Overview

This dynamic text offers a rare glimpse into the literacy development of urban children and their families’ role in it. Based on the author’s candid interviews with her first-grade students, their parents and grandparents, this book challenges the stereotypical view that urban parents don’t care about their children’s education. By listening closely to the voices of her students and their families, the author helps us to move beyond negative assumptions, revealing complexities that have been previously undocumented. A daring critique of racism and other societal factors that affect children’s learning, this important volume: Explores the limits and potential of mainstream literacy practices to make a material difference in the lives of socio-economically struggling families. Challenges educators to view reading as a complex social process that incorporates the experiences of family members as well as school and individual experiences. Provides a literacy model that treats the process of learning to read as situated not only within local contexts but also within a larger social order. Offers recommendations to help educators to build on the literacy experiences students bring with them to schools in poor communities and to respect the particular difficulties that these children face when learning to read.

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9780807742761

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Reviews

"""""Compton-Lilly's remarkable candor about her work among these families provides a startling counterpoint to what passes for fact in government reports and policies."" """"This is an important book.... The author's deft use of contemporary theories challenges the dominant ways of talking and thinking about reading in urban communities and paves the way for teacher inquiries that go beyond the documentation of classroom practices to the ideologies and discourses that construct these practices."""

Compton-Lilly's remarkable candor about her work among these families provides a startling counterpoint to what passes for fact in government reports and policies. This is an important book.... The author's deft use of contemporary theories challenges the dominant ways of talking and thinking about reading in urban communities and paves the way for teacher inquiries that go beyond the documentation of classroom practices to the ideologies and discourses that construct these practices.

This is an important book.... The author's deft use of contemporary theories challenges the dominant ways of talking and thinking about reading in urban communities and paves the way for teacher inquiries that go beyond the documentation of classroom practices to the ideologies and discourses that construct these practices.

Author Information

Catherine Compton-Lilly is a first-grade and Reading Recovery teacher in Rochester, New York, and a visiting associate professor at Saint John Fisher College.

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