Tatum: Using the Pen to Rescue to Power

“Let our testimony be our pen.” – Anonymous African American Male from Chicago

I found myself rushing to get my lunch from the Reading Terminal Market so I could eat it while listening to Alfred W. Tatum yesterday afternoon.  My sandwich landed up sitting in the bag for an hour and 15 minutes since I was too captivated by Tatum to take so much as a bite of my sandwich, let alone to rustle the bag it was in.    Tatum’s session was entitled “Reading and Writing for Their Lives: (re)Theorizing the Literacy Development of African American Adolescent Males.”

Tatum is a professor at the University of Illinois – Chicago.  He is also the founder of the African American Adolescent Male Summer Literacy Institute, or the AAAMSLI.  The AAAMSLI is the Chicago-based literacy collaborative Tatum founded, which accepts applications for a five-week intensive program that focuses on reading and writing.  It is based on four platforms:

1. Defining self
2. Becoming resilient
3. Engaging others
4. Building capacity

Through these intensive summer institutes, Tatum has engaged African American males through writing.  He has transformed adolescents who thought they didn’t have a story to tell into young men who understand their writing has power.  In fact, the students engaged in his program have noted that they benefited from listening to the writing of the other students in the Collaborative.

Tatum not only shared his writing with the packed ballroom of educators who came to hear him speak yesterday, but he shared some of the “Brother Authors’” Writing as well.  (Click here to read Tatum’s writing.  Click here to read the Brother Authors’ writing.)  At the end of his presentation, Tatum shared ten recommendations from the Brother Authors for Moving Beyond the Usual Paths (of teaching) Approach.  I hurriedly copied these suggestions down since they are real suggestions you can use when trying to change the status quo for in order to have students create texts that honor students’ voices.  The Brother Authors’ Suggestions are:

1. Let us speak our minds with our pens.
2. Allow us to choose what we want to write about.
3. Be straight forward with us.  Tell us if there is something going in society so we have something to write about.
4. Allow us to write for ourselves.
5. Provide more feedback.
6. Refuse to give up on students.  Keep working with them even when things seem hopeless.
7. Find something that relates to students.
8. Get to know your students.
9. Let us express ourselves as people, not just assignments.
10. Interact with students.

What powerful words.  Certainly something we should all internalize.

Finally, Tatum has a new book out, Reading for Their Life: Re (building) the Textual Lineages of African American Adolescent Males.  Click here to read a sample chapter.