Volume 9, Number 7        March, 2006       ISSN 1099-839X 
 

 

The Pedagogy of African American Parents:  

Learning from Educational Excellence in the African American community 

 
Audrey P. Watkins 

Western Illinois University 

 
This qualitative study of how parents teach their children to excel academically 

in the African American community seeks to establish the validity of the 

pedagogical practices of working class African American families by 

investigating the educational leadership of two families on Chicago's south side. 

The study acknowledges the significance of non school factors (Schubert, 1986) 

that contribute to academic success. Parent pedagogical strategies are consistent 

with research findings on the sponsored independence parent involvement style 

reported by Clark, (1983). Findings demonstrate the significance of 

intergenerational educational practices, expectations, experiential motivation, 

parent advocacy, rituals and other factors.  

 

“The reason I wanted her and my son to go 

to an Ivy League school was because I felt 

that they would be able to have contact to do 

whatever they wanted to do. So what I’ve 

found is that if you don’t put boundaries on 

the children that you’re having a close 

relationship with they can go far, far, far” 

(Billye Jo). 

 

"We have to deprive our kids of things in 

order to spark ambition. If they have 

everything, what is there left for them to 

want? Achievement usually comes out of a 

desire for something. I believe even if we 

have to do it artificially, we have to create 

deprivation in our children’s lives in order to 

inspire them to want something more" 

(Constance). 

   

 Despite acknowledgement and growing 
recognition of the importance of home and 

out-of-school factors (Schubert, 1986) that 

contribute to academic success and 

educating the whole person, little attention is 

still being given to parents’ views of their 

roles in their children’s schooling and 

education. This study of the pedagogy of 

African American parents seeks to make 

visible the educational leadership of parents 

who design and implement curriculum at 

home to enable their children to attain 

educational excellence.  

 My admiration for Billye Jo Ford’s 
successful work as a family educator led me 

to this area of research. Billye Jo has worked 

to successfully enable the outstanding 

scholastic achievement of her children and 

grandchildren. She is also a community 

teacher in that she is frequently solicited to 

teach adults to read and to prepare children 

to attain standardized test scores that qualify 

them to enter elite, prestigious schools. 

Billye Jo's success is particularly intriguing 

since a high school diploma is the extent of 

her schooling.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Current Issues in Education Vol. 9 No. 7 
 

This level of formal education was not 

unusual for teachers in the African American 

community immediately after slavery. However, 

contemporary conceptions of educational experts and 

elite constructions of knowledge production obstruct 

and obscure the educational contributions of those 

without formal teaching credentials. In addition, the 

diverse dynamics of family and community education 

in the African American community must be 

documented, and our knowledge of teaching and 

learning is incomplete if the theory and practice of 

those considered noncredentialed are ignored. Power 

and justice in a democratic society are linked to 

educational excellence and equity for disenfranchised 

groups such as African Americans, whose continuing 

struggles for equal and quality education are 

multifaceted, shape American society, and serve to 

define the collective hopes, dreams, and strivings of a 

people for justice, dignity, and equality.  

The case studies presented here explore how 

two working class African American families on 

Chicago's south side--one single-parent, and the other 

a two-parent family--strategized to prepare their 

children for academic excellence and scholastic 

success. These parents whom I refer to as Billye Jo 

and Constance began educating their children at 

home with the goals of academic achievement 

beyond mere school completion. Billye Jo's husband, 

Matthew, was also involved in their children's 

education. The parents aimed for excellent grades 

and prestigious institutions as their children's means 

of social capital and social mobility. These families 

attained these goals in that their children won 

scholarships to, are attending, or have graduated from 

educational institutions such as Harvard, Dartmouth, 

Stanford, Northwestern, and Iowa State University. 

Billye Jo continues to instruct her grandchildren and 

others to achieve academic excellence.  

In the context of this study, I define 

educational excellence as superior acquisition, 

mastery, and demonstrated accomplishment in and of 

the cultural knowledge, skills and competencies 

highly valued by and required for mobility and 

success in America's macroculture as well as 

demonstration of that knowledge, competence, 

learning and achievement in outstanding standardized 

test scores. Clearly parent pedagogies in African 

American communities are diverse, and this 

qualitative study is illustrative only of two families. 

This work is significant, however, because it has the 

important goal of documenting and establishing these 

parents' educational leadership as well as establishing 

the validity of the pedagogical practice of working 

class African American families. Through semi-

structured conversational life history interviews with 

both mothers, an audio taped homework/tutoring 

session with Billye Jo and two of her grandchildren, 

and an interview with one of Constance's children 

when she was a college sophomore, I examine the 

mothers' roles in their children's education, 

particularly their explicit teaching in the home which 

include the strategies and rituals parents used to 

fulfill their educational goals and related contextual 

factors that affect education and schooling. 

History and Context 

n America, upward mobility is linked to 

education, specifically to a college education (Hale, 

2001, p. 25; Jackson, 2001, p. 259; Tidwell, 1988, p. 

153; Winter, 1993), and graduating from an Ivy 

League school generally means access to privileged 

social status. As Brunious (1998, p. 24-25) explains, 

however, this view is contested, particularly by 

Social Reproductionists who "argue that education 

does not level the playing field; rather it is a means of 

reproducing the social order, the dominant ideology 

and the work force. The school maintains class 

structure and takes an active role perpetuating and 

maintaining the existing social strata." For many 

African Americans and others in oppressed groups 

academic achievement does not necessarily result in 

economic success and upward mobility (Price, 2000, 

p. 6; Bowles & Gintis, 1977; Spring, 1993). The 

construction of education as the great equalizer is a 

prominent idea which accompanies the view of 

gradualism (Watkins, 2001). This ideology nurtures 

the hope/belief that African Americans’ status will 

improve little by little by means of schooling over 

successive generations and neglects the more 

immediate struggles for justice and equality. 

Gradualism and similar beliefs ensure that Blacks, as 

a group, remain at the bottom of society because for 

many of America’s poor and minority children 

education perpetuates the status quo.  

As a group, African Americans have always 

desired and striven for schooling. From the inception 

of public education for Blacks, however, schooling 

offered to African Americans has been largely 

separate and unequal. Obtaining education and 

schooling for America's former slaves has been a 

struggle of epic proportions which still impacts our 

society socially, politically, economically, as well as 

morally and spiritually. During slavery, even learning 

to read was a criminal act in some areas for many 

slaves, and in 1810 most southern Blacks were 

illiterate (Jones, 1986; Spring 2001). Amott and 

Matthaei (1991) report that: "History is clear that 

denying African Americans access to education, and 

then arguing that their illiteracy proved their 

inferiority, was a central tool in White's 

subordination of Blacks; proving Whites wrong in 

theory and practice was a main concern of the free 

Black community" (p. 154).  



The Pedagogy of African American Parents: Learning from Educational Excellence in the African American 

community 

 

  

3 

 

After slavery, former slaves’ compelling 

desire for schooling was firmly opposed by most 

Whites, and burning schools and lynching teachers 

were some of the tactics used to keep Blacks 

uneducated. In 1915, twenty-three southern cities 

with populations of over 20,000 including Tampa, 

New Orleans, Charleston, and Charlotte had no 

public high school for Blacks. Yet, these twenty-three 

cities had 36 high schools for Whites (Hine et al., 

2003, p. 337). Even with the establishment of public 

schooling, "one of the most important barriers 

African Americans faced was the extremely poor 

conditions of Black schools, especially those in the 

rural south. At the beginning of the 20 th century, 

nearly all Black parents had low education levels and 

most Black schools were in poor condition” 

(Bauman, pp. 502, 504, 1998).  

Once public education was established in 

America, there was much resistance to funding 

schools for Blacks with public monies. The latter was 

the case, even in the North (Hine et al., 2003, p. 161). 

After the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 

overturned Plessy v. Ferguson by declaring separate 

but equal education illegal, American mainstream 

society became even more creative in confining 

Blacks to inferior education. Tracking, ability 

grouping, special education designations (Hale, 2001; 

Jackson, 2001, p. 61; Reglin, 1995, p. 73; Rosciggno, 

1998) unequal funding, different curriculums, under-

prepared teachers, outdated books and other means 

such as inferior resources and facilities are still being 

used to deny Blacks educational equity. Because of 

the latter, it is unconscionable to place the blame for 

the achievement gap and other educational problems 

solely on the Black family while winking at the 

aforementioned inequities (Franklin, p. 11, 2000).  

Today's dropout rates and standardized test 

scores are constant reminders of America’s history 

and the need for equity and excellence in the 

education of all Americans (Jackson, 2001; Steele, 

1992). Statistics illustrating the closing of the 

education gap must be scrutinized. "In 1940, 26 

percent of Whites, but only 7 percent of African 

Americans over age 25 were high school graduates. 

Currently, the figures are close for both races. 

However, the increasing number of Black high 

school graduates does not mean Blacks are being 

better educated (Malveaux, 1998, p. 64). Malveaux 

wonders about the quality of their [Blacks’] high 

school education as well as the resources allocated 

for their education. Jeremy Price (2000, p. 6) 

continues this line of reasoning by observing that 

"although there has been a steady decline over the 

past 30 years in the number of African American 

youth dropping out of school, more than one out of 

five Black youth in the 18 to 21 age group do not 

have the necessary skills for entry level jobs, 

apprenticeship programs, or post secondary education 

(Gibbs, 1988)." Corroborating evidence exists to 

support Price's contention (Yan, 1999).  

