Education research has a problem. The work of brilliant education researchers often doesn't reach the practice of brilliant teachers. Classroom caffeine is here to help. In each episode, I talk with a top education researcher or an expert educator about what they have learned from years of research and experiences.
In this episode, Dr. Alfred Tatum talks to us about a grand dichotomy in America, embracing our roles in teaching, disciplinary equity and the power of literacy. Al is known for his work around the literacy development of African American boys and his most recent work focuses on the roles of texts and writing to advance the literacy development of African American males. Dr. Alfred Tatum is the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Metropolitan State University of Denver, and vice president elect for the literacy Research Association. For more information about our guest, stay tuned to the end of this episode.
So pour a cup of your favorite drink. And join me your host, Lindsay Persohn. For classroom caffeine research to energize your teaching practice. Al, thank you for joining me, welcome to the show.
It's great to be here.
So from your own experiences and education, will you share with us one or two moments that inform your thinking now,
my thinking has primarily been informed by the experiences I had with young boys in my classroom as a first year teacher, this is going to sound hyperbolic. But frankly, I was horrified by the low standards during my first year of teaching, and the trajectory of shape. And so by the time students reached me in eighth grade, it became very important for me to embrace the idea that literacy must be a mighty effort, and must be comprehensive effort to ensure no person was underserved in my presence. And that stark reality hit me my very first year of teaching,
what was it about that experience that really led you to the work you're doing now,
It was contrary to my experiences growing up. And so I was a student in the Chicago public schools and the beneficiary of great teachers, the beneficiary of great text, I was supremely prepared. And when I observed what was happening to the students, not because of their fault, it made me realize that we were shaping two Americas and literacy was at the center of it. So juxtaposing that to my personal experience growing up, and I taught students who had the same identity, African American boys, I was in a predominantly African American school at the time, and I just had a low tolerance for students failing in my presence, and it stopped the commitment to learn everything I can turn under the sun, to protect these students rights to a high quality literacy experience.
This idea of shaping two Americas I hope that you'll say a little bit more about that, because I have a feeling that there are many listeners who can sympathize with that idea. So I'm hoping that maybe you'll unpack that experience for us a little bit, share your observations, and I'm sure that'll lead us to our next question about your work, but to sort of lead us or help us to follow that path with you have these observations that you made that set you out on on the journey to find everything under the sun,
it's really about a grand dichotomy. And so on one end of that dichotomy, you reap all the benefits, and awards, rewards that society offer. On the other end of that dichotomy, you are suffocating economically, politically, socially. I can go on and on health, housing, and that grand dichotomy should disturb all of us, particularly if we are accomplices, and to making that happen, and I'm speaking about educators right now, we have a responsibility to make sure if we think about this dichotomy, you move young people toward the end of that dichotomy that is more socially satisfying, politically satisfying, economically satisfying, because that's how we continue to spread the wealth by giving back to those who come after us. And the other part about this dichotomy? I know I use the term shaping two Americas we have those who have strong social and scientific consciousness in a way that allows them to protect themselves, protect their families, protect their communities, protect the nation. And on the other hand of that dichotomy, we have those who have become dependent on systems. And that notion of being independent, versus dependent with tools of protection is quite disturbing. If we are doing something that cements that grand dichotomy that leads to these long term hierarchies that are very difficult to interrupt. If we don't give them serious interrogation.
