Teaching black children

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• Teaching black children
• is a revolutionary act.
• James Baldwin

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Identifying and Enhancing School-Related Social
Support for African American Boys

• Jeffrey L. Lewis
• Addressing Disproportionality
• 2006 Summer Institute
• Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction
• August, 2006

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• Part I
• Overview of Learning Through Teaching in an
  After-School Laboratory
• Childrens perceptions of teachers
• What children say and what we observed as good
  teaching
• Part II
• School related social support for African
  American boys
• Structure and content of their networks
• Loving Black children

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Learning Through Teaching in an After-School
Laboratory (L-TAPL)

• Pedagogical laboratories and professional
  development sites for inexperienced teachers
• Linked inexperienced teachers with effective
  experienced teachers of poor urban children
• Documented and examined the processes of learning
  among children in the programs
• Documented and analyzed the processes by which
  inexperienced teachers learned to teach in these
  laboratories

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Learning Through Teaching in an After-school
Laboratory (L-TAPL)

• Consequently, our work simultaneously addressed
• the preparation of teachers to work successfully
  with African American students,
• and the underachievement of African American
  students.

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L-TAPL Teachers

• The model teachers at our sites were community
  nominated and had demonstrated the ability to
  effectively teach low-income urban children over
  a long period of time.

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L-TAPL Student Participants

• There were 20 children at each site from grades
  1-4 who attended the elementary schools in which
  the programs were held.
• They were recommended by their teachers for a
  variety of reasons.

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L-TAPL Structure

• Two hours, 3 days a week, for 16-24 weeks
• Included language arts, math, and science.
• The lead teachers were wholly responsible for
  curriculum content and teaching strategies
  employed we only asked that they include basic
  literacy and math skills.

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For more information on L-TAPL

• Foster, M., Lewis, J. L., Onafowora, L. (2005)
  Grooming Great Urban Teachers. Educational
  Leadership, 62(6), 28-32
• Foster, M, Lewis, J. L., Onafowora, L., Peele,
  T. (2003). Anthropology, culture, and research
  on teaching and learning Applying what we have
  learned to improve teaching practice. Teachers
  College Record, Vol. 5 (2), 261-277.

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• Lewis, J. L. Kim, E. (forthcoming). The Desire
  to Learn African American Childrens Positive
  Attitudes Toward Learning Within School Cultures
  of Low Expectations. Teachers College Record.

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Childrens Perceptions of Teaching and Learning

• We were interested in two broad aspects of
  students perspectives of their school
  experience
• Students perceptions of and beliefs about
  schooling, including beliefs about good teaching.
  
• Students perceptions of their academic ability
  and general sense of efficacy.

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Sample and Procedures

• 72 semi-structured face-to-face pre- and
  post-test interviews with children in grades 1-4.
  
• Attitudes toward self, school, and Blacks
  subscales
• As well as open-ended questions about
  characteristics of a good teacher and
  characteristics of not a good teacher.

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School cultures of low expectations

• The kids, people adapt to their environment,
  just like animals or anything else. If you treat
  a person like a criminal, they will act like a
  criminal. And a lot of kids here, theyve been
  treated like criminals for so long. Nothing you
  do, the punishment doesnt faze them.
• (Transcript 1_Oak, p. 3)

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School Cultures of Low Expectations

• We argue that both schools in the study
  represented school cultures of low expectations
  in that adults tended to view children negatively
  and in terms of deficits. These low expectations
  were articulated through teacher attitudes and
  associated pedagogical and disciplinary practices
  that were

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• Historically constituted
• Broadly shared and treated as normative or
  expected (belief system)
• Reproduced through shared practices and social
  interactions.

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School Cultures of Low Expectations

• It was our observation that the general school
  climate and orientation toward students was
  controlling. Children regularly received implicit
  and explicit messages that little was expected of
  them, and that they were incapable of sustained
  autonomous, engaged, or productive behaviors.

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School Cultures of Low Expectations

• Shared low expectations by teachers of students
  could be seen in at least two ways
• Explicitly, through the widespread attempts by
  teachers to control childrens behaviors with the
  use of threats and other forms of coercion.
• More insidiously, when teachers allowed mediocre
  student work (or work beneath the childs
  ability) to pass as exceptional.

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School Cultures of Low Expectations

• But Im realizing now that, you know, maybe its
  not them. Maybe its me and some of the stuff Im
  doing and put myself in their place. If I told
  them everyday, Youre going to detention or
  youre not going to go to recess, I would hate
  the teacher. I really wouldnt do anything.
• (Oakland Transcript 1_Oak, p. 3)

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Childrens Perceptions of Teaching and Learning

• How do you know a teacher is a good teacher?
• How do you know a teacher is not a good teacher?

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Expected Response Treatment

• Given the negative climate of the schools, and
  the relatively young ages of the children, we
  expected the respondents to identify a good
  teacher as someone who treated them well, and an
  undesirable teacher one who treated them poorly.