Ideas of Black inferiority seem to be 

perennially nourished around the standardized test 

score table; however, Berry (1989, p. 288) believes 

that "the old labels of the past that have inferred 

cognitive, motivational, self-esteem, and learning 

deficits of Black children, youth and college age 

young adults should be looked at with a jaundiced 

eye….Cultural attributes found in the family, 

community and peer groups do not by themselves 

explain the lower levels of academic and social 

achievement experienced by some Black people." On 

the other hand, Berry (1989) and Tucker (1999) do 

link the educational attainment of African Americans 

to the need for school and community programs that 

emphasize solid parenting skills which are important 

to the future achievement of the child, his or her self-

esteem, and the survival of Black people" (Berry, p. 

291; Cooper and Datnow, 2000; Sanders , 2000, p. 

365).  

Notwithstanding the historical and 

contemporary challenges, African American parents 

still strive for quality education to inoculate their 

children against unemployment and minimum wage 

jobs and as a means of social uplift. Berry (1988, p. 

288) echoes this claim that “Contrary to much of the 

conventional wisdom, Black families, even of the so-

called underclass, believe in education and schooling 

as a pathway to a better life. Frequently, however, the 

socioeconomic circumstances and experiences of the 

parents do not adequately provide the early 

educational orientation that prepares the child to be 

successful in a classroom that does not value the 

strengths of his or her life-style.” Bauman (1998) 

reports that sociological surveys indicate, “African 

American students from disadvantaged backgrounds 

have higher educational and occupational aspirations 

than comparable Whites (Rosenberg and Simmons 

1972; Hout and Morgan 1975; Hauser and Anderson 

1991)…. One cannot read much of the literature on 

Black education without seeing many assertions of 

the desire, respect and even reverence for education 

held in the Black community" (p. 504).  

Despite this critical, compelling need for 

quality education, schooling and education, in the 

context of our society, are neither solutions nor 

panaceas for discrimination, inequality, injustice and 

oppression. However, the very existence of a Black 

middle class indicates that some African Americans 



Current Issues in Education Vol. 9 No. 7 
 
are able to use schooling and education to move out 

of poverty. The focus of this study is not the 

relationship between schooling and social mobility. 

Rather, the goal of this research is to investigate the 

pedagogy of working class African American parents 

who help their children achieve educational 

excellence. Features of the context and content of the 

pedagogical strategies and tactics of these parents 

should prove instructive to other parents and the 

educational community as well.  

Review and Rationale 

This examination of African American 

mothers' family pedagogies and parenting practices in 

the achievement of educational excellence addresses 

multiple areas such as informal education, parent 

involvement, and parent pedagogical practices. 

Hoover-Dempsey and O'Connor's (2002) study of 

factors responsible for how parents construct their 

roles for involvement in their children's education 

derived findings which suggest, "it is the 

implementation of values and goals--parents' 

cognitions and actions related to those cognitions--

that are most closely associated with student 

achievement"(p. 19). It is therefore important to 

examine various areas of these families' lives in order 

to reveal the values and goals reflected in their 

practice.  

Clark's (1983) concept of sponsored and 

unsponsored independence forms part of the 

conceptual framework used in this study. His 

ethnographic case studies of ten Black families 

compare and contrast child development strategies 

used by parents of five high achieving students with 

the strategies of parents of five students who are not 

high achievers. Clark concluded that, “Psychological 

processes and social communication patterns of 

family life come closest to capturing the essence of 

human learning experiences in homes” (p.3). He 

maintains that parents use either “sponsored 

independence” or an “unsponsored independence” 

style of parenting to prepare their children for major 

life roles.  

High achieving families use the “sponsored 

independence” style of communication in which 

parents use their influence in an authoritative manner, 

maintain high involvement and interest in their 

children’s activity in the home, and consistently 

monitor their children’s use of time and space. These 

parents also engage in frequent, almost ritualistic, 

parent and child activity which involves studying, 

reading, writing, conversing, and creating, regular 

parental explanation, advisement, and demonstration 

of everyday life skills. Praising and acknowledging 

the child’s talents and abilities; consistent parental 

expectations and standards for responsible and 

restricted child behavior are factors as well as 

generally disciplined parental role behavior modeled 

to the child, and regular use of special parent-child 

role etiquettes to get the child’s compliance.  

In low achieving children’s homes the 

“unsponsored independence” parenting style is 

generally characterized by permissive or authoritarian 

parental behavior patterns as well as the opposite of 

the sponsored independence style described above. 

For example, there are infrequent parent child 

activities involving literacy tasks such as studying, 

reading, writing, information sharing and creating; 

limited parental teaching, advising and demonstrating 

of concepts and ideas to the child; inconsistent or non 

existent parental expectations and standards for 

“responsible” child behavior in home, classroom, and 

neighborhood settings; inconsistent discipline or 

irresponsible role behavior modeled before the child. 

Other studies have supported these findings see Yan 

(1999).  

Clark concludes his investigation by calling 

for more studies which trace and analyze family 

educational practices over three generations of a 

family and the discovery of patterns of family 

pedagogy used by diverse strata, including never 

employed parents. He (1983, p. 213) observes that: 

"Although several important research projects on 

family learning processes are now being done, there 

is not enough carefully done research on the role of 

parents' home teaching practices." This study of the 

pedagogy of these African American families in the 

inner cities is an addition to this literature.  

Research by Bempechat (1992) concurs with 

the data above:  

The literature on home influences in African 

American families suggests that the 

importance of parental educational 

socialization practices--both cognitive and 

academic--cannot be overstated. Thus, it 

would be fruitful for parenting programs to 

focus in part on parental teaching strategies. 

Parents who learn how to organize their 

homes around learning, and, in particular, 

how to engage their children to better meet 

the demands of the school, will better 

prepare their children to meet the demands 

of the school (p. 46). 

Most of the strategies and tactics devised by 

the parents in this study can be considered forms of 

parent involvement, but there are myriad ways of 

conceptualizing parent involvement. Yan’s (1999, p. 

1) analysis follows:  

In the search for strategies that foster 

academic success among African American 

students, attention has been focused on 

increasing parental involvement in these 

students' schooling. However, parental 



The Pedagogy of African American Parents: Learning from Educational Excellence in the African American 

community 

 

  

5 

 

involvement has multiple meanings 

(Cassanova, 1996), and it has been 

operationalized in studies in a variety of 

ways. Nonetheless, parental involvement is 

widely recognized as an important 

contributor to the academic success of 

African American students (Coleman, 1991; 

Comer & Haynes, 1991; Cooper & Datnow, 

in press; Epstein, 1995; Lareau, 1989). 

Winters (1993, p. viii) conceives of parent 

participation as referring “to parents who become an 

integral part of their children's education." While this 

conception is necessary to defining Constance’s and 

Billye Jo's roles in their children's educational 

achievement, I conceive their involvement as going 

beyond common meanings of “involvement” and see 

them, in addition, as being educational leaders who 

organize and use schooling as one of the many 

strands designed to produce specific characters and 

lifestyles for their children.  

Much of the literature on parent 

involvement, parents as teachers, informal education, 

and parent participation construct or describe parents 

as clients who need motivation to assist their children 

with homework and other duties. Some of these 

approaches define parent involvement in ways that 

exclude parent leadership and representations of 

parents as sources of transforming knowledge and 

pedagogy that can contribute to scholarship and to 

the field of education. The focus is generally for 

teachers and other school personnel to urge or direct 

parents to become involved in the school and/or with 

their children. Recently, more emphasis has been 

placed on school family partnerships to improve 

educational outcomes (Lewis, 1992). According to 

Lewis, "no discussion of school reform and school or 

education policy issues these days seems complete 

without references to 'parent involvement.' Most 

educators would agree this term goes far beyond the 

traditional view of parents as field trip chaperones 

and cookie bakers from preparing children for 

education choice, to new forms of school governance. 

Nevertheless, much of the literature still defines 

parent involvement as those activities supporting 

what the schools define as involvement, and 

continues to address what parents should do" (Lewis, 

1992, p. 1).  

While efforts to enhance parent participation 

are commendable and clearly necessary, we must 

also examine what teachers, administrators, and the 

wider educational community can learn from the 

theory and practice of parents who have successfully 

mastered the art and science of teaching their 

children to succeed academically. In his study of the 

role of parental involvement in successful African 

American students, Yan (1999, p. 1) decries how 

"studies examining the effect of parental involvement 

on African American students often focus on the 

factors that place these students at risk and ignore the 

ways in which African American families promote 

successful school achievement and experiences." 

Louque (1999) agrees that insufficient studies have 

focused on successful Black students. She critiques 

discussions of the educational achievement of Blacks 

that blame Black pathology for educational failure, 

but completely overlook Black students who succeed 

despite overwhelmingly negative caricatures of their 

culture and home environments. Louque further 

asserts that: “The effectiveness of education can be 

improved by what we learn from the ones who 

experience academic success. Since most studies 

have focused on Black underachievers, little is 

known about the influences that stimulate academic 

achievement by Blacks, particularly females” (p. 2).  

Jenkins (1989, p. 140) observes that: 

“Successful academic achievement appears to be 

greatly influenced by good parenting skills and 

positive parental involvement.” He cites research, 

which indicates that parents’ educational level, 

reading activities and behaviors on the part of family 

and child enhance reading proficiency. The absence 

of these activities was found to be important in 

explaining lower achievement of Black and Hispanic 

children. Jenkins (p. 141) discusses another study, 

which found that lavish praise, teaching 

responsibility, and buying trade books were critical to 

parents’ pedagogy.  

