I spent this week at the Janet Allen It's Never Too Late literacy institute and the roll-out of the English 2 Curriculum that Janet is preparing for South Carolina. At the same time, I started two books--on about teaching African-American males to read and the other a theory of writing assessment. The Tatum book on literacy has got me thinking.I'm thinking about the idea of literacy as power. There are all kinds of power, good and bad. So many of my students are "gang wannabes." They are adopting the colors, the language, the actions, and the attitudes. Perhaps we are still too small to have the serious gang problems that larger cities are facing, but it's coming. These gang wannabes are just as dangerous as real gang members.Tatum talks about the influence of gangs a bit in the first couple of chapters (as far as I've read). He also talks about how reading influenced him--from Judith Bloom's "It's Me, Margaret" (I know there's more to the title than that) to Dick Gregory's "Nigger." These books gave him power to overcome his environment, his homelife, and helped him move into the academic life that he lives now. I know that many of my students will not be part of an academic circle the way TAtum is, but I would like for them to find literate role models who will help them out of the life of poverty and powerlessness that they are in now. I feel hopeless myself that I don't know the body of works that will provide those role models. I don't know how I, a white woman, middle class, with power that comes from my social class and education, can convince the black students that I teach--male and female (I think there might be a book in teaching A-A females as well--they need positive role models besides Oprah!) that being literate--able to read, write, speak, communicate, listen, use computers, access information in all its forms--is worthwhile.I'm going to have to think on this. I don't know where this thinking might take me this year. I'll have to work on the ideas.