Singing the Sky

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I’ve been reading An African Centered Response to Ruby Payne’s Poverty Theory. Although I don’t agree with all of it, it is a fascinating read. One of the points he makes, when he is not encouraging his community to avoid all responsibility for kids in trouble is that school curriculum needs to be more Afrocentric.

There is some real truth to this, although I don’t like the word Afrocentric at all. Centric anything is not good.

I recently bought The Blueford Series from Townsend Press. If you order them directly from the publisher, they are only a buck, as opposed to the $4.95 cover price. I ordered all thirteen of them, and received them three weeks ago. Many of them are already showing signs of wear–the students read them that much.

I was showing them to another teacher, and I asked her how many times she had seen youth fiction that had Black faces on it. I’m not talking about historical fiction, either. Just the regular romances, thrillers, mysteries, whatever it is that people usually read. We take seeing white faces on novels for granted, but if there is a black face, it is usually because the novel is about slavery or something like that. Bummer. No wonder so many Black kids don’t seem to want to read! They pick up these books immediately though. They don’t even look at the rest of what’s on the shelf. It’s amazing, isn’t it? Such a simple little thing–pictures on books that kids can relate back to themselves

We need to provide relevant materials. We need to answer the question of “Where was I” when we are teaching history. (I’ve heard that one a lot from my Hispanic students.)

My books are disappearing. The kids love them. I’ve ordered a second set.

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