The racial achievement gap in literacy is one of the most difficult issues in education today, and nowhere does it manifest itself more perniciously than in the case of black adolescent males. ...Approaching the problem from the inside, author Alfred Tatum brings together his various experiences as a black male student, middle school teacher working with struggling black male readers, reading specialist in an urban elementary school, and staff developer in classrooms across the nation. His book, Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males: Closing the Achievement Gap' addresses the adolescent shift black males face and the societal experiences unique to them that can hinder academic progress. With an authentic and honest voice, Tatum bridges the connections among theory, instruction, and professional development to create a roadmap for better literacy achievement. He presents practical suggestions for providing reading strategy instruction and assessment that is explicit, meaningful, and culturally responsive, as well as guidelines for selecting and discussing nonfiction and fiction texts with black males. The author's first-hand insights provide middle school and high school teachers, reading specialists, and administrators with new perspectives to help schools move collectively toward the essential goal of literacy achievement for all.
Winner of AM&P EXCEL Gold Award "They don't care about their education." "They are not capable of learning." "I can't work with them." "I can't get through to them." Just as you may have thought ...these things about your students, they, too, may have similar thoughts about you: "She doesn't care about my education." "He is not capable of understanding me." "I can't work with her." "I can't get through to him." While all students in your class, building, or school district need your support, the Black and Latino male students—the most underserved, suspended, and expelled students in education—need you to understand them as you support them so that they can thrive academically. In Becoming the Educator They Need, former professional athlete turned educator Robert Jackson reminds teachers and administrators that although "a great majority of all the stories in the news about Black and Latino males are negative, " these young men—the most likely to be incarcerated, drop out of school, and become victims of homicide—need you to work through any biases you may have and internalize and employ the five core beliefs and mindsets necessary to best serve your Black and Latino male students, the six core values for teaching Black and Latino males, and the 11 characteristics of strong, healthy relationships and become the educator that these students need.
High school and the difficult terrain of sexuality and gender identity are brilliantly explored in this smart, incisive ethnography. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in a racially diverse ...working-class high school, Dude, You're a Fag sheds new light on masculinity both as a field of meaning and as a set of social practices. C. J. Pascoe's unorthodox approach analyzes masculinity as not only a gendered process but also a sexual one. She demonstrates how the "specter of the fag" becomes a disciplinary mechanism for regulating heterosexual as well as homosexual boys and how the "fag discourse" is as much tied to gender as it is to sexuality.
Southern Sons Glover, Lorri
2007, 2007-02-15, 20070101
eBook
Between the generations of Thomas Jefferson and Jefferson Davis, the culture of white Southerners experienced significant changes, including the establishment of a normative male identity that exuded ...confidence, independence, and power. Southern Sons, the first work in masculinity studies to concentrate on the early South, explores how young men of the southern gentry came of age between the 1790s and the 1820s. Lorri Glover examines how standards for manhood came about, how young men experienced them in the early South, and how those values transformed many American sons into southern nationalists who ultimately would conspire to tear apart the republic they had been raised to lead.
This was the first generation of boys raised to conceive of themselves as Americans, as well as the first cohort of self-defined southern men. They grew up believing that the fate of the American experiment in self-government depended on their ability to put away personal predispositions and perform prescribed roles. Because men faced demanding gender norms, boys had to pass exacting tests of manhood—in education, refinement, courting, careers, and slave mastery. Only then could they join the ranks of the elite and claim power in society.
Revealing the complex interplay of nationalism and regionalism in the lives of southern men, Glover brings new insight to the question of what led the South toward sectionalism and civil war.
Learning the Hard Way Morris, Edward W
2012, 20120915, 2012-09-30, 20120101
eBook, Book
An avalanche of recent newspapers, weekly newsmagazines, scholarly journals, and academic books has helped to spark a heated debate by publishing warnings of a "boy crisis" in which male students at ...all academic levels have begun falling behind their female peers. InLearning the Hard Way, Edward W. Morris explores and analyzes detailed ethnographic data on this purported gender gap between boys and girls in educational achievement at two low-income high schools-one rural and predominantly white, the other urban and mostly African American. Crucial questions arose from his study of gender at these two schools. Why did boys tend to show less interest in and more defiance toward school? Why did girls significantly outperform boys at both schools? Why did people at the schools still describe boys as especially "smart"?
Morris examines these questions and, in the process, illuminates connections of gender to race, class, and place. This book is not simply about the educational troubles of boys, but the troubled and complex experience of gender in school. It reveals how particular race, class, and geographical experiences shape masculinity and femininity in ways that affect academic performance. His findings add a new perspective to the "gender gap" in achievement.
'A boy sings...a beautiful thing' (www.boychoirs.org), but is it? What kinds of boy, singing what kinds of music and to whom? Martin Ashley presents a unique consideration of boys' singing that shows ...the high voice to be historically, culturally and physiologically more problematic even than is commonly assumed. Through Ashley's extensive conversations with young performers and analysis of their reception by 'peer audiences', the research reveals that the common supposition that 'boys don't want to sound like girls' is far from adequate in explaining the 'missing males' syndrome that can perplex choir directors. The book intertwines the study of singing with the study of identity to create a rich resource for musicians, scholars, teachers and all those concerned with young male involvement in music through singing. The conclusions of the book will challenge many attitudes and unconsidered positions through its argument that many boys actually want to sing but are discouraged by a failure of the adult world to understand the boy mind. Ashley intends the book to stand as an indictment of much complacency and myopia with regard to the young male voice. A substantial grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council has enabled the production of a multi-media resource for schools, choirs and youth organizations called Boys Keep Singing. Based on the contents of this book, the resource shows how, once the interest of boys is captured in primary schools, their singing can be sustained and developed through the difficult but vital early secondary years of ages 11 - 14, about which this book says so much. The resource is lavishly illustrated by short films of boys singing, supported by interviews with boys and their teachers, and a wealth of of animated diagrams and cartoons. It is available to schools and organizations involved in musical education through registration at www.boys-keep-singing.com.
For the middle class and the affluent, local ties seem to matter less and less these days, but in the inner city, your life can be irrevocably shaped by what block you live on. "Living the Drama" ...takes a close look at three neighborhoods in Boston to analyze the many complex ways that the context of community shapes the daily lives and long-term prospects of inner-city boys. David J. Harding studied sixty adolescent boys growing up in two very poor areas and one working-class area. In the first two, violence and neighborhood identification are inextricably linked as rivalries divide the city into spaces safe, neutral, or dangerous. Consequently, Harding discovers, social relationships are determined by residential space. Older boys who can navigate the dangers of the streets serve as role models, and friendships between peers grow out of mutual protection. The impact of community goes beyond the realm of same-sex bonding, Harding reveals, affecting the boys' experiences in school and with the opposite sex. A unique glimpse into the world of urban adolescent boys, "Living the Drama" paints a detailed, insightful portrait of life in the inner city. An index is included. (Contains 6 tables.)
When the pit reaches capacity, and a new baby boy arrives, an older brother must leave and is never seen again. ...A brother returns, bringing danger and ultimately forcing Urgle to leave the pit ...(before he believes himself to be ready), testing him in ways he could never imagine and making him question everything he holds true.