ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a framework for advancing the literacy of black males. This framework consists of various facets, or “strands,” for theory, instruction, and professional development, and is based on the experiences as a middle school teacher, the research with struggling African American adolescent readers and their teachers, and practices educators have found to be successful with students of color. The overall goal of this framework is to help teachers and administrators create classrooms where black males receive literacy instruction that both promotes academic excellence and nurtures a positive identity of who they are and what they can become—classrooms that are nesting grounds for literacy development. Theoretical strands are to the framework for creating nesting grounds what a brain is to a living being: they provide direction for the entire organism. The instructional strands of the framework can be viewed as the midsection—the part of the being that contains many of the vital organs.
