situated herself in the story, along with her sister and grandmother, where she actually participated in the events of the story and became Cinderella. She said, “My Cinderella went to the ball with her grandmother. Then she turned to a girl again who had to clean up.” Shasha’s verbal response suggested that she entered the secondary world of the story (Benton, 1992), showing her engagement with literature by “inserting” (Sipe, 2000, p. 478) herself and family members in the text.  In this case, the student appeared still to be living the world of the text in her memory long after reading the story. [paragraph 4]

After I shared the above data with her classroom teacher, Ms. Rich told me, “Danielle is a great reader and she lived in a homeless shelter because her father was in jail.”  Reflecting on how Danielle disrupted my stereotypes of incarcerated dads not valuing literacy, Lamar also came to mind.  Lamar was a first grade boy in another school, who wrote one day in his journal about his father being in jail.  He also told me a similar story about his dad helping him to write a book, starting with the same nursery rhyme using “yarn and a hole-punch.” These data were replicated across two different grades, genders and schools. In each example, the student’s dad had been in jail, and each dad used the same type of literacy event with his child. In both cases, the students were reading above grade level according to the school assessments, and both of their incarcerated dads demonstrated that they valued literacy.  [paragraph 5]

Centering students’ voices as resources to the curriculum pointed beyond the boundaries of school to the importance of home literacies. Since both incarcerated dads in the above examples did the same kind of literacy activity, it raised questions whether these literacy events reflected a prison literacy program. More research is needed concerning the effect of prison literacy programs on the lives of the children. It was noteworthy in the above examples that reading success and motivation for these particular children did not appear to be dependent on socio-economic status, race or incarceration of a parent. [paragraph 6]

Disrupting Gender Stereotypes

In another classroom, five African American second-grade boys huddled on the sofa in the reading center, animated with the joy of literature. They eagerly reread a culturally relevant picture book that the teacher had previously read aloud to the class.  Noticing their pleasure of reading, I asked if they like to read at home.  Nathan indicated his pleasure of reading by saying, “I read at home when no one is around. I want to be a librarian when I grow up.”  Desmond claimed that he taught himself how to read:  “I have books downstairs. I like to read when I get bored, when there isn’t anything to do.... I have a big shelf of books upstairs.”   Ronald spontaneously joined in on the conversation and claimed that his dad taught him how to read.  Ronald said, “He gave me easy books. He read it. He told me to sound out all the words. Then I read it. He listened to me read it. I know how to read chapter books. I read it to my baby brother. He’s nine months old.”  This example demonstrated how another African American father involved himself with the literacy development of his son. The student also demonstrated pride that he could read chapter books and that his sister was “student of the month.” [paragraph 7]

The spontaneous enthusiasm and the joy of reading were evident by how the boys voluntarily stayed on task during independent reading.  Their descriptions of their reading at home were consistent with their motivation at school.  The intrinsic motivation and interest in books demonstrated by the boys in the above example were validated by their teacher as well as my observations over the course of two years. It also was consistent with the findings of the National Reading Panel Report (2000), which states that competent readers show “reading competence in many ways, not only by their phonics skills, but also by their interest in books” (p. 2-136).  These findings help to dispel deficit stereotypes of low SES urban African American boys.  According to Hull and Schultz (2001), “developing the habit of mind that students are able” (p. 603) should be the goal of every educator. These data helped to confirm that reality and also raise questions about how teacher expectations and assumptions of their students affect learning as well as schools' measure of success. [paragraph 8]

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

Over the course of the two-year period as a reading coach, it became evident that curriculum could not remain colorblind to race as a key force in learning (Ferguson, 2001; Ladson-Billings, 1994). For example, during one of my visits to a kindergarten class, I noticed a big book displayed on an easel in the reading center.  The front cover had pictures of six multicultural faces: three were white, one Asian and two were Hispanic. When the teacher began talking about differences, one of the kindergarten students said, “There no black people.” [paragraph 9]

Ms. White, an African American teacher,  told me after class, “That is why they have low self-esteem, because they don’t see themselves in their school texts.” Upon further investigation of this big book, I counted 28 pages filled with colorful photos of multicultural children, with only three African American pictures and one African boy. Two of the African American students were placed off center, with white children in the center. Paradoxically the book was considered multicultural. This concern of representation was consistent with the perspective of an African American parent who said, “Students don’t see much relevance to their education.” [paragraph 10]