A National Institute of Education document 

(June 1985) explains that “programs fostering parent 

involvement in at-home teaching improve 

achievement, particularly for low-income elementary 

school children, but more elaborate parental 

programs and parent education are needed. The 

pedagogies of the two mothers who participated in 

this study exemplify the parenting practices discussed 

above. Harris et al (1999, p. 490-491) write that:  

...Contemporary investigations examining 

the teaching practices of African American 

mothers (with the exception of low-income 

mothers) and the influence of education or 

schooling on the teaching practices of 

African American mothers are virtually 

nonexistent (Brody & Flor, 1997; Heath and 

Thomas, 1984; Scott Jones, 1987). This 

seems puzzling given that for the past few 

years, social scientists have argued for race-

homogenous studies that explore the cultural 

aspects of child rearing, parenting style, and 



Current Issues in Education Vol. 9 No. 7 
 

behavior (Peters, 1988). Conversely, 

research on the teaching behaviors of 

Caucasian mothers has expanded rapidly 

during the past two decades. The diversity in 

parenting and methodology of in home 

education among African Americans 

demands examinations of a range of family 

types and settings.  

The literature discussed reveals the 

usefulness of this examination of various aspects of 

participants’ pedagogy from the early years of 

parenting until the children leave for college. In the 

case of Billye Jo, her family pedagogy continues with 

her grandchildren's schooling. A significant benefit of 

this research is this intergenerational educational 

experience. Scott-Jones, (1987) establishes the need 

for information about both contextual and intentional 

teaching by parents in the following:  

The current popular educational practice of 

encouraging parental help with children’s 

schoolwork needs to be carefully 

implemented and needs to be informed by 

more extensive research. Conceptualizations 

of the mother’s role in her children’s school 

achievement must be developmentally 

based. Research with older children as well 

as with preschoolers is needed to establish 

effective roles for parents to assume as 

children progress through school. The 

indirect ways in which parents influence 

their children, in addition to directly 

teaching skills, must be assessed….Greater 

knowledge in these areas may lead to both 

families and schools being more successful 

in the socialization and education of 

children” (p.34). 

Bempechat (1992, p.1) also stresses the 

research needs in this area: "While much research has 

underscored the importance of parental educational 

socializational practices in children's academic 

achievement, little is known about the ways in which 

high achieving Black families differ from one 

another. The educational value orientations of 

families can be quite complex.... more research on 

within group differences will deepen an 

understanding of the home factors that mediate high 

achievement in African American families"  

Multiple aspects of parents as teachers need 

to be investigated to illuminate and facilitate teaching 

and learning. Laura Desimone (1999, p. 15) 

advocates developing "a better understanding of the 

mechanisms through which parent involvement 

affects children’s school success.” Billye Jo and 

Constance are not simply models of excellence from 

the African American community, but their 

educational experiences can contribute to an 

examination of how/whether or not the system of 

education held up as ideal works for diverse 

constituencies in a democracy. This study could also 

help to inform further exploration and assessment of 

the relationship between school and home in our 

society.  

Finally, this study has implications for the 

educative process in general and for curriculum and 

methodology in formal and informal learning 

communities and can serve to enlighten classroom 

teachers and parents who need to be informed, 

encouraged, and connected as to the efficacy of their 

efforts towards the educational success of children. 

Using parents’ narratives gained from conversational 

interviews I explored:  

 Parents' beliefs about schooling and 
education  

 The role and source of parents’ motivation 
and action/agency for schooling and 

education  

 The role of literacy and parent self-
education and research in their children’s 

achievements 

 Parents’ practice--strategy and tactics used 
to educate their children/home/ 

methodologies parents’ formal and informal 

teaching/learning in the home  

Introducing Billye Jo 

Billye Jo and Matthew married after their 

high school graduation in 1955; she was 17, he was 

20 years old. Their daughter, Sybil, was born the 

following year. Matthew completed junior college 

during this period, but Billye Jo's schooling ended 

with her high school graduation. Intelligence and a 

desire to work did not unlock job opportunities 

closed to Blacks in Memphis, and the frustratingly 

futile efforts to get a job as a postal clerk in Memphis 

led Matthew and the family to leave the Jim Crow 

South and join the “Great Migration” to Chicago.  

Unlike in Memphis, passing the postal 

service test in Chicago allowed Matthew to begin a 

32-year career as a postal clerk. He welcomed the 

chance to work and soon he was a full-time bus 

driver and a part-time postal worker. When he 

became a Chicago police officer two years later, 

Matthew continued working two jobs so that Billye 

Jo could remain at home and teach their children. 

Billye Jo's self educational efforts, talents, hard work, 

and educational strategizing led her to not only 

provide educational leadership for her family, but 

also to her being asked to serve as the teaching 

assistant in the first open classroom in Chicago’s 

public school system. In addition, parents of students 

at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools 

recommended her as a tutor for children who needed 



The Pedagogy of African American Parents: Learning from Educational Excellence in the African American 

community 

 

  

7 

 

academic help. When Billye Jo told parents who 

requested her services that she did not have a college 

degree, they simply responded, “What’s your fee?”  

Billye Jo's Family Socialization 

Despite their economic locations on the 

other side of the American dream, Billye Jo's parents 

created an atmosphere of confident hope. She and her 

siblings sat on orange crates because the only chairs 

were for the family’s adults. Billye Jo recalls 

however that: "the table always had a tablecloth on 

it.” The table was always set and floral arrangements 

from their garden mediated the starkness of poverty. 

Despite the family’s circumstances, Billye Jo’s 

mother and grandmother provided informal 

education, which laid a foundation for the children’s 

adult lives. In addition to a flower and a vegetable 

garden, there was an herb garden, and everything was 

used to instruct: “My grandmother would walk with 

us and tell us the names of the flowers and the plants. 

She would pick off some leaves and say, ‘here's 

peppermint, smell this, taste this sweet gum.”  

An important piece of Billye Jo's family's 

education was the love of reading that her mother and 

grandmother inculcated into the children. Billye Jo 

says her mother and grandmother always read: “I 

think my mother probably had a fifth or sixth grade 

education and probably my grandmother even less, 

but the thing that impressed me the most was that we 

always had this big box and it was full of books, and 

my mother and grandmother read, you know, all the 

time. And when we got through with our homework 

we would sit and they would tell us folktales or 

riddles and read to us." The behaviors these women 

modeled, impacted the children's lives. Billye Jo 

spent most of her free time reading. She particularly 

liked reading fairy tales.  

In addition to reading, the curriculum of the 

home included arts and crafts projects, which ranged 

from sewing, quilt making, drawing, and painting to 

woodworking. Arts and crafts are on Billye Jo’s 

home curriculum, just as it was when she herself was 

a child. One of her brothers earned his college tuition 

by tailoring. The result of this home training is 

obvious in Billye Jo’s life. Tiffany’s of New York 

purchased some of her dolls for their “Dolls and 

Diamonds” exhibit. Billye Jo has conducted quilting 

and origami workshops in schools, and she has been 

commissioned to make quilts for schools and 

organizations such as Jack and Jill of America. She 

strives to learn and produce any art or craft that 

intrigues her. 

Introducing Constance 

The second participant, Constance, was a 

housewife during her three children's infancy. Her 

husband was a financial aid administrator at a 

university, and she says she held middle class status 

during her marriage. The couple divorced, and 

Constance and her three children slipped into the 

underclass, coping with the pervasive poverty, which 

accompanied single parent status. "In a social climate 

in which only 23 percent of American children are 

growing up in two parent families and 85 percent of 

African American children are in single parent 

families" (Hale, 2001, p. 6), Constance and her 

children were surrounded by others in similar 

circumstances. Yet, she raised her three high 

achieving children while dealing with abuse from her 

former husband and earning a bachelor's degree in 

communications. The degree helped her work her 

way up to becoming a public housing manager. 

While in this position, Constance developed a 

training program to teach public housing residents 

who were supervisory trainees skills ranging from 

business etiquette to using a calculator and writing 

reports.   

Constance’s Family Socialization 

I have more information on Billye Jo than I 

do on Constance because I have been investigating 

Billye Jo’s practice for a longer time. Constance had 

a difficult relationship with her mother. Her mother 

believed in African derived religious practices and 

Constance wanted no part of it. She remembers:  

Because I resisted my Mother’s attempts to 

include me in a religious practice called 

“roots”, we were never close. She was an 

interesting dichotomy; she sent us to church 

every Sunday, but she wanted me to be a 

“root worker” as well . Because I was 

steadfast in my refusal to participate in any 

of the rituals she practiced, I became the 

family goat. My mother was a terrifying 

woman. She drank, she smoked, she fought 

men and women all her life. I didn’t drink, I 

didn’t smoke. I was an “A” student and as 

straight as I could figure out how to be. She 

would look at me and get mad. When she 

got mad, she would beat me. She was a 

funny, fearless, intelligent woman who lived 

a life completely out of control. Maintaining 

control over her children was of paramount 

importance to her. When I left her house, it 

was to marry yet another controlling 

personality.   

Despite the above, Constance credits her 

mother "for teaching me how to persevere in the face 

of extreme adversity." She remembers that her father 

motivated her to excel. She credits him:  



Current Issues in Education Vol. 9 No. 7 
 

for giving us a sense of self. My daddy 

insisted that all of his children were 

exceptional. He taught us that we were all 

blessed with high intelligence, which 

increased our responsibility to our race, our 

community, and our family name. We were 

taught to always be aware that other people 

are watching what we do. My father loved 

the church. He did not always live an 

exemplary life, but he loved God all of his 

life. In the church, they say that if you’re a 

Christian, you’re supposed to be a stand up 

example, and I’ve used that most of my life. 

I have always wanted to create a positive 

environment where people are encouraged, 

where people are convinced that the dream 

they have is attainable.  

Clark (1983, p. 112) explains that, “The case 

studies of high achieving students indicate the 

existence of an intergenerational transmission of 

behavior patterns.” The lives of Billye Jo and 

Constance illustrate this transmission in multiple 

areas. Both women are successful in their personal 

and professional endeavors. Billye Jo discovered an 

extraordinary talent when a friend took a sample doll 

Billye Jo had made to the American Bar Association 

and received 400 orders that first day. Connie excels 

as housing manager in the public and private sectors 

and is currently assistant housing manager of a city in 

the eastern United States. 