Yeah, so Al what you're saying it makes me think about the area where I live and grew up and, and also now teach and prepare pre service teachers in the state of Florida. And I'm hoping that you might be able to help us to maybe uncover what some of those structures are, as we know, the teaching profession tends to be white females. And so how can we begin to understand this dichotomy in order to disrupt it, particularly if we maybe come from a background where we are on the end of your dichotomy of receiving many of those benefits? How can we begin to understand lived experiences of others so that we are able to support them in their learning journey, and really get away from this idea of shaping two Americas where we are giving everyone opportunities to learn and to grow and to become the people? They want to be? How, how can we get started on that journey, if it's not something that is part of our own personal background,
I think we already understand the differences that exist in society, we've been talking about it for close to a century, just as it relates to education. So this is not a reintroduction before us. But what's going to be very important is that we don't park our competence or lack of knowledge, behind the wrong things, race, economics, culture, we often start with a poor conceptualization of what this really means. So one, just a small push back, we fully understand what's happening, we don't have to learn about these experiences anew. But we do have to ask the question, what do we need to become smarter about so we start authorizing different trajectories? That's not going to be race based, or cultural based, or community based, it's really going to be competency base and enveloped in a love of care for the human beings that we are responsible for supporting. We have to wash away those things that continually give us license to fail other people, for example, I was a student teacher in a predominately white school. If I was not prepared to teach those students, it wasn't because I didn't understand their culture, their ethnicity, their race, their experience. It was because I was not fully equipped to do those things that I was charged to do as an educator. And so early on in my career, I began to ask the question, What am I missing? And what do I need to become smarter about? And the thing that made the difference had very little to do with many cultural appropriations or misappropriations. It was really rooted in I'm going to talk about reading specifically, can I teach a kid how to decode a word without regard to his parents income? Can I nurture reading fluency, comprehension monitoring, teach phonemic awareness, shape curricular practices, go in with an ethic of love that allows me to remain steadfast and accept and embrace my charge as an educator. We all have to think about what that means for us individually. We will all have some gaps, and then continue to ask that question, what do I need to become smart about but let's not park it behind conversations and licenses, although that continue to allow us to underserve students in our present, embrace your role as a teacher, embrace your role as an educator and one of my first principles told me and I'm going to say it verbatim let nothing or no one make you a poor teacher. And that has become part of my mantra for a long time. I've been doing this for a while but I'm constantly studying to figure out what is my next move to serve our nation of children.
That's so helpful. I think that it's, it's helpful to refocus our energy right on, as you said, the human beings right in front of us and how we can best serve each of them. Because I think that there is so much noise in education right now that it can be very difficult to know where to begin in order to identify what you're missing and what you need to do or what you need to become smarter about. I think that there are just a lot of distractions right now that can actually take us away from that objective of being the best educators we can to every child who sets foot in our classrooms. So I really appreciate that kind of refocusing the energy into every child, every individual who's in front of us in classrooms. And so I hope that in response, this next question, you'll help us to continue on that journey of thinking. So what do you want listeners to know about your work, Al?
it's important to understand how we've all been positioned to authorize underperformance and failure. It has either been through an assessment lens, it has occurred through reckless research. It has been influenced by political naysayers or other naysayers. That just finds a way to imprison reading, writing and intellectual development by smallness. So what I've been trying to do over the last couple of years is really shaping the argument that we can move students toward advanced levels of reading, writing, and intellectual development, if we don't get bogged down by some of the ongoing conversations, and so right now we have the science of reading conversation versus complex text or grade level texts. But nowhere in there do you hear the need to nurture intellectual development across the disciplines. I was having a conversation recently. And it was around issues of equity. And I said, we need to think about disciplinary equity. So all text, and all disciplines belong to me, that is the culture that I came up with. And so I can become equally excited by science or history, African American history, which was one of my favorite subjects growing up. But I can also take a Fortran class, chemistry class, a physics class. And I found residence in all of those subject areas, sometimes we robbed students of the opportunity to find that type of residence. That's disciplinary equity. That's critical in my new thinking, as it's always been there, but I've been more pronounced by it. But then there was an incident in a small town recently. And as a university administrator, I think about lab equity, who's in those labs. So they bought the young girl who someone called the police on this young girl finding some type of insects and trees. And so someone from Yale invited her to have a conversation. And I just saw this young girl days earlier, who had the police called on her walking through a lab at Yale, and being totally excited. Both of those experiences could shape residents in a particular way. So there was a psychological residence or this physical residence. And we have to be very careful when we think about that. And I think literacy is a tool of protection. It can destroy everything that goes against our humanity. But we want to make sure that students have the affordances to move towards advanced levels of reading, writing, and intellectual development. If we don't do that, then shame on all of us.
So I know you have significant contributions to the world of particularly literacy with African American voice. And in that context, is there anything else that you would want listeners to know about the work that you've done?