The issue of representation came up again in a second grade class as Azure was thumbing through a multicultural book during independent reading. Sitting next to her as she flipped the pages, I noticed that the house of the two main characters was the biggest and prettiest of all the houses. Their mom came to meet them when they got home. There was a cat sleeping on the windowsill. Everything looked beautiful and peaceful. It was noteworthy that the children in the story were dark skinned; however, I noticed that Azure did not seem very motivated to read the book.  After we read and discussed the story,   I said, “Tell me about your street. What do you do when you go home from school?”  Without hesitation, she became animated as she told me her story. She said,

My pop-pop takes me to the store for a snack. He walks with me when I ride my bike. My uncle helps me with homework. He is 21. He got shot in the hip, five times. Someone tried to rob him. He has a blood clot. He is in the hospital. When I go to my mom’s house, she hugs me and said, "God is not going to take him away." I like my family. They are nice to me. I will write you a book about my family. I got $40.00 for my birthday. I am rich. I will write it on my computer. I wish you didn’t go (Fieldnotes, 4/18/02). [paragraph 11]

Azure’s comprehension and motivation were enhanced when she became socially involved with the text as she made text-to-life connections (Cochran-Smith, 1984; Sipe, 2000, p. 266).  It was noteworthy that the pictures in the book had children with dark skin; however, the story contrasted drastically with the streets in her neighborhood. Instead of having her mother waiting for her after school, her grandfather met her and she visited her mother at another house. In spite of these differences, Azure made it clear that she felt loved by her family and she felt rich. [paragraph 12]

According to school assessments, Azure was reading below grade level . She often went to the principal’s office because of discipline problems, and her seat was separated from the other children in class.  Azure surprised me when she volunteered to write a book at home about her family.   Her motivation to write a book seemed to point to what Dyson (1993) described as the “link between composing a text and composing a place for oneself in the social world” (p. 229). [paragraph 13]

Race Matters

The following examples provide evidence of how some children connected race with school success.  In a second grade classroom, where the racial composition consisted of all African American students with the exception of one Asian girl, a student associated school success with whiteness. One day Charles, an African American boy, cried and pointed to another student and said, “He called me ‘White boy.’” This African American boy was labeled as “White,” because he raised his hand and waited to be called on in order to talk in class. As she discussed this incident with me after school, the teacher had a flashback to a parent-teacher conference when one dad said, in response to his son’s good report card, “My son is a White boy.” He smiled and said, “That is what we say sometimes.” Another day the Asian girl had a similar experience when a peer said, “You are White.” She also was following directions. Later in another second grade class in the same school, some students said, “You are White,” to students who were standing quietly in line. In response the teacher said to the students, “Look, I am Black and I went to college, and I am successful. You can be, too.” [paragraph 14]

In the above examples, school success was associated with what Ogbu (1993) defines as “acting white” ( p. 102).  I could not ignore the implications of this finding, concerning the identity of school failure that the students in the above examples had adopted at such a young age.  While guarding against a deterministic view that ignores variability within culture, agency, and empowerment of cultural groups, this finding suggests that school identities are well formed at young ages by the messages that students receive. It was disheartening that these students did not identify school success with being African American. This finding raises questions about where these stereotypes came from at such an early age. What is the school doing to challenge those concepts? What is the role of the school in helping to form those concepts? [paragraph 15]

These observations clearly point to the importance of  curriculum that Delpit (1995) describes in which African American children can find “intellectual achievements of people who look like themselves” ( p. 177), so that school success is not seen as acting White. Delpit (1995) points out that students who “appear to be unable to learn are in many instances choosing to ‘not-learn’…, choosing to maintain their sense of identity in the face of what they perceive as a painful choice between allegiance to ‘them’ or ‘us’” (pp. 163-164). Unfortunately, current reform efforts that focus only on the best teaching methods ignore this reality. [paragraph 16]

The concept of whiteness surfaced again in another second grade classroom.  This time the student seemed to be overcoming the negative connotations of whiteness when writing in his journal. He wrote, “Martin Luther King wanted white people to treat black people the same.” The teacher who was White asked, “Do I treat you differently?” The African American boy said, “No, you aren’t white. You are light-skinned black.” This same theme was noted in three other classrooms in which the students liked the teacher who was White. The students referred to the teacher as “light skinned” or “having a little black in her." [paragraph 17]

