Toward a Literacy of Promise

<p><em>"[This book] gives us strategies for bringing life back to school; it allows us to think creatively about connecting instruction to the lives of children who have not been well-served; it helps us learn to value the gifts with words our children of color bring; and it gives us hope for educating a generation that can change the status quo, that will build the America we have yet to see...the one that made that as-yet-unfulfilled promise of ‘liberty and justice for all.’"</em><strong>Lisa Delpit, From the Foreword</strong></p><p><em>Toward a Literacy of Promise </em>examines popular assumptions about literacy and challenges readers to question how it has been used historically both to empower and to oppress. The authors offer an alternative view of literacy – a "literacy of promise" – that charts an emancipatory agenda for literacy instructional practices in schools. Weaving together critical perspectives on pedagogy, language, literature, and popular texts, each chapter provides an in-depth discussion that illuminates how a literacy of promise can be realized in school and classrooms. Although the major focus is on African American middle and secondary students as a population that has experienced the consequences of inequality, the chapters demonstrate general and specific applications to other populations. </p> <p>Foreword <em>Lisa Delpit </em></p><p>Preface</p><p>1 Introduction <em>Rebecca Powell</em></p><p>PART I: PROBLEMS AND PROMISES</p><p>2 Along the Road to Social Justice: A Literacy of Promise <em>Linda A. Spears-Bunton and Rebecca Powell</em></p><p>3 "Unbanking" Education: Exploring Constructs of Knowledge, Teaching, Learning <em>Letitia Hochstrasser Fickel</em></p><p>4 Resistance, Reading, Writing, and Redemption: Defining Moments in Literacy and the Law <em>Sherman G. Helenese, Linda A. Spears-Bunton and Kimberly L. Bunton</em></p><p>PART II: REALIZING A LITERACY OF PROMISE THROUGH LITERARY TEXTS</p><p>5 "Educational, Controversial, Provocative, and Personal": Three African American Adolescent Males Reflect on Critically Framing of <strong>A Lesson Before Dying </strong><em>Julia Johnson Connor and Arlette Ingram Willis</em></p><p>6 The Obscured White Voice in the Literacy Debate: Race, Space and Gender <em>Linda A. Spears-Bunton</em></p><p>PART III: REALIZING A LITERACY OF PROMISE THROUGH ORAL AND POPULAR TEXTS</p><p>7 Ebonics and the Struggle for Cultural Voice in U. S. Schools <em>Ira Kincade Blake</em></p><p>8 The Potential of Oral Language for Empowerment <em>Jessica S. Bryant</em></p><p>9 Voices of Our Youth: Antiracist Social Justice Theatre Arts Makes a Difference in the Classroom <em>Karen B. McLean Donaldson</em></p><p>10 The Promise of Critical Media Literacy <em>Rebecca Powell</em></p><p>Contributors</p><p>Index</p>