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Findings

• Although treatment was a salient theme, children
  provided responses that reflected a cluster of
  concerns, including teaching ability and teacher
  character.
• Through our content analysis we identified four
  response categories

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Findings

• Treatment
• Teacher competency (ability/willingness to teach)
• Treatment and competency
• Teacher character

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Treatment

• Treatment was defined as responses that reflected
  teachers attitudes, behaviors, and actions
  toward children that we deemed as generally
  unrelated to learning. Sample responses included
• Makes you stand in the corner when somebody else
  did wrong.
• We get to do good stuff and dont have to sit on
  bench.
• They do special things for us and have parties.
• They yell at you.

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Teacher Competency

• Teaching competency was defined as any response
  related to the learning process. These included
  teaching ability, willingness to teach, and
  helping children. Sample responses included
• Helps with math, reading, spelling and tests
• They dont take time to explain
• Dont teach and just gives answers
• They teach you what they learned by not yelling
  and teaching us math
• By not helping with our work that we dont
  understand

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Treatment and Competency

• Teaching and treatment were responses that
  combined treatment and teaching ability codes.
  Sample responses included
• When they yell a lot and dont teach right.
• Gives a lot of parties. Help you with your class
  work.
• Yell doesnt give us work doesnt let us play
  paper airplanes.
• When she doesnt know something, she looks it up
  and learn more herself.

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Teacher character or disposition

• Teacher character or disposition were those
  responses with which coders were able to answer
  the question What kind of person is the
  teacher? Sample responses included
• They are mean, unhelpful.
• When they make mistakes, blame student, say
  different things at conferences (integrity
  trustworthy).
• She doesnt care about nobody.
• Listens to both stories and not just one side
  (fairness).

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Summary and Conclusions

• Urban children in first to fourth grade have
  complex ideas about teachers and teaching.
• They are not only concerned with how they are
  treated by teachers, they are also concerned
  about their teachers ability to teach.
• The children in this study are also concerned
  about the character of their teachers--they
  expressed a desire for teachers who are caring,
  trustworthy, fair, and helpful.

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Conclusions

• Even in school environments in which little is
  expected of them, African American children
  possess a desire to learn as indicated by how
  they describe good and not good teaching.
• They also desire learning environments that are
  nurturing (fair and friendly) and teachers that
  tap into their desire to learn (helpful).

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Characteristics of successful urban classrooms

• What characteristics of the classrooms in our
  study appear to promote positive social and
  academic identities?

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• Teacher-student interactions help create positive
  social and academic identities (extending
  Wortham, 2004)
• The constructive use of the public nature of
  teacher-student interactions

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solidarity

• Cultivating a sense of we-ness or solidarity
  in community (Ladson-Billings, 1995 Widegren,
  1997 Rivers Scanzoni, 1997)
• Differences in social and academic abilities were
  not marked by how teachers interacted with
  students.
• Democratization of opportunity (formal and
  informal) and participation (Ladson-Billings,
  1995)
• The classroom as an artifact of the students
  lives. (Eisenberg, 2003 Ladson-Billings, 1995).

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integrity

• Teaching with integrity and classrooms of
  integrity.
• But by identity and integrity I do not mean only
  our noble features, or the good deeds we do, or
  the brave faces we wear to conceal our
  confusions, and complexities. Identity and
  integrity have as much to do with our shadows and
  limits, our wounds and fears, as with our
  strengths and potentials (Parker Parker, The
  Courage to Teach).

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School Related Social Support for African
American Boys

• A pilot study

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Expected School-Related Network

• Based on our interviews and observations of
  children in our previous study of exemplary
  teachers, and our interviews of school staff in
  the current study, we expected African American
  boys who come from low-income environments and
  low performing schools to have relatively limited
  school-related social networks, largely made up
  of a parent or guardian and 1-2 other adults
  (from home and/or school).

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Interview Questions

• When you have a problem with homework, who at
  home helps you?
• When you have an unhappy day at school, who do
  you like to talk to about it?
• If you were to receive an award at school, who
  would you want to tell about it?
• If you were in trouble at school and someone had
  to come to the school to discuss the problem and
  support you, who would you want to come?

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Findings Social Support

• Contrary to our expectations, the boys possessed
  school-related support that was somewhat more
  complex than we anticipated, and that was not
  necessarily limited to their immediate family.
• There was evidence that support could involve
  multiple households.
• School staff were at times important to this
  support, as were non-custodial males in extended
  or social families.

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categories of responses

• household adults
• adults from childs social family (related and
  unrelated)
• school staff
• siblings/cousins
• schoolmates

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Support Map-Child 4
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Support Map-Child 2
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Support Map-Child 1
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Support Map-Child 3
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FindingsHomework
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FindingsUnhappy Day
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FindingsAward
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FindingsTrouble
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Classrooms of integrity loving Black children

• AA boy, Y, is having a difficult day and is sent
  out of the room by T (though he is allowed decide
  when he is ready to return to the classroom).
  When he returns, the teacher publicly apologizes
  to Y for sending him out of the class when he was
  acting obnoxious such that they could not work.
  She apologizes because she realizes that what he
  needed from her was to know that she loved him.

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• The day will come when after harnessing the
  ether, the winds, the tides, and gravitation, we
  shall harness for God the energies of love. And
  on that day for the second time in the history of
  the world, man will have discovered fire.
• Teilhard de Chardin, The Evolution of Chastity
• Loving black children
• is a revolutionary act.

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• Teachers of young children