What Did Alfred Tatum Tell the Principals?

I.Tatum described three school scenarios that he called borderline criminal and told principals it was their responsibility to ensure that this wasn’t happening in their schools.

1) As part of a word meaning lesson a teacher wrote the word "laff" on the board and asked a class of 9th grade students whether it was the correct spelling.


2)A second teacher eager to get classical literature to the her ninth graders divided them into three groups.

a)Create a travel brochure with all of Odysseus’ stops and figure the cost of going from one to the next.
b) Draw pictures of each of Odysseus’ adventures
c) Make a crossword possible with the names of the gods, goddess, and other charcters in the story.

3) A teacher listed 4 words from a story that the class was about to read, had them repat them and read the story. He then asked a number of questions about the story, most of which the class got wrong. He then told them the right answers.

Tatum repeated that the only way to learn to read is by reading and that text should relate to:
a) Other texts. Kids should initiate connecftions without being asked.
b) Self.Kids should have a better understanding of who they are from the text
c) The World. Kids should learn something about the world beyond them from their rteading

Here are some texts and/or authors tatum recommends for middle and high school students.
To Be A Slave-Julius Lester
Bud, Not Buddy-Christopher Paul Curtis Ages 9-12No Turning Back-A novel of South Africa Beverley Naidoo Ages 8-12
Bang-Sharon Flake
47 Walter Mosely
Toothpast Millionaire-Jean Merrill Ages 4-8
Invictus-Bill Yancey
Reallionaire-Farrah Gray and Fran Harris
Our America: Life And Death On The South Side Of Chicago by Lealan Jones, Lloyd Newman, and David Isay
The Pact-Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, Rameck Hunt, Lisa Frazier Page
Handbook for Boys-Walter Dean Myers
MiracleBoys-Jacqueline Woodson


Frantz Fanon
James Baldwin
Langston Hughes
W.E.B. DuBois

Text have a twofold purpose:
They are two engage i.e., motivate and capture the reader and enable i.e. teach the reader to read and to know more.

Dr. Tatum emphasized his point about needing a more anatomically complete model for teaching reading.
We now have only the body-Research Based Teaching Reading Strategy but we need a head and feet as well.

The Head-
The Role of literacy instruction-a) Curriculum Orientations b) Approach to Literacy Teaching

The Feet-
Instructional Strands-a) Mediate text-help students comprehend b) Student Assessment Profile
Professional Development Strands- a)Professional Community b)Teacher Inquiry
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Tatum suggested a good student assessment profile meant a careful look at student’s performance to figure what actually is the problem. Sometimes fluency can be the problem not the designation of the particular question.

II Tatum ended with the whole school needs model that principals must address.

C.O.R.E.-Professional Development

Consistency -within department and across the whole school
Organization -Core Group of Reading Strategies to be used by teachers-maybe 5
Assessment profile to find out what to work on
Reflection -Support Structures and Human/Material Resources
Evaluatio Ongoing and Multiple
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Tatum acknowleged that this is not easy to accompplish in a school.

Message to Principals from Dr. Tatum
“Leadership is the Cornerstone of Change-You can be a barrier to or a conduit for change.”

(more next time)

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.