Table Of ContentThe Practitioner Inquiry Series
Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan L. Lytle, SERIES EDITORS
ADVISORY BOARD: JoBeth Allen, Rebecca Barr, Judy Buchanan, Robert Fecho,
Susan Florio-Ruane, Sarah Freedman, Karen Gallas, Andrew Gitlin,
Dixie Goswami, Peter Grimmett, Gloria Ladson-Billings,
Sarah Michaels, Susan Noffke, Marsha Pincus, Marty Rutherford,
Lynne Strieb, Carol Tateishi, Diane Waff, Ken Zeichner
Reading Families: From Another Angle:
The Literate Lives of Urban Children Children’s Strengths and School Standards
CATHERINE COMPTON-LILLY MARGARET HIMLEY with
PATRICIA F. CARINI, Editors
Narrative Inquiry in Practice:
Advancing the Knowledge of Teaching Unplayed Tapes:
A Personal History of Collaborative
NONA LYONS &
Teacher Research
VICKI KUBLER LaBOSKEY, Editors
STEPHEN M. FISHMAN &
Learning from Teacher Research
LUCILLE MCCARTHY
JOHN LOUGHRAN, IAN MITCHELL, &
JUDIE MITCHELL, Editors Inside City Schools:
Investigating Literacy in the Multicultural
Writing to Make a Difference:
Classroom
Classroom Projects for Community Change
SARAH WARSHAUER FREEDMAN,
CHRIS BENSON &
SCOTT CHRISTIAN with ELIZABETH RADIN SIMONS,
DIXIE GOSWAMI & JULIE SHALHOPE KALNIN, ALEX
WALTER H. GOOCH, Editors CASARENO, & the M-CLASS TEAMS
Class Actions:
Starting Strong:
Teaching for Social Justice in Elementary and
A Different Look at Children, Schools,
Middle School
and Standards
JOBETH ALLEN, Editor
PATRICIA F. CARINI
Teacher/Mentor:
Because of the Kids: Facing Racial and
A Dialogue for Collaborative Learning
Cultural Differences in Schools
PEG GRAHAM, SALLY HUDSON-ROSS,
JENNIFER E. OBIDAH &
CHANDRA ADKINS,
KAREN MANHEIM TEEL
PATTI MCWHORTER, &
Ethical Issues in Practitioner Research JENNIFER MCDUFFIE STEWART, Eds.
JANE ZENI, Editor
Teaching Other People’s Children:
Action, Talk, and Text: Literacy and Learning in a Bilingual
Learning and Teaching Through Inquiry Classroom
GORDON WELLS, Editor CYNTHIA BALLENGER
Teaching Mathematics to the New Standards: Teaching, Multimedia, and Mathematics:
Relearning the Dance Investigations of Real Practice
RUTH M. HEATON MAGDALENE LAMPERT &
DEBORAH LOEWENBERG BALL
Teacher Narrative as Critical Inquiry:
Rewriting the Script Tensions of Teaching:
JOY S. RITCHIE & Beyond Tips to Critical Reflection
DAVID E. WILSON JUDITH M. NEWMAN
(continued)
Practitioner Inquiry Series titles, continued
John Dewey and the Challenge of Learning in Small Moments:
Life in an Urban Classroom
Classroom Practice
DANIEL R. MEIER
STEPHEN M. FISHMAN &
Interpreting Teacher Practice:
LUCILLE MCCARTHY
Two Continuing Stories
“Sometimes I Can Be Anything”:
RENATE SCHULZ
Power, Gender, and Identity in a
Creating Democratic Classrooms: The
Primary Classroom Struggle to Integrate Theory and Practice
KAREN GALLAS LANDON E. BEYER, Editor
Reading Families
The Literate Lives
of
Urban Children
CATHERINE COMPTON-LILLY
FOREWORD BY
BARBARA COMBER
Teachers College
Columbia University
New York and London
Published by Teachers College Press, 1234 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027
Copyright 2003 by Teachers College, Columbia University
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, or any information
storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.
Author’s notes:
Sections of Chapters 3 and 4 were previously published in an article by Catherine Compton-
Lilly entitled “Staying on Children: Challenging Stereotypes About Urban Parents,” which
appeared in Language Arts, copyright 2000 by the National Council of Teachers of English.
Reprinted with permission.
Chapter 6 was previously published as an article for the online teacher research journal
Networks. Networks can be viewed at www.oise.utoronto.ca/⬃ctd/networks.
This research was supported in part by a grant from the Genesee Valley Developmental
Learning Group.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Compton-Lilly, Catherine.
