Tatum, a professor at the University of Chicago and expert on teaching literacy to black males, spoke to more than 100 teachers at Hillside High School on Friday after observing several reading and writing classes.

His visit was the latest effort in a partnership between the district and the Durham Association of Educators to improve black male student academics. Black males make up a quarter of all students, yet are the majority when it comes to drop outs and suspensions. Their classroom performance ranks among the lowest of all racial and gender groups in the district..

When it comes to literacy, one concept that works is connecting the text to something students understand, he told the group. Tatum was in a New Orleans elementary school class right after Hurricane Katrina when he read a quote that said the storm caused "god to clean out the projects."

"And all of a sudden they're with me," he said. "It's connected to something real."

The Durham News spoke with Tatum after his talk.

Q: How does history and socioeconomic conditions affect the literacy proficiency of black males?

A: Most literacy-reform efforts that are taking place for African-American boys ignore their history. So they don't recognize that these young men have always been viewed as literate across different societies, but when we start measuring these young boys, the first thing that's ignored is what happens historically and how we can take those historical lessons to shake modern-day context.

The thing that's most important to them is being able to tell their stories and to put their voice on record. So if you open up that avenue and pathway, it allows you to teach other necessary skills and strategies. So without a historical approach, [we] deny them a part of their own humanity as they work on skills in isolation.

Q: Should there be separate literacy programs for black males?

A: There is no evidence that if you put them in separate programs, without addressing the broader needs, that it works. In those settings, they may feel valued and accepted, but we still have to know how to teach reading and writing to them.

Q: How do you teach struggling black male readers?

A: Struggling readers, all struggling readers, need someone who is competent, someone who knows how to teach reading and somehow recognizes their humanity. When we reduce black males to what people call reading deficits, we ignore the other identities they bring to the classroom. Their personal ID and their gender identities. So in short, we need to reconceptionalize how we are thinking about reading development for African-American male boys, not simply paying attention to reading scores, but how we can score reading with them. And the only way we can do that, [is to] pay attention to out-of-school variables that can interrupt their reading achievement.

Q: Why aren't black females struggling as much as black males?

A: Black male African-American failure has become part of our national imagination, and it's connected to the larger society. Crime, incarceration rates, joblessness. So there's been more attention given to that. The nation feels handicapped when it comes to African-American boys, and in some ways they feel more threatened by African-American boys than African-American girls.

Most teachers are women, so they're teaching not only across ethnicities, but across gender. So there is a greater connection or understanding of the girl identity than the boy identity. So boys want to be boys and their aggressive behavior can be misinterpreted as disciplinary behaviors. So that's why you have more kids assigned to special education, whether it's behavioral problems or emotional disorders. And a lot of that is connected to reading scores. The best way to discipline boys is to provide powerful instruction.

And I think in many ways we forgot how to love these young boys. We look at these boys as scorecards of achievement and we ignore their larger humanity.

Q: Do you feel what Durham's doing to address black male student performance is the way to go?

A: I think yes. I think Durham is unique in that they're planning a serious systematic effort that's bringing special attention to African-American boys. They're not lumping it under a cultural initiative or multicultural initiative. They put African-American boys in the signature of their reform efforts. And that is unique in itself. And I think when you put African-American males as a signature of you reform efforts, you can be very unapologetic in what you're doing. There's no hidden agenda. And it's a great first step, but there's a lot of work to do.