"Reading the World of School Literacy: Contextualizing the Experience of a Young African American Male"

Arlette Ingram Willis uses the example of her own son Jake and his reluctance to enter a writing competition and his primary grade teachers' teaching styles to illustrate school society's inability to include diverse cultures in its curriculum. Not to make light of the issue, but after I read about her third experience with a teacher who still did not incorporate multicultural literature into her curriculum, I thought, "Where does this lady live?" Then I compared Willis's disappointment (too weak a word) with the limited view each one of her son's teachers had about culture with the deflation I feel when one of my students writes a research paper on adoption and comes up short on what I understand about adoption as an adoptive parent. The paper may be well written, technically perfect, cited appropriately, but the interpretation is off. Willis writes, "Educators have not effectively built upon the culture and language of every child, and have set arbitrary standards of acceptance and defined them as normative" (47). I like to think my education as a librarian has prompted me to be aware of diverse cultures and addressing their needs, gender issues, learning styles. But this article, the one about African-American venacular, and others in the packet remind me that I can never get too comfortable, to be open to my students' ( and their parents') needs and ideas. B the Book Lady