In a fifth grade social studies class, a student’s awareness of race surfaced again; this time I could not hide as a White researcher. A literacy intern, Mr. Brown, who taught kindergarten moved to the fifth grade as an apprentice teacher during the second year of this study. He tried to make his teaching culturally relevant. Mr. Brown said, “When I was going to school, I didn’t like history because I didn’t see myself in it.” He did not want his students to say that when they were adults. I had just arrived in his social studies class to observe how he integrated reading and writing across the curriculum. I sat quietly at the back of the class, so that I would not disturb the whole group lesson. At that moment, an African American girl turned around, looked at me, and smiled. With a twinkle in her eye, Shabrae questioned me about my racial identity, wondering if I was Irish, Puerto Rican, or German.  Finally, she said, “Do you know what you is?” [paragraph 18]

Shabrae’s riveting questions concerning my identity demonstrated that I could not hide my racial difference and become invisible, especially when I was the only White person in the classroom.  This incident helped me to guard against what Ellsworth (1997) describes as “normalizations and reinscriptions” (p. 268) of my entitlement and White privileges. I also reflected on the words of a White teacher (Paley, 1979) in this study, who said during an interview, “I don’t see color.  I only see children.”  Delpit argues that, “If one does not see color, then one does not really see children.... Children made ‘invisible’ in this manner become hard-pressed to see themselves worthy of notice” as though “there is something wrong with being black or brown, that it should not be noticed” (1995, p. 177). [paragraph 19]

Conclusion

Balanced literacy practices have many cultural balances beyond teaching methods or strategies to address in curriculum development. This essay presents how low-SES urban children construct their cultural identities as literacy learners. Listening to children’s literacy perspectives helps to expand the boundaries of the balanced literacy discourse to include culture, rather than assuming a one-size-fits-all model for schools.  It also helps us raise questions about parental engagement and deepen our knowledge of the children whom we teach. The literacy perspectives of the students suggest that schools need to include students and parents as resources to the curriculum.  These perspectives also question how schools define success and how teachers inquire about their students' literacy perspectives in order to know them. Delpit’s words are pertinent again, “In order to teach you, I must know you” (1995, p. 183). [paragraph 20]

Moreover, African American children’s literacy perspectives help to expose and disrupt deficit stereotypes.  The findings of my study demonstrate that when classrooms are divorced from the cultural identities of the classroom, the ethnic disconnect affects the motivation of students.  How some young second grade students already acquired the assumption that success in school is for White kids is a key question that needs an answer. In turn, the question persists: Will best practices of balanced literacy construct school success (Mehan, Villanueva, & Lintz, 1999), with built-in support systems through high school, so that all schools can be "dreamkeepers" (Ladson-Billings, 1994)? [paragraph 21]

References

Anderson, J. D. (1988). The education of blacks in the South, 1860-1935. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina.

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Hilliard, A. (2002). Language, culture, and the assessment of African American children. In L. Delpit and J. K. Dowdy, (Eds.), The skin that we speak: Thoughts of language and culture in the classroom (pp. 87-105). New York, NY:  The New Press.

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Hull, G., & Schultz, K. (2002). School’s out!  Bridging out-of-school literacies with classroom practice. New York, NY: Teachers College.  

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Ogbu, J. U. (1993). Frameworks—Variability in minority school performance: A problem in search of an explanation.  In E. Jacob and C. Jordan, (Eds.), Minority education: Anthropological perspectives (pp. 83-111). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Paley, V. G. (1979). White teacher. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.

Schultz, K. (2003). Listening: A framework for teaching across     differences. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Sipe, L. R. (2000). The construction of literary understanding by first and second graders in oral response to picture storybook read-alouds. Reading Research Quarterly 35, 252-275.

Jean M. Landis, Ed. D., Assistant Professor of Education and Coordinator of Reading Certification and Literacy Programs at Eastern University, received her doctoral degree in reading, writing, and literacy from the University of Pennsylvania. She has experience as a student teacher mentor, instructor, facilitator, supervisor, teacher, pre-school director and reading specialist. (Contact this author at jlandis6@eastern.edu; contact the editors of EMME at emme@eastern.edu.)

Recommended Citation in the APA Style:

Landis, J. M. (2005). Listening to African American literacy perspectives. Electronic Magazine of Multicultural Education, 7(1), 21 paragraphs. Retrieved [your access month date, year], from http://www.eastern.edu/publications/emme/2005spring/landis.html