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PREFACE

No challenge has been more daunting than that of improving the academic achievement of African American students. Burdened with a history that includes the denial of education, separate and unequal education, and relegation to unsafe, substandard inner-city schools, the quest for quality education remains an elusive dream for the African American community. However, it does remain a dream—perhaps the most powerful for the people of African descent in this nation.

The power and persistence of the metaphor of the dream has defined the sojourn of African Americans in the United States. From the words of the Bible to the poetry of Langston Hughes to the oratory of Martin Luther King, Jr., African Americans’ struggle against all odds has been spurred on by the pursuit of a dream.

Perceived as the most direct avenue to the realization of the dream, education and access to schooling have been cherished privileges among African Americans. Slaves were not allowed to learn to read or be educated, and this has underscored the possibility and power of education for liberation. The chronicle of the civil rights movement in the United States illustrates the centrality of education to the fight of African Americans for equal opportunity and full citizenship. Thus, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas; the University of Mississippi; the University of Alabama; the Boston Public Schools; and Brownsville, New York, all symbolize the willingness of African Americans to sacrifice all for the sake of education.

But today African Americans find themselves in a downward spiral. African American students lag far behind their white counterparts on standard academic achievement measures. At the same time, the very society that experienced a civil rights revolution finds itself locked in the grips of racism and discrimination. Almost forty years after a Supreme Court decision declaring separate but equal schools to be illegal, most African American students still attend schools that are in reality segregated and unequal.

However, The Dreamkeepers is not about the despair. Rather, it is about keeping the dream alive. The significance of this book can be found in the changing demographics of our nation’s public schools. Children of color constitute an increasing proportion of our students. They represent 30 percent of our public school population. In the twenty largest school districts, they make up over 70 percent of total school enrollment. Conversely, the number of teachers of color, particularly African American, is dwindling. African American teachers make up less than 5 percent of the total public school teaching population. Further, many teachers—white and black alike—feel ill-prepared for or incapable of meeting the educational needs of African American students.

Based on a study of a group of excellent teachers, this book provides exemplars of effective teaching for African American students. Rather than a prescription or a recipe, this book offers the reader models for improving practice and developing grounded theory, through a look at the intellectually rigorous and challenging classrooms of these teachers in a low-income, predominantly African American school district.

I have written this book with three voices: that of an African American scholar and researcher; that of an African American teacher; and that of an African American woman, parent, and community member. Thus the book offers a mixture of scholarship and story—of qualitative research and lived reality. I have relied heavily on “story” as a means of conveying the excellent pedagogical practice of the teachers studied. Increasingly, in fields such as law, education, ethnic studies, and feminist studies, story has gained credence as an appropriate methodology for transmitting the richness and complexity of cultural and social phenomena. Thus the audience for this book may be broad and varied.

The book is both reflective and empirical. At its center is the story of the pedagogical practice of eight exemplary teachers. However, my own experiences as an African American student who successfully negotiated public schooling provide a backdrop for my understanding of that practice. What was there in my schooling experiences that allowed me to persevere and prevail? I am not dismissing the fact that my schooling took place in a different and, perhaps, simpler time. Yet I retain vivid memories of ways in which schooling affected me both positively and negatively, and those memories help me see and understand current classroom practices.

Because of my decision to write in this way I break at least two scholarly conventions. First, I diminish the primacy of “objectivity” as I write both of my own life and memories as an African American student and of the lives and experiences of this group of effective teachers. Second, I write in a style that may be seen as methodologically “messy,” as I discuss issues at both the classroom level and the school level. I do this because it is an opportunity to reinforce the fluidity and connection between the individual and the group in which teachers and students do their work.

I could have chosen to write this book in the dominant scholarly tradition—statement of the problem, review of the literature, methodology, data collection, analysis, and implications for further research. Indeed, this is what I was trained to do. But that tradition rejects my necessary subjectivity. Thus I chose to integrate my “scholarly” tools with my knowledge of my culture and my personal experiences.

Multicultural teacher educators will find this book a useful addition to the literature on curricular and instructional issues concerning African American students. Practicing teachers and student teachers will have an opportunity to create appropriate strategies and techniques for their own classrooms based on those shown in this book. Parents and community members will be able to use the book as a “talking point” to help outline the redesign of community schools that better meet the needs of their students.