Method 

Billye Jo's enthusiasm for excellence in 

educational achievement fuels her desire to see 

parents infected with hope and equipped with 

strategies to help their children succeed and excel. 

Constance is also gratified with her own and her 

children's educational successes and agreed to 

participate in this study. A third parent, Billye Jo's 

neighbor, whose son recently was graduated from 

Harvard University with a double major, declined to 

participate. Clark (1983, p. 9) observes that the “Most 

promising new research on the topic of ‘families’ as 

educators is taking a more holistic view of family 

units as producers of knowledge.” My goal is to look 

holistically at these lives so as not to, a priori, 

exclude information that may inform our 

understanding of their family education.  

I use background information from a 

previous study of Billye Jo's practice which I 

conducted in 1994 for doctoral coursework because 

this knowledge is inextricably part of the data I use to 

conceptualize her pedagogy. I also use information 

from an audio taped tutoring session with the two 

grandchildren she worked closely with, Simon and 

Jill. I recorded an interview with Constance's oldest 

daughter, Pauline, in 1999 about her perceptions of 

her family's educational journey during her tenure at 

Dartmouth. I recorded and transcribed life history 

conversational interviews with both mothers in 2000, 

and I conducted follow up interviews by telephone 

and in person in 2003.  

Semi-structured conversational life history 

interviews enabled the excavation of embedded 

information about participants' lives and teaching. 

Both mothers' philosophies and practices are 

interspersed/suffused/located in several areas of their 

experiences. Not wanting to disembody them from 

their individuality, which is critical to examining and 

understanding their pedagogy, I look at them 

individually and jointly. The diversity and similarity 

in their approaches should be valuable to our 

understanding in many areas. I use narrative 

methodology (Riessman, 1993) because it gives 

agency to participants and allows them to discuss 

how their life experiences shaped their decisions, 

strategies and tactics as successful family educators. 

Interviews are similar to informal conversational 

ones used in Etter-Lewis' (1993) study of older 

professional Black women. Themes (Eisner, 1988, p. 

64) and patterns (Polkinghorne, 1988) are identified 

and analyzed.  

Both in- and out-of school factors influence 

education and academic achievement, and this study 

acknowledges the conceptual framework derived 

from Schubert's (1986) theorizing on the significance 

of the relationship between the in-school and non-

school curriculum. Schubert suggests that answers to 

questions such as “What messages do students get 

about the value of schooling; What do they see it as 

being good for; Do students come into contact with 

persons who are actively trying to become educated 

in their homes and families; Is such an education of a 

formal or informal variety; Do family members take 

an interest in or discuss ideas or projects dealt with in 

school; And what does the family environment 

teach," must inform the practice of educational 

stakeholders and therefore should be investigated. 

The answers to these questions will not only inform 

us as about the various influences on education but 

will also illuminate the pedagogy of the parents in 

this research. Narrative data from this study address 

questions similar to Schubert's that explore family 

education. The significance of the out-of-school 

curriculum and pedagogy of these parents in their 

children's academic success will be demonstrated.  

Academic Achievement of Participant's 

Children/Grandchildren  

Her children's elementary school teachers 

often told Constance that her children set the curves 

on examinations. Two of her three children majored 

in mathematics. However, her son Mark was notable 

in that:  



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The teachers recognized that he needed 

challenging, so from seventh grade on every 

summer he went to a different college for 

high-level mathematics. And so they kept 

trying to engage him, and by his junior year 

he was taking his math at the University of 

Chicago, because there wasn’t anything else 

for him to take. By third and fourth grade he 

figured out that school was easy, work was 

dumb. And so that was the struggle I had 

with him. Mark did not learn until after he 

entered the master’s program how to study 

because he never needed to.  

Mark earned a master's degree in electrical 

and computer engineering and is thriving in his 

profession.  

Billye Jo's daughter, Sybil, was in 

kindergarten for only three weeks when the teacher 

requested a conference; “I was like what could Sybil 

have done, why is she calling me? So I go up and she 

said, 'you know your daughter is very, very bright.' I 

was like, she is? And she said, 'Yes, we want to move 

her from kindergarten to second grade.' And so I said 

okay she could go, you know, and Sybil felt all right 

with it. And so then I started paying attention to what 

Sybil was really doing.” Sybil scored in the 99 

percentile on her high school entrance examination 

and won scholarships to prestigious high schools 

such as the Latin School and Frances Parker. Billye 

Jo and Matthew, unaware of the reputation of these 

schools, sent Sybil to a catholic girls’ school close to 

home, however, because they believed she would be 

safer. Under her mother's tutelage, Sybil became 

valedictorian of her class and won academic 

scholarships to institutions such as Harvard, Yale, 

and Dartmouth. She became a lawyer and married a 

doctor. When Sybil and her husband were expecting 

their first child, Billye Jo challenged herself to see if 

she could make her first grandchild a genius.  

Billye Jo's grandchildren, Sybil's two 

children, represent the maturation of Billye Jo's 

pedagogy. Billye Jo began teaching Jill soon after she 

was born, and at four years old, Billye Jo applied to 

have Jill admitted to a program for the gifted at 

Northwestern University. Jill’s comprehension 

impressed the program’s instructors when they 

noticed that she knew the difference between “rain,” 

“reign,” and “rein.” Jill enrolled in all honors classes 

at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, 

won the Brown University Award for Literature, and 

earned perfect SAT verbal scores. She is now 

completing her freshman year at an Ivy League 

University. Her brother, Simon, is just as 

accomplished, although not as disciplined, according 

to Billye Jo’s standard. He has been admitted to the 

high school rated by Chicago magazine and the 

Chicago Sun Times as one of the top five high 

schools in Chicago where he has been invited to 

enroll in honors mathematics and science. 

Contextualizing – Struggles and Dreams – 

Education as Motivation  

and Motivation for Education  

Poverty was a ubiquitous, oppressing force 

in both families--a legacy they did not want their 

children to inherit. Their lives were influenced by 

their struggles to survive and escape poverty. Yet, 

they refused to allow poverty to define them and fix 

their destinies. Both families saw schooling and 

education as a means of empowerment and upward 

social mobility, and they shared these values with 

their children explicitly, both verbally and 

nonverbally. In addition to single parenthood and 

financial disaster, Constance coped with knowing 

that her husband was stalking her. Billye Jo and 

Constance are both characteristic of Clark’s (1983, p. 

116) description of the high achieving students’ 

parents he describes as being:  

Distinguished by their hopeful, forthright 

sensibilities about themselves and their 

children. Specifically, they possessed a 

belief in their own ability to see to it 

somehow that their children’s needs would 

be provided for, a strong sense of goal 

direction and a hope and belief that things 

would get better, a penchant for managing 

their time and material resources prudently, 

a strong sense of self-reliance and 

independence, deep self-pride and personal 

integrity, a sense of the salience of the needs 

of their children....  

They saw themselves and their own efforts 

as indispensable to attaining educational goals they 

willingly sacrificed to obtain. This willingness to 

sacrifice demonstrates their beliefs in and 

commitment to assuming responsibility for the 

education of their offspring. Throughout her 

struggles, Constance focused on her educational 

goals for the children as well as for herself. She 

explains:  

I was paying all of the little money I was 

making out in babysitting, and tuition and 

we were eating raviolis and Ramen Pride--

three for a dollar. We were struggling, but I 

knew that--I kept my eyes on the prize--I 

knew that the struggle was worth it, and I 

was able to convince the children that we 

could do anything in a short period of 

time…But all through our lives education 



Current Issues in Education Vol. 9 No. 7 
 

was the key to the change and the children 

saw it once I got my degree.  

After earning her bachelor's degree, 

Constance's salary climbed from $13,000 a year to 

$25,000, "And that seemed like a fortune. We were 

middle class at 25 grand." The children noted that 

they no longer shopped in thrift stores once their 

mother became manager of a department at Sears.  

Billye Jo and Matthew’s strategy meant that 

he worked two jobs so that she could remain at home 

and educate their child. Despite his working two jobs, 

money was still scarce. “Here comes one-suit-Ford,” 

Matthew’s coworkers would say. “What if you make 

this sacrifice and your daughter gets pregnant,” some 

of them would ask him. He was resolute, however, in 

his determination to see his daughter well educated.  

Even before Sybil was born, Billye Jo 

dreamed of the life she wanted for her daughter. 

Andy Hardy movies exposed Billye Jo to the link 

between a diploma from an Ivy League school and 

upward mobility. “The girls attended Mt. Holyoke 

and others of the seven sisters. There’d be a big ball 

at Harvard or Dartmouth and the girls always looked 

fabulous." Billye Jo reminisces that the message she 

got from the media and society was that "Blacks had 

to excel; we had to have something special. When I 

watched the kids on the screen, I just thought, that 

looks like a much better life than I had, and I decided 

I wanted that for my child.” By the time Sybil 

enrolled in high school, Billye Jo had researched "Ivy 

League schools, and I figured, why shouldn’t she go? 

Never mind we didn’t have any money. Never mind 

all of these other things, you know."  

