What do we do with the students who come in, sit at the back of the room, put their iPod ear buds in, and tune us out? We know that they need specific instruction, but what can we do with them when they adopt their "cool" pose and insist that nothing we do is for them?
Alfred Tatum states that effective teachers of black males understand the need for moving beyond reading instruction. Its all about the texts. We must put texts in front of them that address the psychological and emotional scarring that occurs when you grow up black, male, and poor in America. And how do you do this? By building relationships. By understanding where the students come from. By integrating knowledge gathered, not only as an educator, but as a sociologist, an anthropologist, and a social worker.
In his book, Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males, Tatum explores the roots of black turmoil and its effects on the teens that sit in our classrooms every day. Imagine going from a place where you are allowed to develop your own personal power and shared values in a strong community setting to a place where you have no political rights, are considered a piece of property, and are forced to live a new worldview. So much time in this new world convinces you that you are inferior. Inadequate. This is the historical lineage of our black male students. After coming to America, they were bombarded with the image of the black male as "subhuman, unintelligent, sexually promiscuous, idle buffoon" (27).
There are also present day factors that lend itself to this inferiority complex and the aftermath--urban economic neglect, pop culture, and the persistence of racial discrimination. (And if you don't believe that racism is alive and well, look at the Don Imuses of society. It is still alive and well.)
So how do our black male students respond? They adopt the "cool pose" (29). You know the student--pants below the waist, prolific profanity, the fist bump. The cool pose is a defense mechanism. It can account for just about anything--inner conflict and anxiety; social environment; rage in the face of racism and descrimination. The cool pose is a way for young black men to keep the world at bay until he figures out how to handle it.
But this coping mechanism has unfortunate side effects. It leads to authority issues, refusal to find experiences to aid in growth, reluctance to share with teachers, and a refusal to 'turn the other cheek' in the face of violence.
In order to help black males close the reading achievement gap, we have to lose the mentality that test scores are the sun and the students are in orbit around them. Data can be helpful, but can also pigeonhole students. We also have to ward off barriers to learning. If we expect students to be low acheivers, then they will be. We have to raise our expecations and beliefs of them so that they will have something to work for.
Lastly, Tatum addresses the need for multiple literacies. We must beware the misinterpretation of the cool pose--it isn't that they don't care. This misinterpratation can lead to "negative reciprocity". The student thinks the teacher doesn't care and the teacher thinks the student doesn't care so no one is doing what is best for the child. (And when it boils down to it, no matter the age or size, they are still children.) As we move away from a reading instruction style that is focused on test scores and begin to develop a complete understanding of the turmoil faced by young black men, we can work on the multiple literacies in the lives of black men: academic literacy, cultural literacy, emotional literacy, and social literacy.
As teachers, it is our responsibility to become personally invested in our black males and to move them beyond the existing curriculum. Instruction must hit students at their "life-level", not necessarily at their reading level. How would you like to be a 16-year-old boy, the bread winner of your home, and stuck in class all day reading Dick and Jane?
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