Teaching black children

is a revolutionary act.James Baldwin

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

Part IoOverview of “Learning Through Teaching in an After-School Laboratory”oChildren’s perceptions of teachersoWhat children say and what we observed as good teaching

Part IIoSchool related social support for African American boysoStructure and content of their networksoLoving Black children

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

o Pedagogical laboratories and professional development sites for inexperienced teachers

o Linked inexperienced teachers with effective experienced teachers of poor urban children

o Documented and examined the processes of learning among children in the programs

o Documented and analyzed the processes by which inexperienced teachers learned to teach in these laboratories

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

o Consequently, our work simultaneously addressed

o the preparation of teachers to work successfully with African American students,

o and the underachievement of African American students.

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.

L-TAPL Student Participants

o There were 20 children at each site from grades 1-4 who attended the elementary schools in which the programs were held.

o They were recommended by their teachers for a variety of reasons.

L-TAPL Structure

o Two hours, 3 days a week, for 16-24 weeks o Included language arts, math, and science.o The lead teachers were wholly responsible for

curriculum content and teaching strategies employed; we only asked that they include basic literacy and math skills.

For more information on L-TAPL

o Foster, M., Lewis, J. L., Onafowora, L. (2005) Grooming Great Urban Teachers. Educational Leadership, 62(6), 28-32

o 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.

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

Children’s Perceptions of Teaching and Learning

o We were interested in two broad aspects of students’ perspectives of their school experience:

o Students’ perceptions of and beliefs about schooling,

including beliefs about good teaching.

o Students’ perceptions of their academic ability and general sense of efficacy.

Sample and Procedures

72 semi-structured face-to-face pre- and post-test interviews with children in grades 1-4.

o Attitudes toward self, school, and Blacks subscales

o As well as open-ended questions about characteristics of a “good teacher” and characteristics of “not a good teacher.”

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, they’ve been treated like criminals for so long….

Nothing you do, the punishment doesn’t faze them.” (Transcript 1_Oak, p. 3)

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…

o Historically constitutedo Broadly shared and treated as normative or

expected (belief system)o Reproduced through shared practices and social

interactions.

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.

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 children’s behaviors with the use of threats and other forms of coercion.

More insidiously, when teachers allowed mediocre student work (or work beneath the child’s ability) to pass

as exceptional.

School Cultures of Low Expectations

But I’m realizing now that, you know, maybe it’s not them. Maybe it’s me and some of the stuff I’m doing and put myself in their place. If I told them everyday, “You’re going to detention” or “you’re not going to go to recess,” I would hate the teacher. I really wouldn’t do anything.”

(Oakland Transcript 1_Oak, p. 3)

Children’s 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?

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.

Findings

o Although treatment was a salient theme, children provided responses that reflected a cluster of concerns, including teaching ability and teacher character.

o Through our content analysis we identified four response categories:

Findings

o Treatmento Teacher competency (ability/willingness to

teach)o Treatment and competencyo Teacher character

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:

o Makes you stand in the corner when somebody else did wrong.

o We get to do good stuff and don’t have to sit on bench.

o They do special things for us and have parties.o They yell at you.

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 don’t take time to explain

Don’t 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 don’t understand

Treatment and Competency

o Teaching and treatment were responses that combined treatment and teaching ability codes. Sample responses included:

o When they yell a lot and don’t teach right.o Gives a lot of parties. Help you with your class work.o Yell; doesn’t give us work; doesn’t let us play paper

airplanes.o When she doesn’t know something, she looks it up

and learn more herself.

Teacher character or disposition

o 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:

o They are mean, unhelpful.o When they make mistakes, blame student, say

different things at conferences (integrity & trustworthy).o She doesn’t care about nobody.o Listens to both stories and not just one side (fairness).

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.

Conclusions

o 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.

o They also desire learning environments that are nurturing (fair and friendly) and teachers that tap into their desire to learn (helpful).

Characteristics of successful urban classrooms

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

o Teacher-student interactions help create positive social and academic identities (extending Wortham, 2004)

o The constructive use of the public nature of teacher-student interactions

solidarityo Cultivating a sense of “we-ness” or “solidarity in

community” (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Widegren, 1997; Rivers & Scanzoni, 1997)

o Differences in social and academic abilities were not marked by how teachers interacted with students.

o Democratization of opportunity (formal and informal) and participation (Ladson-Billings, 1995);

o The classroom as an artifact of the students’ lives. (Eisenberg, 2003; Ladson-Billings, 1995).

integrity

o Teaching with integrity and classrooms of integrity.

o “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).

School Related Social Support for African American Boys

A pilot study

Expected School-Related NetworkExpected School-Related Network

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

Interview QuestionsInterview Questions

1. When you have a problem with homework, who at home helps you?

2. When you have an unhappy day at school, who do you like to talk to about it?

3. If you were to receive an award at school, who would you want to tell about it?

4. 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?

Findings: Social Support

o 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.

o There was evidence that support could involve multiple households.

o School staff were at times important to this support, as were non-custodial males in extended or social families.

categories of responses

household adults

adults from child’s social family (related and unrelated)

school staff

siblings/cousins

schoolmates

Support Map-Child 4

Support Map-Child 2

Support Map-Child 1

Support Map-Child 3

FindingsHomework

FindingsUnhappy Day

FindingsAward

FindingsTrouble

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.

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 childrenis a revolutionary act.

Teachers of young children