Epps reveals that his survey research 

indicates that parents and students who believe 

opportunities are not open to them have lower 

educational aspirations (Epps in Clark 1983). Mavis 

Sanders' (1998) investigation of students' beliefs also 

links beliefs about social mobility and achievement in 

schooling:  

Students' achievement ideologies or beliefs 

about the relationship between schooling 

and future success and prosperity also have 

been found to influence academic 

performance.... If youth view education as 

an effective means of social and economic 

improvement, they are more likely to value 

educational attainment and academic 

achievement. On the other hand, if they are 

pessimistic about the role of education for 

socioeconomic mobility, they are less likely 

to value academic achievement. Indeed, in 

an analysis of fifth-grade attitudes, 

Brookover and Schneider (1975) found that 

students' sense of futility in the school 

system accounted for nearly 45% of the 

remaining variance in academic 

achievement after controlling for student 

background variables.  

Expectations and Boundaries 

Kitano's (1998, p. 2) observation applies to 

how Billye Jo and Constance were raised and how 

they in turn trained their children:  

In general African American families hold 

high expectations for schooling and are 

motivated to support children’s academic 

achievement (Stevenson, Chen, & Uttal, 

1990). Within African American families, 

achieving students are more likely than their 

unachieving peers to have nurturing but firm 

parents who are optimistic and who perceive 

themselves as having effective coping 

strategies, engage in activities that enhance 

their children’s literacy, and are assertive in 

their interactions with the schools ( Clark, 

1983). Overall, there is a strong belief in 

education as means to a better life across 

economic groups (Clark; Prom-Jackson, 

Johnson, & Wallace, 1987; Willis, 1992).  

Some of the factors critical to the children's 

success were that their parents set high standards of 

academic performance, explicitly communicated 

these goals/expectations/dreams, and supported their 

children's own goals and efforts by implementing 

strategies for their success. Billye Jo was not an 

outstanding student, but she was aware of her parents' 

expectations: “I could never catch on as fast. I could 

catch on, but it took time for me to catch on. I felt 

that I was dumb…but going through school I guess I 

was like ahm low average. I never brought home Ds, 

but Bs and some Cs because my parents did not do 

Ds. So that’s what I grew up with, but my place was 

in the peach tree. I would sit up in the peach tree and 

just daydream all the time and “star light, star 

bright….” These dreams may well have been sites 

where young Billye Jo envisioned breaking 

boundaries.  

Constance’s parents were also quite explicit 

in conveying their academic expectations: “My 

daddy used to say that anybody could get a “C.” The 

only thing he really expected you to bring home was 

an “A” or a “B,” so I did tell the children that as well-

-so I passed that on. Anybody could get a “C”--you 

might as well be flunking. All you gotta do is show 

up; you get a “C;” so they accepted it. It was easy for 

them to get “A”s. ...My children would get “A”s. 

They would set the curves on exams.” When her 

children were three, five, and seven years of age, 

Constance communicated to them her vision of how 

they would survive and thrive:  

After my divorce, I used to sit and talk to 

my children. After being a stay at home 



The Pedagogy of African American Parents: Learning from Educational Excellence in the African American 

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11 

 

mother, it was time for me to go to work. I 

sat down and talked to them. I said I’ve got 

to go to work and that’s going to be my 

job…I told them that you’ve got a job too. 

Your job is to make good grades… Your 

mother’s poor. We’re poor now and I am not 

sure that I’ll be able to send you to college. 

But you can go if you make good grades. 

You make good grades and they’ll give you 

scholarships. You can go anywhere in the 

world you want to go. You can go to Paris, 

you can go to Austria, you can go anywhere. 

Your job is to make those grades and the 

world is yours. I had no intention of staying 

poor enough for my kids to get to school 

based on financial hardship, …[but] I knew 

if they didn’t make the cut financially, they 

needed to make it academically. As it turned 

out, all three of them went to school on 

academic scholarships.  

Like Connie, Billye Jo was explicit with 

Sybil. “I’m telling her, oh Sybil, I want you to go to 

an Ivy League school, either Yale or Harvard or 

whatever. I said, you know, your grades have to be 

perfect, but her grades always were. She was always 

in the Junior Classical League, honors, everything." 

Billye Jo explained that students who excelled in 

Latin were invited to join the Junior Classical 

League. Both families exemplified persistent 

dedication by working daily towards their goals. 

Information such as the academic rankings of 

educational institutions was part of the social capital 

that helped them compete in a world where 

knowledge and information can mean the difference 

between success and failure.  

The word 'boundaries' represents opposition 

to limits on their children's potential, which Billye Jo 

and Constance reject. Instead, they strove to harness 

all areas of life to holistically support educational 

achievement. Constance stresses: “I never told them 

there was a limit to anywhere they could go. I never 

told them there was a limit to their aspirations, 

because how would I know? I told my children they 

could be anything they wanted. I told them that with 

the understanding that they needed to know what 

they wanted. I never said that they would be the 

president of the United States, but I fully--I let them 

know they could be the president of something.” 

Billye Jo expresses similar sentiments: “What I found 

is that if you don’t put boundaries on the children that 

you are having close relationship with, they can go 

far, far, far."  

Billye Jo adds that her daughter “Sybil 

wanted to be the best, and I would tell her, you are 

the best. I told her my hopes and dreams for her.” 

The latter conveys both positive expectations and 

boundary defying worldviews that bore fruit by 

inculcating positive self-concept. An adult Sybil 

informed Billye Jo that: “I wanted them (these goals) 

for myself, but for you, too."  

These mothers' practices exemplify 

Bempechat's findings (1992, p. 1) in the following: 

"The messages parents communicate to their children 

about learning and schooling, while often subtle, can 

be very powerful in their children's developing 

notions about achievement. Caregivers who 

communicate the importance of effort and of taking 

responsibility for personal academic outcomes may 

foster in children greater persistence and diligence in 

the pursuit of achievement goals." Both families used 

explicit as well as subtle means of educational 

socialization.  

Clearly these parents’ beliefs in the viability 

of education as the way to upward mobility, and their 

focus support Clark’s finding that parents of high 

achievers seem more optimistic and believe they can 

cope with life challenges, whereas parents of low 

achievers view things as hopeless ( Clark 1983). 

Even in their interactions with the youth in their 

communities, Billye Jo and Constance share similar 

messages of setting high standards, personal 

achievement, and fulfilling potentials. Constance told 

the youth at the housing projects she managed not to 

limit themselves: “They have people in their lives 

that are telling them what they can’t do. I don’t want 

people to think in a provincial way. I don’t want 

people to believe that where they are is the only place 

for them to be.” 

Parental Responsibility and Advocacy 

Although their tactics differed, both mothers 

demonstrated persistent, informed advocacy as a 

form of parent involvement. This advocacy meant 

high visibility in school affairs. Connie taught her 

children how to negotiate with adults and to solve 

problems in the school environment, so they could 

learn to handle situations independently. However, 

she knew when to intervene:  

Now if one of my children took my advice 

and did as I suggested, and I did not like the 

report they brought back to me, I appeared 

at the school. The favorite phrase at the 

school was, ‘Now Ms. Clark, now Ms. 

Clark, (laugh) let me explain what 

happened...’ But what it did, in matters 

where my children seemed to have been 

victimized or mistreated, P.S. 25 knew that I 

was going to show up. I think that too, 

affected my children’s academic careers. 



Current Issues in Education Vol. 9 No. 7 
 

The children got to the point where they 

would rather take care of the problem than 

see me show up at the school. I was never 

ignorant, never abusive to the 

administrators, but I was very firm, and very 

determined to get the problem resolved. And 

that’s how we went through their secondary 

school years. I would go to the school, I 

would make it very clear to whoever was 

involved in the matter, that whatever their 

problem was, they should visit it upon 

somebody else. My child was not the one. 

It’s interesting in that once a teacher had met 

me, from that point on, my children would 

cease to have problems with that particular 

teacher. Whatever their personality 

problems were, they did not want those 

dialogues to happen again and they would 

leave my children alone.   

Billye Jo and Matthew both visited a high 

school teacher they thought was being unfair to Sybil. 

The presence of both parents, united in their concern 

and support, undoubtedly left an indelible impact on 

the school. Their approach seems subtler than 

Constance's, though. Billye Jo's advocacy was 

frequently expressed in assertively researching 

information to help Sybil fulfill her dreams and goals. 

Like Constance, Billye Jo believes passionately that 

parents must assume responsibility for and take 

charge of their children’s education. When Sybil 

wanted to be the valedictorian of her class, but 

worried that other classmates who were smarter than 

she might prevail, Billye Jo responded, "Oh well, you 

can be that if you want to be.” Action followed those 

words: “ I went to school to find out what it took to 

be valedictorian, and she ended up valedictorian; so 

that taught me a lot of times you can’t wait for 

circumstances. If you want something you have to go 

after it." Now that Billye Jo's granddaughter Jill 

wants to win the service award for Jack and Jill of 

America, the same parental assertiveness is guiding 

her towards her goal.  

Findings of Hoover-Dempsey’s and Jones 

O'Connor's (2002) study of the role of parental role 

construction in parent involvement and children's 

education affirm the link between Billye Jo’s and 

Constance’s concept of responsibility for their 

children's educational success and their children’s 

academic achievement. These researchers define 

parental role construction for involvement in 

education "as parental beliefs about what one is 

supposed to do, as a parent, in relation to the child's 

education. It functions as a motivator of parental 

involvement because it enables the parent to imagine, 

anticipate, plan, and behave in relation to a host of 

activities potentially relevant to the child's 

educational success" (2002, p. 5).  

Hoover-Dempsey and Jones O'Connor 

(2002, p. 15) found that: "Student achievement, the 

focal student outcome for much parental involvement 

research, was associated with components of parental 

role construction. Parents of lower achieving children 

tend to focus on the school's responsibility in both 

day to day and common crisis situations; parents of 

higher achieving students tended to focus on their 

own responsibilities in day-to-day education and on 

partnership-focused responsibilities in common crisis 

situations.” Constance's response to my question if 

she believes the educational system works for 

African Americans since it has worked for her 

children follows:  

I believe that it is the parents’ responsibility 

to see to it that it works. I believe in public 

education. My children got an excellent 

education from the public school system, but 

I am somewhat concerned about the 

tendency of parents to abdicate total 

responsibility for their children’s education 

to the school system. I do not believe it’s 

possible for the school system to totally 

serve the needs of Black children, and I 

think that we are fooling ourselves when we 

try to structure a situation where that is. 

