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CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE
EDUCATION FOR
AFRICAN·AMERICAN MALES
Roslyn Moffitt, M.Ed.
Collaborative Conference on
Student Achievement
Greensboro, Ne
March, 2014
[email protected]
Culturally Responsive Checklist
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Know their students and the subject matter they teach.
Place learning in a meaningful context.
Help students understand more about themselves and more about the world.
Find ways to help students see the implications texts have for their lives, futures,
and communities.
Provide instruction that gives shape and form to students lives
Use literature that is culturally relevant and that speaks to their students'
experiences.
Help students understand society' s perception of who they are while helping
students define who they want to become.
Avoid using a social efficiency model of literacy instruction just to get through
the day.
Pay attention to current events and incorporate them into lessons.
Apprentice students toward success.
Establish classroom communities based on the concepts of care and culture.
Establish trusting relationships and feelings of kinship.
Address the multiple illiteracies in students' lives (academic, cultural,
developmental, emotional and social.
Understand the lived experiences of their students and how their students respond
to their experiences.
Connect. as best they can, students' in-school lives with their out-of-schoollives.
Understand their role as being broader than just helping students do well on tests.
Emphasize cooperation over competition during instruction.
Have knowledge of students' cultural history and the residual effects of that
history.
Carry the burden of success with their students, not assigning success or failure to
the students only.
Understand cultural-specific behaviors.
Plan instruction and assessments with a rich audit of who the students are.
Confront racist stereotypes in the curriculum and the instructional environment.
Understand that literacy can be a tool of resistance.
Help students critique the cultural norms and mores in society.
Resist curriculum orientations that are disempowering.
Seek ways to make intertextual connections.
Focus instruction on helping students develop strategies for overcoming academic
and societal barriers.
(Alfred Tatum, Teaching Reading To Black Adolescent Males, 2005)
Suggested Literature for
Elementary School Students
The following lists are not exhaustive. Inclusion in any list does not imply endorsement of content,
authors, or publishers / sponsors.
Brothers of the Night
Debbie Allen
Genre Fiction
Courage Has No Color, The True Story of the Triple Nickels:
America's First Black Paratroopers
Tanya Lee Stone
Genre: Nonfiction
What Color Is My World? (The Lost History ofAfrican American Inventors)
Kareem Abdul Jabar
Genre: Nonfiction
Pink and Say
Patricia Polacco
Genre: Historical Fiction
Testing the Ice (A True Story about Jackie Robinson)
Kadir Nelson
Genre: Nonfiction
We Are The Ship
Kadir Nelson
Genre: Nonfiction
The Real Slam Dunk
Charisse K. Richardson
Realistic Fiction
Sasquatch In The Paint
Kareem Abdul Jabar
Genre: Fiction
Wind Flyers
Angela Johnson
Genre: Historical Fiction
Suggested Literature for
Middle School Level/High School
The following lists are not exhaustive. Inclusion in any list does not imply endorsement of content,
authors, or publishers / sponsors.
With Every Drop of Blood: A Novel of the Civil War by James Collier and Christopher Collier
Black Union soldiers capture a 14-year-old white boy from Virginia, attempting to bring food to besieged
Richmond, one of whom is a former slave his own age . The boys ultimately become friends.
47 by Walter Moseley
The narrator remembers himseLf as a young slave named "47" living in Georgia in 1832. A mystical
runaway slave called Tall John inspires him to fulfill his destiny and lead his people to freedom.
Handbookfor Boys: A Novel by Walter Dean Myers
A 16-year -old is given the option of participating in barber Duke Wilson 's "community mentoring
program" instead of serving time in a youth rehabilitation center. The teen ' s gradual change in perspective
shows the value of adult mentoring.
The Beast by Walter Dean Myers
A young man leaves his neighborhood in Harlem to attend a college prep school and confronts his anxieties
about his future when he returns for winter break to discover that his girlfriend has become addicted to
drugs.
Nightjolm by Gary Paulsen
Nightjohn, a new slave on the Waller plantation, sacrifices his chance for freedom and risks punishment to
empower other slaves by helping them learn to read and write.
Letters to a Young Brother: Manifest Your Destiny by Hill Harper
Harper, an actor and graduate of Brown University and Harvard Law School offers inspiration to young
men clamoring for advice. This book has contemporary language and a contemporary approach.
interspersed throughout are e-mail inquiries and responses from other celebrities, such as Nas, Venus
Williams and Barack Obama.
Yo, Little Brother: Basic Rules o/Survivalfor Young African American Males
by Anthony C. Davis and Jeffrey W. Jackson
In direct, down- =to -earth language, this book offers advice for African American youth from their older
counterparts.
Reallionaire: Nine Steps to Becoming Rich from the Inside Out by Farrah Gray
A self-made millionaire and philanthropist at the age of 20, the author tells his personal story of growing up
on the South Side of Chicago and rising to success.
There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the other America
by Alex Kotlowitz
A Wall Street Journal reporter tells the true story of two brothers, ages 11 and 9, who live in a violenceridden Chicago housing project.
The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and FUlfill a Dream
by George Jenkins, Sampson Davis and Rameck Hunt
This true story tells how these three authors grew up in poverty in Newark, New Jersey, became friends at a
magnet high school, and made a pact to attend coJlege and become dentists.
Rite of Passage by Richard Wright
Set in Harlem in the late 1940' s, this book tells the story ofa bright IS-year -old boy who
suddenly learns that he is a foster child and is being transferred to a new foster home. He
runs away and struggles to survive in a harsh world.
"MUST-READ" TEXTS FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN MALES
The alphabet
Their names
The Bible
Manumission documents
Tile Emancipation Proclamation
Appeal: To tile Coloured Citizens of tile World by David Walker
Tlte Narrative oftlte Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave
Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington
Tile Miseducation oftlte Negro by Carter G. Woodson
Tlte Autobiograplty of Malcolm X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Go Tell It On Tile Mountain by James Baldwin
Tile Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Native Son by Richard Wright
Black Boy by Richard Wright
A Raisin in tile Sun by Lorrajne Hansberry
A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to tile Ivy League by Ron Suskjnd
Our America: Life and Death on tlte Soutlt Side of Chicago by LeAlan Jones, Lloyd Newman and David
Isay
Tlte Greatest by Walter Dean Myers
Letter to My Nepllew by James Baldwin
Stories of Scottsboro by James Goodman
Workin 'on tlte Chain Gang: Shaking off the Dead Hand of History by Walter Mosley
Think Big by Ben Carson
And Still We Rise: Tile Trials and Triumpll of Twelve Gifted Inner-City Students by Miles Corwin
(Tatum, 2005)