Reading families : the literate lives of urban children / Catherine Compton-Lilly ;
foreword by Barbara Comber.
p. cm. — (The practitioner inquiry series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8077-4276-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8077-4277-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. City children–Education–United States–Case Studies. 2. City children–Books and
reading–United States–Case Studies. 3. Reading–Parent participation–United
States–Case studies. 4. Education, Urban–United States–Case Studies. I. Title.
II. Series.
LC5131 .C615 2002
372.42′5—dc21 2002028502
ISBN 0-8077-4276-7 (paper)
ISBN 0-8077-4277-5 (cloth)
Printed on acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to the poets in my life—
Hearts glistening in the sky,
Erasing hate by love,
Apart, never together, always,
Racing, dashing from heart to heart.
Tonight loves soars into your heart.
—C.C.L., age 8
The voices that were never supposed to be:
Scrawled this on the station wall:
Nobody wanted to ride it anyway.
We knew it when we
Made the valleys high
And laid the mountains low
To make the grade at the river bridge;
Then gain speed
Passing tired factories and
Clapboard houses that
Were never meant to be passed down.
And at the crossing
The children lean on their dreams and wonder:
“What a strange sight,
Who’d build such a thing
Without asking?”
While inside the carriages
The empty berths sway and
Clank in florescent light
And perpetual hope.
Everyone likes the thought of a train
Whistling its way across the night.
—T.K.L., age 48
Contents
Foreword by Barbara Comber ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
Exploring the Discourses That Occupy Urban Schools 6
The Purpose of This Book 10
The Plan of This Book 12
1. A Theoretical Framework 15
Mainstream Discourses About Reading 17
Mainstream Discourses About Urban Families 18
Discourses in Education 20
The Possession of Capital 28
Conclusion 31
2. Research Methodology 32
Site and Participants 33
Data Collection 35
Analysis of Data 39
Being a Teacher-Researcher 41
Being a White Teacher 42
Conclusion 43
3. The Role of Reading in the Lives of My Students
and Their Families 45
Reading and Survival 46
Reading and “Getting Somewhere” 47
Not Knowing How to Read 52
Conclusion 56
vii
viii Contents
4. Parents’ and Teachers’ Roles in Helping Children
Learn to Read 60
Parents as Teachers 61
Staying on Children 64
Conclusion 73
5. The Role of Social Relationships in Learning to Read 77
Relationships in an Urban Community 79
Conclusion 93
6. The Construction of Urban Reading Identities 96
Parents’ Reading Identities 97
Conclusion 107
7. Contradictions and Complexities 110
Challenging and Supporting Mainstream Discourses 112
“I Don’t Know:” The Limits of Alternative Discourses 115
Alternative Discourses and Social Change 120
Conclusion 122
8. A Concluding Case Study 124
Bradford’s Family and Reading: Application of a
Contextualized Model 125
Bradford’s Family and Capital 132
Implications of This Research 137
Appendix 143
References 147
Index 152
About the Author 156
Foreword
Teachers cannot control children’s lives out of school. As much as they
might wish them to be different—happier, healthier, wealthier—chil-
dren’s home environment is subject to wider forces, such as the way
society distributes its resources and the extent to which families are able
to access those resources. Teachers, however, can make a great deal of
difference to children’s lives within schools. Understanding and recogniz-
ing children’s capacities and potential is crucial. We know that when
teachers subscribe to deficit views of what specific groups of children can
achieve, their underestimation can do irrevocable damage and impede
educational trajectories. We know also that when teachers recognize that
all their students possess potential and respect their families’ cultural and
linguistic practices, their high expectations have a positive impact on
children’s learning. The last decade has been marked with a so-called
“literacy crises” in many nations, with admonitions to address falling
standards and invest huge sums of money on literacy testing. At the
same time, the gaps between the rich and poor have widened. Catherine
Compton-Lilly’s book is indeed very welcome at this time. Her interview-
ees are the parents and grandparents of children in her classroom. She
invites us to listen to the families of children in an urban neighborhood,
to listen to what they make of reading in their daily lives and what they
want for their children.
Reading Families: The Literate Lives of Urban Children is an important
book by a teacher-researcher firmly committed to social justice. Compton-
Lilly disrupts deficit discourses about the educational aspirations of fami-
lies living in urban poverty. She tackles head-on the dangerous and incor-
rect assumptions that circulate about poor parents’ supposed lack of
concern for their children’s education. Through her research with families,
she discovers and demonstrates that parents and grandparents living in
poverty do engage in a complex and varied range of reading practices.
She also explores the limits and potentials of literate practices to make a
material difference in the lives of socio-economically struggling families.
What is most striking about Compton-Lilly’s approach is that she
sets out to listen to learn from her students’ families. We can hope that
ix