Because all it means to me is that we are 

abdicating responsibility. I believe that the 

primary basis for ensuring the education of 

our children remains in the home. I’ve 

always believed that. And I believe that we 

as parents have to take full responsibility for 

our children. If my children were mad at me 

because I wouldn’t let em go somewhere, 

well that’s just too bad. I’d just have to take 

that hit. They still couldn’t go!   

The economic and social stressors should 

not be minimized, but these families’ lives 

demonstrate the faith as well as the works needed to 

overcome the barriers they faced.  

Constance's position on the role of parents in 

the educational achievement of their children is 

informed partly by her observation of how "southern 

Blacks, maids, people with third grade educations 

sent five, six kids to college because they insisted 

that that’s what was going to happen." The latter 

illustrates the power of parent leadership as well as 

the influence of community and the force of history 

to motivate educational achievement. The 

intergenerational transmission of values is evident 

here as well.  

Clark (1983, p. 211) notes: “Parents who 

expect public schools and other public agencies to 

take the major responsibility for their children are 



The Pedagogy of African American Parents: Learning from Educational Excellence in the African American 

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13 

 

likely to see their children leave school sooner than 

they should and with inadequate preparation for 

social responsibilities.” Clark advocates practical 

training and information to help Black parents 

improve the quality of their children's academic 

experience. For this training to be most effective, I 

believe it is critical to investigate parents’ perceptions 

of the role of the school and their own roles in the 

educational process.  

Family Pedagogical Strategies 

Educational Rigor/Commitment/Discipline 

That these parents accepted the 

responsibility for the academic goals they chose for 

their children as discussed above is reflected in the 

level of educational rigor they sustained. They sought 

the educational experiences and rewards of elite 

institutions, and therefore accepted the accompanying 

challenges. The following remarks by Billye Jo about 

her grandchildren's schools are self-explanatory: "But 

another thing that I like about Lab and Lenard, is that 

no matter what the parents think, you know, a lot of 

parents say I don’t want my child under stress, I don’t 

want my child this, I don’t want my child that, but we 

live in a real world. You have to either do it or not do 

it. If you’re gonna be successful there are things 

you’ve gotta do. And if you’re not, you’re not. So 

this has taught Jill and Simon I’m gonna budget my 

time and I’m going to do this, this, and this. And then 

the stress is not stressful."  

Billye Jo acknowledges the parents' 

challenges in the following: "…But if you go to the 

meetings there are parents there who complain that 

there’s too much homework, you shouldn’t do this, 

you shouldn’t do that, and you shouldn’t do the other. 

And I feel the same way; I feel there is an awful lot 

of homework at both schools, awful lot, plus they 

have an awful lot of after school things that are going 

on too that they want to participate in, so you have to 

find a way to do all of it.... If you’re gonna do it, you 

might as well do it well.” in addition to school work, 

Billye Jo's grandchildren have elected to be involved 

in extra curricular activities such as foreign study, 

music, tennis, children's choir, soccer, and theatre. 

Each child also has to plan and cook dinner one night 

per week at home.  

Clark (1983, p. 5) asserts: “There are at least 

three types of home activity that prepare children for 

the competent performance of school 

responsibilities.” The first of these is “home 

educational-instructional activities, such as deliberate 

teaching in the three Rs, home recreational activities, 

and health maintenance activities.” The first two 

factors are particularly relevant in this study. Both 

mothers conscientiously implemented early literacy. 

During Sybil's infancy, the family’s weekly shopping 

trip always ended with the purchase of a Golden 

Book. By the time Sybil was six years old, she owned 

about 100 of these books. Sybil took a book instead 

of a toy on family outings, her father read to her 

nightly, and books were always part of her life.  

Billye Jo remembers, "I talked to Sybil a lot 

and because of my love for reading, every time I saw 

a book I'd bring it to Sybil. And ahm, we'd talk and 

we'd read stories together and she--I wanted her to 

have the love of reading because when I discovered 

reading from that box my mother had, it was like a 

whole world opened up. You could dream about 

traveling and dream about this and that. So when 

Sybil was born I had all these dreams for Sybil." The 

multidimensional connections between education and 

dreams are repeatedly apparent in their dialogue.  

The period after Sybil was skipped from 

kindergarten to second grade was decisive. Billye Jo 

noted:  

I really started paying attention to what 

Sybil was doing. So when she came home 

and talked about phonics--I had never really 

heard about phonics because I grew up in 

the 50s, so I went to school and I sat in the 

back of class and told the teacher you need 

to teach me phonics because I’ve never 

heard of this. So the teacher was gracious 

and she taught me phonics, then I could help 

Sybil. I attended school with her at least two 

times a week to learn what she was learning, 

then I’d improve on the lesson and teach it 

to her.  

Billye Jo diligently used the school or any 

other resource that she could learn from, so that she 

could teach the information to her cooperative 

daughter: “People often think that I overpowered 

Sybil, but I always asked her opinion and agreement 

before we did things. Even when Sybil was only in 

the fifth grade I’d get her opinion on what I planned 

to cover with her. I’d say, Sybil, I think this is what 

we should do, what do you think?”  

Both mothers pursued early literacy for their 

children. On observing a first grade classroom where 

many children were not being taught to read at grade 

level, Hale’s (2001, p. 137) remarks address the 

critical nature of early literacy: "They want to learn. 

However, many of these children are not being taught 

to read at grade level. Teaching reading is hard work. 

Many children who are not taught to read by their 

parents before entering school fall through the 

cracks."  

Constance shared some teaching techniques 

she used with Mark when he was a preschooler:  



Current Issues in Education Vol. 9 No. 7 
 

When I taught him it was big A, it might 

have been like a song, I had a book. It said 

big A--little a. what begins with A, A-apple, 

something else, it all began that way. It was 

a poem. But I also found when I was 

teaching him, and this is helpful to young 

parents who try, you have to teach him both 

cases. You have to teach him the big “A” the 

little “a,” Big “B”, the little “b” at the same 

time because the children take what you say 

as law. So if you teach them the upper case 

and then you try to introduce the lower 

cases, they’re going to think you’re crazy. 

No, no you told me this other thing was the 

“A.” what do you mean this is an “a” too? 

So I found that out in the course of me 

working with them, you have to teach them 

both cases of the letters going in, and you 

have to pick a book that reflects the fonts 

that are most regularly used in books.  

Of her after school sessions with 

grandchildren Simon and Jill, Billye Jo remarked: "I 

make learning a game, it's not just a matter of do this 

or do that.” She also mentioned arts and crafts: 

“there's a big box of papers, origami things, scissors, 

I have crafts, it's so much fun, they cry when they 

have to go home."  

Even though single parenting meant she had 

to enter the workforce, Connie says she developed an 

abbreviated method of instruction, which included a 

minimum of 15 minutes per day with each child, and 

like Billye Jo, she stresses the importance of making 

learning fun:  

What I did was I combined it with love, you 

know. If they got it right I’d kiss em all up 

and tickle em all, and they just loved it. And 

so then they’d want to do the next one. And 

then I’d say “what’s this?” and he’d say big 

"A," and I’d say what’s that and he’d say 

little “a.” and I’d tickle, tickle, tickle and 

then we’d go. And so I would introduce 

maybe three letters at a time, you know. 

Maybe A, B, C then D, E, F and then we’d 

go back and check those other ones just to 

make sure he retained it. And it was nothing. 

They picked it up like that.  

Both parents bought educational toys with 

alphabets or numbers, blocks or puzzles of the United 

States. Constance limited her purchases to “anything 

...that taught them how to do something.” She bought 

a few non-educational toys such as He Man and She 

Ra for Christmas, though.  

Teaching and learning were neither 

relegated to a particular time nor space. Billye Jo 

kept a map on the wall, and whenever she took one of 

her many trips to places such as Japan, Israel, or 

China, for example, Jill charted the countries on the 

map and studied them. The World Almanac, Ripley’s 

Believe It or Not, Greek and Indian myths, the "Iliad" 

and the "Odyssey," Great Artists for Children, 

Shakespeare for Children, a question and answer 

book (the latter is reminiscent of general knowledge 

textbooks I used in Jamaica under the British system 

of education) were some of the texts in Billye Jo's 

home curriculum. "I’ve got this great new book, it’s 

gonna teach you how to remember the capitals,” was 

Billye Jo's introduction to a memory system to help 

Jill, who was now in the fourth grade, remember the 

state capitals and the American presidents. Jill now 

says that her grandmother’s enthusiasm motivated 

her to love learning. One of Billye Jo's goals was for 

Jill to be equally interested in all subjects. This plan 

was eminently successful because as a high school 

student Jill was enrolled in honors physics, 

chemistry, English, literature, and writing.  

In preparing to teach her grandchildren, 

Billye Jo took her neighbor’s advice and purchased 

the book How to give your child a higher I.Q. One of 

the book's techniques that she used was teaching her 

granddaughter colors even before she could speak. 

“This is a red rattle,” Billye Jo would say. “People 

would wonder why mention the color when she 

didn’t understand, but I’d always mention it. By the 

time Jill was one and a half years old, she knew all 

her colors.” Every day Billye Jo picked up her two 

grandchildren from school, supervised their 

schoolwork, helped them with homework, and 

instructed them. As mentioned above, arts and crafts 

were integral to the curriculum in the home. 