I think there's a need to find the appropriate balance between the larger conversations about the role of literacy, and then the pragmatic tools to move it forward. My work has always been anchored by two of those. And so let's think deeply about what this means for us. But then how do we translate it pragmatically? So that we're seeing evidence across our respective classrooms, schools, etc. I just put African American boys at the center of my work because the nation continues to miss the mark. And I see far too many of these students. I see it across all ethnic groups, but I see far too many of these students losing confidence in this thing we call reading, and writing and intellectual development. So the whole focus of this is how do you resuscitate that confidence in ways that they begin to embrace text, and become absolutely convinced that this has that determinative power to move them toward that grand dichotomy. We talked about an economy earlier, move them for that grand dichotomy that says, This is where you belong. No more intellectual isolation, no more, finding comfort in the most demeaning aspects of society. And so these young boys have to find immediate, they have the power within them. But someone has to help them release that power. That was my experience growing up, never had a shortage of confidence around these particular things in elements. And I've seen young boys tilt toward the sunlight, when they get a rich and meaningful literacy experience. And I'm going to continue to move in that direction without equivocation, to make sure that I play a small part, to interrupt that hierarchy that leads to national conversations where these boys are at the bottom of the queue. Not just physically but in people's imagination.
What an important message, I think, for all of us as educators to hear and that metaphor you use of tilting towards the sun, it really fills me with hope for students who are in situations like that, where they are, in fact being tilted toward the sunlight in order to help them grow. Because you're absolutely right. I think we all have potential inside of us to achieve our goals to identify opportunities. But often you do need someone who, who serves as a bit of a compass, or can introduce students to those kinds of experiences. So I really appreciate that, that vision of the kinds of opportunities that we can provide in our own classroom spaces in order to support students learning. So given the challenges of today's educational climate, what message do you want teachers to hear?
I'm going to speak very briefly with this. And this particularly for literacy educators, we have to have an epic faith in the written word. That epic faith allows me to remain steadfast. If you don't have that epic faith, you will do strange things that, whether intentional or unintentional, cause some students to Surr- surrender their life chances before they get to know their life choices. I know the power of literacy. I've witnessed it, I've studied it. And because of that, I have that epic faith in the written word, the power of text, and the life outcome trajectory it shapes, teachers should find their power and something very similar, that would allow them to always think deeply and seriously about destroying anything that resembles a horror of the horrific standards that I started with. No one should ever experience horrific standards of low levels of literacy. And I can't do that with an epic faith and the written word.
Well, I thank you very much for that message. And I think that that does help to refocus our energy. Because, you know, in some spaces, it is a daily challenge to refocus on what matters most. And so I really appreciate you sharing that with us. And thank you again for your tremendous contributions to the world of education.
But I just love what you're doing and why are you doing this and these conversations are important. I am privileged to be a part of them this morning.
Well, thank you so much. Dr. Alfred W. Tatum is known for his work around the literacy development of African American boys. As a foremost expert on the literacy development of African American boys., He's authored more than 75 publications on the topic. His works have appeared his chapters and edited books, monographs, and journals such as the Harvard educational review, reading Research Quarterly, urban education, Black History bulletin, the reading teacher, Journal of adolescent and adult literacy, Journal of education and educational leadership and literacy research theory, method and practice. Alfred authored the award winning book teaching reading to black adolescent males closing the achievement gap in 2005. His second book reading for their life rebuilding the textual lineages of African American males, was published in 2009. His third book, fearless voices engaging a new generation of African American adolescent male writers, was published in 2013. His most recent book, teaching black boys in the elementary grades advanced disciplinary reading and writing to secure their futures was published by teachers college press in 2021. He's also the author of four major reading and writing programs used with millions of students throughout the US. His current research focuses on the roles of text and writing to advance the literacy development of African American males. Al is also the father of two African American men. He is currently the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Metropolitan State University of Denver, and vice president elect for the literacy Research Association. For the good of all students classroom caffeine aims to energize education research and practice. If this show provides you with things to think about, don't keep it a secret. Subscribe, like and review this podcast through your preferred podcast provider. I also invite you to connect with the show through our website at WWW dot classroom caffeine.com where you can learn more about each guest. Find transcripts for many episodes, explore episode topics using our tagging feature, support podcast, research through our survey, request an episode topic or a potential guest or share your own questions that we might respond to through the show. You could also leave us a voice message or a text message at 1-941-212-0949. We would love to hear from you. As always, I raised my mug to you teachers. Thanks for joining me