However, again, the book is not a prescription. It does not contain lists of things to do to achieve effective teaching for African American students. As tempting as it was for me to do just that, my work on this book has convinced me that doing so would be professionally dishonest. I am committed to the belief that just as we expect children to extrapolate larger life lessons from the stories we tell them, we, as adults, can make our own sense of these teachers’ stories about themselves and their teaching.

I have written this book not to offer a solution to problems in the education of African Americans but to offer an opportunity to make those problems central to the debate about education in general. In accordance with current public policy thinking, this book contends that the way a problem is defined frames the universe of reasonable public actions. Given our limited ability to address every problem that confronts the society, problem formulation takes on added proportions. Thus a specific problem, such as education, cannot stand alone; rather, it must be linked to broader issues like national defense, economic competitiveness, or crime. In this book, I attempt to reformulate what has been thought of as the problem of African American schooling into the promise of successful practice and the problem of our inability to consider how we might learn from that success.

This book discusses the notion of culturally relevant teaching and its inherent conceptions of the teacher and others; of classroom social interactions; of literacy and mathematics teaching; and of knowledge itself. Further, the book examines the implications of culturally relevant teaching for African American student education and teacher education.

Chapter One, in an attempt to rethink teaching and learning for African Americans, asks the question, “Is there a case for separate schools?” Far from suggesting a return to racial segregation, the chapter points to the growing disaffection of African Americans with the kind of education their children receive today in the public schools. Placed in a historical context, the question raises additional questions about teacher preparation.

Chapter Two discusses the growing educational and anthropological literature on ways in which school can be made more compatible with the students’ cultural backgrounds. The chapter identifies a lack in the literature on the experiences of African American students specifically, and offers culturally relevant teaching as a way to address this gap. The chapter also compares assimilationist, or traditional, teaching practices with culturally relevant teaching practices.

Chapter Three discusses a critical aspect of culturally relevant teaching: the teachers’ conceptions of themselves and others. Vignettes and interviews with this group of successful teachers of African American students illustrate how they see themselves and their students.

Chapter Four discusses a second critical aspect of culturally relevant teaching: the manner in which classroom social interactions are structured. Once again, vignettes and interview data illustrate the pertinent points.

Chapter Five discusses the third critical aspect of culturally relevant teaching: the teachers’ conception of knowledge. The chapter provides examples of how this kind of teaching practice helps both teachers and students construct knowledge and move beyond the state- and district-required curricula to achieve academic and cultural excellence.

Chapter Six focuses on three of the teachers in the study and their teaching of elementary literacy and mathematics programs. The focus on literacy contrasts two different instructional approaches and materials that yield similar results: a classroom of literate students. The chapter discusses the ways in which the teachers’ use of culturally relevant teaching transcends the material and instructional strategy. The focus on mathematics contrasts the practice of a culturally relevant teacher with that of a novice who works in an upper-middle-class white school.

Chapter Seven attempts to peek into the future. It examines the prospects for improving the academic performance and the school experiences of African American students. It looks at current practice in teacher education, established school and community programs that have a focus on African American learners, and some experimental programs.

Two appendixes at the close of the book address methodological and contextual issues. They are included to help colleagues think about ways to both replicate and improve upon my research. Indeed, this entire effort represents not a conclusion but a starting point from which the educational needs of African American students can begin to be addressed.

Acknowledgments

Mere words do little to express my gratitude for the invaluable assistance I received in conceiving, developing, and writing this book. My colleagues, Mary E. Gomez, Carl A. Grant, Joyce E. King, B. Robert Tabachnick, and William H. Tate have provided me with invaluable feedback and encouragement. The National Academy of Education postdoctoral fellowship program, administered through the Spencer Foundation, gave me the resources and the opportunity to carry out the research upon which this book is based. The spiritual guidance of the Reverend and Mrs. Emil M. Thomas kept me from feeling discouraged and defeated during a period of serious illness. The teachers, parents, students, and community in which I did my research gave generously of their time and energy to make this project happen. And my family—my husband, Charles, and my children, Jessica and Kevin—gave me the time and the support to make this book a reality.

In the final analysis, however, I assume full responsibility for the contents of this book. The ideas and opinions expressed and the mistakes made are mine alone.

Madison, Wisconsin Gloria Ladson-Billings