Ritualized learning practices began so early that the 

children knew no alternatives.  

Early in their family education efforts, 

Matthew, Billye Jo’s husband, came home in 

between his two jobs to teach Sybil mathematics. 

Unlike Billye Jo, Constance received no help from 

her husband with the children, but she was undeterred 

from her daily teaching ritual. She says her son 

received more teaching time because she did not 

work outside the home during his infancy. Billye Jo's 

neighbor who declined to be part of this study shared 

many successful techniques with her such as how to 

use alphabet blocks and flash cards to instruct the 

children.  

Billye Jo threw flash cards on the floor and 

used them to compose words for Jill. She would then 

have Jill compose her own words. Next, Billye Jo 

moved the words around to make sentences. Soon she 

would assign the five-year-old Jill to make a 

sentence, and competition heightened the challenge. 

“My sentence is the best, Billye Jo would say; I bet 

you $100 you can’t make a better sentence than 

mine.” Jill might fail and become concerned that she 



The Pedagogy of African American Parents: Learning from Educational Excellence in the African American 

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15 

 

owed her grandmother money, but Billye Jo would 

graciously give Jill opportunities to clear her debts by 

earning double the money if she could produce more 

than the agreed on number of sentences. Progress 

came quickly, and soon Jill would be composing 

“asking sentences,” “statement sentences,” and so on.  

One day, Billye Jo announced to four-year 

old Jill, "I'm giving you a test; I’m putting you on the 

clock." Jill looked puzzled, but began the process of 

becoming familiar with taking timed tests. Billye Jo 

had been afraid of tests in her youth and the 

realization that her children would be competing in a 

stratified society mandated this approach. One of the 

teachers interviewed in Cynthia Jackson's reference 

handbook on African American Education believes if 

African American students are taught test taking 

skills, "they could probably do equally as well as 

other children" (2001, p. 81).  

A synonym finder and the study of critical 

thinking were soon added to the home curriculum. 

Billye Jo's husband’s belief that if one knows the 

rules for a particular procedure, one can do anything, 

guided the family’s focus on the rules for grammar, 

math, Latin, and other subjects. Jill’s teachers at the 

University of Chicago Laboratory Schools did not 

believe in such a focus on rules, but Billye Jo and 

Matthew insisted on it anyway. They wanted their 

children and grandchildren to study Latin to help 

them with root derivatives, for example, and they are 

pleased with the results.  

Although Billye Jo never studied Geometry 

in high school, she read books and taught Jill 

Geometry before Jill learned it in school. The goal 

was to keep Jill ahead of her class. Jill was the only 

student of color and the only female at a prestigious 

national engineering summer camp for honor 

students, and it is obvious that the fruit of these 

labors of love is evident. These parents conceived of 

these strategies as giving their children "a little leg 

up." Teachers recognized the achievement, 

preparedness for learning, and the superior 

performance of these students.  

Billye Jo believes that success comes in 

"having and working a plan," and her pedagogy is 

illustrative of this. The educational strategies she 

currently uses with her grandchildren reflect her 

ingenuity and initiative to research and develop ways 

to achieve her educational goals. She consulted with 

upper class Asians at her grandchildren’s schools to 

learn how they helped their children excel 

academically. She discovered that these parents 

acquired required readings for the coming school 

year and prepared their children over the summer. 

They examined papers and other schoolwork to 

anticipate what their children would need and 

provided the appropriate resources in advance. Billye 

Jo began to apply these same principles, and her 

grandchildren were always ahead of their classes.  

She explains, "I keep em ahead. That’s the 

key; you have to keep them ahead of what the 

teacher’s asking. When Jill was in third grade if I 

knew the teacher’s gonna give a test on whatever, I 

would teach it to her. She already knew it because I 

would teach it to her. When I had her with me, I’m 

teaching her.” Hale's (2001, p. 134) discussion of 

affluent White parents is descriptive of what 

Constance and Billye Jo sought to do by means of 

their pedagogy: "These parents left nothing to 

chance. They did not depend upon the schools to 

teach their children to read and calculate. The 

children came to school reading, having being taught 

by their mothers."  

I tape recorded an after school session 

during which Billye Jo worked with Simon on 

rhyming words while Jill did her mathematics 

homework. In one segment Billye Jo tells four-year-

old Simon, “Ok now, this might be a little hard” and 

receives the expected reply:  

Simon: Not hard for me, hard for you!  

Billye Jo responds: Oh, is that what it’s going to be? 

Let’s see! And the challenge is on.  

Billye Jo: Okay, what’s the next word?  

Simon: Spoon.  

Billye Jo: and what rhymes with it?  

Simon: Poon?  

Billye Jo: Spoon, what?  

Simon: Moon? Billye Jo sounds delighted and a bit 

surprised. Oh, that’s great, okay!  

Jill, who has been working independently asks,  

Jill: Grandma,  

Billye Jo: Yes, Jill?  

Jill: What does it mean when it says tell how many 

hundreds tens and ones? 

I did not sense anything spectacular except 

devotion, diligence, patience and a disciplined, yet 

fun approach to the work. Billye Jo tells Simon, 

“Look at the word so when you see it again you’ll 

know it.” Undoubtedly, the day-by-day consistency 

counts. While working on rhyming words, Simon 

sees the word 'money' and begins singing "more 

money, more money, more money, more!" Billye Jo 

firmly guides him back to the rhyming sentences. 

When Billye Jo invested in learning aids such as the 

Evelyn Woods reading course. The speed-reading 

and comprehension helps Sybil in her work as a 

lawyer. Constance stressed the importance of going 

beyond commitment to being informed: "....It’s a 

time, it’s a time commitment, for sure. And then you 



Current Issues in Education Vol. 9 No. 7 
 
educate yourself. I mean, I went to the teachers’ 

stores...."  

I asked these parents repeatedly if these 

were bright children who would do well academically 

under any circumstances. Rather than claiming their 

children are geniuses, both mothers believe their 

early and consistent home education efforts were 

instrumental in their children's academic excellence. 

Connie responds:  

I believe my children are bright. I don’t 

know that they are necessarily brighter than 

other people’s children. I’ve had this 

conversation with other people. My children 

represent the third generation of college 

educated people on both sides of their 

family; both my ex-husband’s family and 

my own. We are intelligent people. But I 

have become convinced that if you take the 

time out when they are very small, then 

almost any child can achieve similar results. 

I didn’t expect people to consider my 

children geniuses when they went to school. 

I just wanted them to be adequately 

prepared. Everybody went nuts every time 

one of my children came through the first 

grade because they knew how to read. I 

believe just doing that isolates the children. 

In our educational system, the category they 

assign you to going in oftentimes determines 

how the system will respond to you. My 

children were given opportunities and 

advantages that other children were not 

given. That is unfortunate.  

As a parent of a student in the high school 

Constance's children attended, my observations of the 

teachers with whom I interacted led me to conclude 

that some of them were more enthusiastic, 

responsive, protective of, and helpful to these 

students who already had the strong foundation of the 

"little leg up" and were outstanding scholastically. 

My perception was that the "ordinary" students were 

not 'feathers in teachers' caps,' and therefore 

resources and opportunities were different. This is 

probably what Billye Jo referred to when she said 

Blacks need "something special to succeed."  

In addition, Constance's daughter Pauline 

who graduated from Dartmouth noticed that her 

friends who attended all Black high schools were 

pushed to graduate from high school, but not to 

attend college. These students did not get the referrals 

and college information her integrated high school 

offered. Pauline claims guidance counselors made a 

difference because at her high school, "There were 

three really good counselors. I kept close to them. A 

friend of mine was telling me how guidance 

counselors didn’t tell them anything. They had to go 

to the counselors. I understand having to go to them, 

but you have to pry information; and, like, if you 

don’t ask the right questions you don’t get info. No 

information is volunteered as far as like college or 

higher education. The higher education information is 

like Chicago State or Robert Morris, Columbia. So I 

mean, I found that very interesting.” 

Discipline 

This study’s parents were not engrossed 

with academic achievement to the exclusion of 

discipline, the effect of peer influences, and such. 

Their holistic plans included discipline as a critical 

component of the various methods they used to shape 

their children’s consciousness and steer them towards 

their educational goals. I asked Constance if the 

children rebelled; she replied, “Well now, I didn’t do 

a lot of that;” she continued with a laugh: “I know 

that parents today worry about that, but my children 

never--I never gave them that latitude. This is how 

they lived, you know, this was it! ‘Can you go?’ ‘No, 

mother’s not goin’ let me go,’ (whiney voice) you 

know. It wasn’t like they had witnessed another 

option, so this was normal life.” Constance adds that 

while she separated the children from negative 

forces, she also made home life fun.  

Constance's behavior echoes that of the high 

achieving parents Clark (1983, p. 114) describes: “A 

significant amount of television watching was 

monitored at home and was supplemented by parental 

discussions and explanations. Parents believed that 

television programs influenced the way a person 

thinks.” Constance agrees, and explains:  

Throughout my children’s lives I only had 

one TV in this house, so whatever was 

watched, everybody watched it--from 

Sesame Street to whatever. We weren’t 

sitting in the house in four different 

bedrooms all doing our own thing. I 

constantly interacted with the kids. We 

laughed. We joked. I refused to get cable. I 

didn’t get cable until my last child went 

away to college because I believe that there 

was too much sexual material, you know, 

too many incendiary things on cable for 

young children. We would watch the TV 

program and then I would ask them 

questions about the program. That’s what 

we did, we would pick out stuff. I would 

say, “What do you think about what that girl 

just did, do you see that? And we would talk 

about it. We are a very chatty family.  

