By Yvonne Divans-Hutchinson
I
am a nationally board certified teacher and a veteran of forty three years as
an English teacher in middle and high school in South Los Angeles. A product of
South L.A. myself, I have always been concerned about the so-called achievement
gap of African Americans, especially African American males. Despite the dismal
statistics regularly trumpeted by the media—lowest academic achievement,
highest in unemployment, lowest in college degrees earned, highest number
incarcerated—I know that, with effective, culturally sensitive instruction, our
young men can—and will—achieve. In fact, my greatest joy in the last two years
of teaching came from my participation in the All-male Academy (AMA) at one of
my former schools, an urban magnet high school.
The AMA was established in 2004 to address the absence of African
American males in Advanced Placement classes, the discrepancy between one young
man’s score of advanced on the CST and
his academic achievement—he received an F in English—and the disproportionate
number of referrals and suspensions (51%) among male students, who were only
30% of the student population.
Due to competition from
other medical magnet schools, on the eastside and in the valley, our once
widely diverse population has diminished since its creation twenty-nine years
ago as the first medical magnet high school in the Los Angeles Unified School
District. Conceived by a group of African American community activists and parents,
it has long been a haven for high achieving students of color and those who
want to pursue careers in medicine and science. The student body is mostly African
American (58%) and Latino (40%) with a small percentage of Asian, African, and
Middle Eastern students. Only one-third of the population of 1500 students is
male.
Reuniting with the Gentlemen Scholars
When I was invited to
become a member of the English Language Learner Inquiry Leadership Team under
the aegis of the UCLA Writing Project, I decided to focus on speakers of Black
English, the African American Vernacular (AAV). My Gentlemen Scholars, the
young men I had taught the last year before I retired in 2009, immediately came
to mind. From the first day that they entered my class as ninth graders, I
addressed them as “Gentlemen Scholars.” In his book Teaching
Reading to Black Adolescent Males, educator Alfred Tatum discusses Black male literacy development in the
context of “the turmoil milieu.” He underscores the importance of considering
the environment of poverty, family problems, crime, gangbanging, police brutality,
and racism, and “its implications for literacy among black males who attend
school in America’s economically starved urban centers.” Vershawn Ashanti
Young, an African American assistant
professor at the University of Iowa, emphasizes that being scholarly or acting
like a “nerd” is viewed in “the hood” as unmanly or “acting white.”I set out to counteract these negative perceptions and encouraged my freshmen to act like “schoolboys” instead of “homeboys. “Homeboys,” I had been informed by one of my male students long ago, “did not carry books; that’s for schoolboys.” Because I had continued to visit my school since retirement, I knew that my former “schoolboys” were now seniors and that about half of them had remained in the All-male Academy for the entire four years.
As a past department chair and mentor to a few of the younger teachers at King/Drew, I had maintained my relationship with my ex colleagues. Consequently, I had no qualms about approaching Ms. Code,* the current teacher of my former all male class with a proposal to “borrow” the gentlemen back for a short time to do my study. She had guided the young men through the eleventh grade American Literature/Contemporary Composition class. She was in the midst of teaching the first semester of their senior World Literature/Expository Composition class. When I asked to take over the class second semester, she graciously assented.
That Is the Question
Both Ms.
Code and I recognized that the chief characteristic of the class as a whole was
their garrulousness. They reveled in talk. Their conversations were rousing
(and sometimes rowdy) and usually dominated by a few, highly articulate members
of the class, mostly Black students. Geneva Smitherman refers to “the natural
talent for oratory prevalent among African Americans. The man of words—be he preacher, poet,
philosopher, huckster or rap song creator—receives the highest form of respect
in the black community. The verbal
adroitness, the cogent and quick wit, the brilliant use of metaphorical
language, the facility in rhythm and rhyme evident in the language of . . .
many black students, may all be drawn upon to facilitate learning.” As I reflected on my interactions with my
former Gentlemen Scholars,
Smitherman’s words resonated loudly. I
wanted to maintain that level of involvement and encourage all students toward
oratory, or in our case, academic discourse. While I am aware of the
educational trend toward focusing on black students who speak the so-called African
American Vernacular(AAV), or Black English (Ebonics), and encouraging “code switching,” in their written and spoken
discourse, I did not choose to employ this approach. Code switching involves teaching
speakers of AAV to learn and use so-called standard English** in formal and
academic settings. They then “switch back” to Black English during informal or
personal encounters with other African Americans. During my observations,
modifying the students’ use of language did not strike me as imperative. I have noted that the more well-read students
are, the more conversant they are with “standard English.” Avid readers become
steeped in language, unconsciously absorbing vocabulary and syntax.
Hence, I decided to explore the question: Which research-based strategies will prove most effective in enhancing
the reading, writing, and thinking skills of the African Americans in my all
male Senior World Literature/Expository Composition class?
Since the
course was devoted to World Literature and expository composition, the class
had already read widely in the literary canon: Oedipus, Hamlet, Beowulf, Things Fall Apart. Their activities
included Socratic Seminars, small group and whole class discussions, graphic
representations, written responses to open-ended questions about the
literature, the production of individual and group performances enhanced by
media and technology, and composing essays. They had reflected on many ideas,
values, and issues of universal concern, especially those of relevance to them.
One of their favorite topics was the nature of manhood. They pondered such
questions as What makes a man a man? What is a real
man? What does it take to become a man?
Tatum emphasizes, “Texts
connected to larger academic, cultural, economic, political, social, and
personal aims help …young [African American] males define who they are and what
they can become; help them become resilient and move them to engage positively
with others for their own benefit and that of the larger society.” With his admonition in
mind, I set out to explore their notions of manhood more deeply. I had chosen
two novels that met Tatum’s criteria, Always
Outnumbered Always Outgunned by Walter Mosley, an African American author
and gods go begging by
Alfredo Vea, a Mexican American author.
However, I could only teach one novel during the ten to twelve weeks of my
guest teaching. Admittedly, my focus was on African American students, but my
class also included young men of Latino descent. I needed to choose a text that
would resonate with them as well. Meanwhile, I was very much interested in how
the young men responded to the “Big Idea”—the nature of manhood—that had
occupied them the first semester.
*
Pseudonym
**Some scholars refer to it as “the language of the wider culture” or “the language of power.” 
Yvonne Divans-Hutchinson is a veteran English teacher of forty-three years in LAUSD. She has taught at Markham Junior High/Middle School and King/Drew Magnet High School of Medicine and Science. She is a National Board Certified teacher, a member of the UCLA California Writing Project, and an instructor in Teach LA/Teach Compton Teacher Intern Program for UCLA Extension
