Librarians Form a Bridge of Books to Advance Literacy: A Group of School Librarians Enlisted in an Effort to Raise Literacy among Black Males by Reaching out to Them with Books and Programs Aligned with Their Interests and Culture

It's a beautiful thing when I have to tell my black male students to stop reading in class so that they can pay attention ... and that has happened several times since we started [the bookclub]. -- Middle school teacher (Butts, 2011) School librarians are natural partners in the effort to improve the education, social, and employment outcomes of black males. Although school librarians have become increasingly associated with technology, they still play an important role in literacy development. The American Association of School Librarians' (AASL) most recent guidelines for school library programs includes "promoting reading as a foundational skill for learning, personal growth, and enjoyment" as one of the major responsibilities of school librarians (2009, pp. 21-23). School librarians in Durham, N.C., have demonstrated the crucial role that librarians can play in supporting the literacy development of black males and working as partners with administrators and classroom teachers. The work of these librarians demonstrates that black males will read with enthusiasm, participate in discussions, and write reflectively about what they read when they are presented with books that connect to their lives. The context In 2010-11, Durham Public Schools in North Carolina implemented a multi-pronged approach aimed at closing the achievement gap for black males in the district's 55 schools. One of the literacy initiatives centered on the work of Alfred W. Tatum at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In his 2009 book, Reading for their Life, Tatum argues that traditional reading strategies have failed to work with black males because educators are not engaging them with meaningful texts. Tatum calls such works enabling texts and says they have discreet characteristics. They: * Promote a healthy psyche; * Reflect an awareness of the real world; * Focus on the collective struggle of African-Americans; and * Serve as a road map for being, doing, thinking, and acting (Tatum, 2009, p. 76). Enabling texts include such classics as Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845, 2005), as well as contemporary texts such as the picture book Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down, by Andrea Davis Pinkney (2010), and the young adult novel We Could Be Brothers, by Derrick Barnes (2010). Enabling texts contain strong content that will not only interest black males, but will "cause [them] to take action in their own lives" (Tatum, 2009, p. 65). Adults should give enabling texts to black males at every opportunity and also ensure that teachers, parents, librarians, or other adults act as mediators between the readers and the texts, Tatum says. Without the chance to discuss their reading with others and to respond to the texts through writing, Tatum argues, enabling texts can't fulfill their true potential in the lives of these young men. Over a year, we met with Durham's school librarians 11 times to determine how they could integrate Tatum's ideas into their daily work. Action plans, discussed below, emerged from these meetings. Together, these strategies describe a model for how school librarians can proactively work to close the literacy gap among black male students. Additional examples and professional development resources can be found at the project wiki (http://rftldurhamcounty.pbworks.com). Strategy #1: Collect, display, recommend The librarians began by analyzing the library collections for enabling texts. They soon discovered that while the collections contained a number of culturally relevant books, not all of them were enabling. Many were "disabling texts" (Tatum, 2009, p. 65)--books that feature black children and teens yet reinforce the stereotypes of black males as hoopsters, fatherless sons, and gang recruits. While disabling texts may appeal to some black males, Tatum argues they aren't appropriate for literacy instruction. …