Dr. Alfred Tatum has two goals in every reading class he teaches. Students need to read better and be smarter.
Reading better for struggling adolescent readers means gaining a skill that allows them to better understand the passsage. Being smarter means learning something that will help the students in other experiences in their lives.
Dr. Tatum, speaking before over a hundred educators at Wheelock’s Family Theater in the fourth of five sessions on Educating Black Male Youth, emphasized that there is no special reading strategy for teaching young Black males, but there is more to teaching reading than following a single strategy.

Not only must the reading pieces be considered but also the reader, the educator, and the quality and nature of delivery of instructtion. For the reader we need to consider home life, environment, culture, language and economics.The educator needs competence, commitment, caring, and culpability. Reading instruction includes quality of instructional support, text, context and assessment.
Tatum feels the country is stuck in the reading pieces and pay little or no attention to the other three areas.
Tatum also emphasizes the importance of text with struggling readers. You don’t give fourth grade level material to an 16 year old life level. He emphasizes texts that speak to the student’s life situation. He speaks of textual lineage which is texts that contribute to who students are, and that give them directions for the future.
Too many students he questioned said there was no book that so affected them.

Dr. Tatum speaks of literary overload outside of school, and literary under load in school. Students have demands in life but school has not provided the literacy experience to match it.

He says you have to read to learn to read, and he attempts to provide meaningful passages for students to read. He encourages and teaches comprehension monitoring so students are aware of what they are reading as they are reading.

Tatum’s advice is to change conditions and break down conditions that thwart struggling readers. We have to capture the reader and engage them with text to teach them to read.