Alfred Tatum Presents Annual Chall Lecture

The photograph showing African American men bound and face down is one that Alfred Tatum, dean of the College of Education and director of the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) Reading Clinic, regularly reflects upon. It’s not only a reminder of how African Americans arrived in America, but also how little the narrative of African American boys has changed.

“We haven’t opened spaces wide enough to create a new narrative,” he said at the 10th annual Chall Lecture on Thursday, October 2. Tatum believes that reading and writing hold a key to changing and enriching these young boys’ lives. His research focuses on the literacy development of African American males, particularly the role texts and writing play in advancing their literacy development and disrupting the national narrative.

Despite policies aimed at closing the achievement gap, Tatum argued that these policies don’t often succeed due to little focus on how to actually teach literacy. “Policy is getting in our way. Policy allows us to take the path of convenience based on assessments and practices,” Tatum said. “What policy doesn’t authorize — it doesn’t tell us how to mediate text to support reading, writing, and human development.”

Calling them “recurring policy recommendations,” Tatum said there are parts that make sense in these policies, but that the models were much too simple. “Reading is not simple,” Tatum said, noting that it is more like calculus, where students might hit a curve and need to be pushed to move forward. He criticized that many polices from Common Core to the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans doesn’t really demonstrate how to move beyond typical instruction.

A former eighth-grade teacher who later became a reading specialist, Tatum has spent many years bridging the gaps among reading, writing, and human development.

His summer writing institute at UIC for adolescent African American males has proved that with creativity and careful instruction, reading and writing can be significant for this population. The month-long workshop places 15 boys of all achievement levels together and then Tatum empowers them with a love for reading and writing. While Tatum admitted that none of the students arrive on day one eager to spend part of their summer reading and writing, their writing samples show a great depth by the workshop’s end.

Tatum shared some of the complex writings of the “brother authors” as he referred to the students who partook in his institute. Tatum also demonstrated how he carefully crafted lessons to help students make sense of their identity and use language to reclaim authority, share knowledge, and promote ideas.

Tatum told the audience that it doesn’t matter whether teachers are black or white — it’s about how you are going to do the work.

Following Tatum’s lecture, Lauren Capotosto, Ed.M’13, Ed.D’14, was announced as the recipient of the Jeanne S. Chall Doctoral Student Research Award. Capotosto, currently an assistant professor of education at the College of the Holy Cross, researches parental support for middle grade comprehension development. Her dissertation examined the influence that parental questioning had on fourth grade children’s retelling of narrative and informational texts. The results of her study indicated that parental questioning can have a positive impact on children’s comprehension, leading to the implication that schools should encourage home-based parental literacy support.

A second award, the Jeanne S. Chall Research Grant, was also given to Catherine Compton-Lilly, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison, who teaches courses related to literacy history, theory, and globalization. Compton-Lilly’s researches reading instruction for children who have historically been underserved, including African American students and second language learners. As the Chall visiting researcher, she will focus on how young children’s understanding of text develops as they move from being emergent to competent readers.