The foregoing supports research by Yan 

(1999, p. 8), and others that "the finding of higher 

levels of home discussion in successful African 

American students' families is consistent with 



The Pedagogy of African American Parents: Learning from Educational Excellence in the African American 

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17 

 

previous literature (Clark, 1983; Ritter, Mont-

Reynaud, &; Dornbusch, 1993)."  

Like Billye Jo's family in Memphis, one of 

Constance's family's favorite entertainments was 

nature walks, which were also used to instruct: "We 

would just all go outta the house and we’d just walk, 

and we’d examine flowers, people’s houses, people 

who passed us….” They would return home and 

discuss their adventures. In his case studies of high 

achieving Black children Clark (1983, p. 114) found 

that parents encouraged and maintained “cohesion 

building family rituals that involved group singing, 

conversation, and reading aloud within an affect-

authority relationship characterized by firm but warm 

supervision and support.”  

In addition to nature walks, the family 

skipped and sang together. I remember being 

incredulous at seeing an adult female singing and 

skipping down the street with her daughters. At the 

time it seemed odd and maybe slightly offensive to 

my sensibilities. I did not realize the role this and 

similar activities played in their family cohesiveness. 

The impact of these rituals is apparently life long. 

Connie explains:  

They loved the singing, even Bruce, he’d be 

embarrassed, but even he would do the ‘Off 

to see the Wizard’ song. We had a favorite 

song; it was the ‘Greatest American Hero’ 

song--it went ‘Believe it or not, I’m walking 

on Air, I never thought I could feel so Free”! 

We would skip down the sidewalk and sing 

these songs. It’s so funny, Mabel and I were 

riding back from Maine the other day, it 

started thunder storming and she started 

singing one of our songs. We had power 

songs and we had happy songs. Our power 

song was ‘ If it had not been for the Lord on 

my Side, Tell me where would I be?’ We 

would sing that song at the top of our lungs. 

This thunderstorm was coming down and 

she just broke into that song and we both 

sang it. If we were happy, we would sing 

‘Look at what's happened to me, I can’t 

believe it myself’, Suddenly I’m on top of 

the world, It could have been somebody 

else.' And if we were angry, it was ‘Don’t 

push me ,cause I’m close to the edge.' 

We’ve sung together since my divorce from 

their father. It’s been a part of our family life 

for many years.  

Billye Jo and her family sang and performed 

oldies, particularly on Saturdays, as they hurried 

through housework so they could do fun things later 

on. Particularly in Constance's family's case, it seems 

as if the songs were modes of communication that 

were also used as coping mechanisms used to 

communicate various states of being. The family 

could solicit/elicit various modes such as support, 

comfort, or communicate anger, frustration or other 

emotions or simply see the song as a call to rejoice in 

the moment with hope. 

Motivation and Social Control 

In addition to telling their children that 

education could enable them to travel to exotic 

destinations, the parents vividly illustrated to their 

children what their destinations in life could be if 

they made other choices. Modern day object lessons 

were features of this experiential learning. Connie 

took her middle school daughters to a Chicago 

Housing Authority building:  

When my girls were 10 and 11, I made them 

walk a 16-story building with me. And I 

said, ‘you know your mother has been 

struggling for many years. It’s been hard, 

taking care of all of you by myself. I need 

you to understand that I’m not going to take 

care of you and a baby, too. If you look 

around, do you see my mother? No? Well 

when you have a child, you’re going to be 

the mother. You’re going to have to take 

care of them like I take care of you. Look 

around, if you don’t finish your education, 

this is where you’ll stay. I can get you a 

place here, and I can get it cheap. If you 

decide you want to get pregnant for some 

boy, be sure to have a plan. If you want, you 

can plan to live here. But you’re not going to 

live with me.' And they believed me. 

Standing in a urine- stained hallway in 

Robert Taylor Homes, they believed me…  

Billye Jo used similar techniques to instruct 

and motivate her grandchildren. When Simon and Jill 

were even younger than Constance's children were, 

Billye Jo drove them by the same housing projects 

and asked, “Do you want to live this way?” Next, she 

drove by upscale Hyde Park residences and asked the 

same questions. “If you want to live this way, then 

education is the key. You have to decide. What do 

you want your life to be like? It’s up to you.” She 

sometimes watched the "Jerry Springer" show with 

Jill to teach her what to avoid. Billye Jo states that at 

times she would ask Jill, “Here is a young man who 

is not a Christian, has no job, he doesn’t respect his 

parents, why are these girls fighting over him?"  

Connie walked with her children to the 

neighborhood hangout and discussed the behaviors 

they observed. “I’d say look at that one, they’re up to 

no good. My favorite quote was ‘Look to your 



Current Issues in Education Vol. 9 No. 7 
 
friends, there goes your future. I would say that 

child’s future is not going to be yours. You cannot be 

with this person." Constance pointed out that her 

separating her children from others had nothing to do 

with economic status, because some of her children’s 

friends were as poor as her family was. “I wasn’t 

going to have them running with kids whose parents 

didn’t want anything for em, who were ill-supervised, 

you know. If there was a kid who could run around 

and do whatever they wanted to do then that wasn’t 

the kid for them to hang out with because that meant 

their parents were not on the case. So I couldn’t trust 

my children to that parent.” Billye Jo conveyed the 

same message to her children and grandchildren by 

using the exhortation: “You have to decide who is 

your kind. You deal with people that are your kind."  

The grammar of the macroculture was the 

foundation of the curriculum, and, so speech, and 

language and other aspects of mainstream American 

culture had to be mastered. Billye Jo's parents told 

her and the other children to speak like the words 

they read in the books. Constance's older daughter 

observed:  

My mother and father were, you know, very 

correct speaking people. They spoke 

Standard English. They expected us to speak 

Standard English, especially my father. If 

we said something in slang, he’d say, 'what?' 

And at my school everybody spoke the same 

way that being the type of school it was, 

even though it was a public school. And 

when I moved around here...everybody 

called me little White girl, called me and my 

sister, you know the two little White girls or 

whatever.  

When Sybil was invited to a cotillion, given 

by a parent who was a member of the Links, Billye 

Jo and her sister, Capri, researched the proper 

etiquette so that Sybil would fit in. Billye Jo even 

instituted her own manners week as a part of Sybil’s 

social grooming. Some of this information on "proper 

etiquette" Billye Jo learned from wealthy Whites her 

mother worked for in Memphis.  

I conceptualize the parental roles of these 

mothers as life coaches in that they addressed every 

area of their children's lives and pursued their 

educational goals continuously and relentlessly. 

Every component of the family culture: peers, 

recreation and entertainment were vehicles for the 

desired outcome. Billye Jo wanted Sybil to not only 

excel in school, but to be well rounded in the social 

graces also. Sybil enjoyed being popular, and the 

family subscribed to Time and Newsweek magazines 

to keep her informed and to ensure that she knew 

enough about current events to converse effectively 

with people at all levels.  

Connie’s daughter Pauline remembers the 

catch in her voice as she responded “stamps” when 

the proprietor of the Arab store across the street from 

our building asked 'cash or stamps?' She also 

remembers vividly the embarrassment of wearing 

thrift store and hand me down clothing while students 

in her middle class school wore the latest fashions. 

According to Pauline, a strong desire to avoid this 

deprivation helped motivate her focus on education 

as a way out of poverty.  

Work 
Both families approached the discipline of 

work in the lives of their children differently. 

Constance explained:  

I carried the ball with the eating and I would 

tell them, you know 'mama doesn’t have it. -

-But if they wanted extra stuff, they had to 

work (stated very emphatically)! All of 

them. The only one that didn’t work every 

summer was Mark, and that was because he 

was always at a math camp. But he was 

working on his education. My children 

could not sit around the house during the 

summertime. That was the other thing. My 

mother used to say, ‘When I get up, 

everybody has to get up.’ And that was my 

philosophy. When I get up, everybody has to 

get up. And you have to have something to 

do. You just can’t sit around this house. So 

they started, each one of them started 

working at 13.... but, now, they got to keep 

all of their own money, and they got to 

spend it any way they wanted. I never saw 

their checks. I would encourage them to 

save it. I would give them suggestions.  

Referring to her youngest daughter, Mabel, 

who spent her money on her friends rather than save 

for school clothing, Constance offers: "I never made 

up for the difference. I mean however your money 

turned out that’s the way it turned out because I 

believe that experience is the best teacher. So she 

would treat everybody, and… she’d never have a 

dime.” Constance fervently believes: “We have to 

deprive our kids of things in order to spark ambition. 

If they have everything, what is there left for them to 

want? And, and achievement usually comes out of a 

desire for something. I believe even if we have to do 

it artificially, we have to create deprivation in our 

children’s lives in order to inspire them to want 

something more.”  

Billye Jo's family had the benefit of income 

from Matthew’s full time and his part time job. 

Although her children did not have to seek 

employment, the discipline of work was still 

inculcated in them because they were responsible for 

keeping their rooms clean and performing household 



The Pedagogy of African American Parents: Learning from Educational Excellence in the African American 

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19 

 

chores. Matthew and Billye Jo did not deny Sybil 

anything the family could afford. Billye Jo believes 

that if children are taught the right values and they 

know them, that is sufficient. Matthew would leave 

twenty dollars on the dresser each week so that Sybil 

and Andy could get what they needed, whenever they 

needed it. They were accountable for the money, and 

they used it judiciously.  

Constance told her children that she 

expected them to move out after high school. If they 

decided to attend college, however, they could 

remain in the home for four more years. They clearly 

acceded to the added motivation to pursue a college 

education. Billye Jo’s grandchildren have been told 

that their parents’ possessions belong to their parents. 

The expectation is that Jill and Simon will make their 

own ways in life. Clearly the seeds of family 

education are designed to direct and equip them to 

pursue formal education that will guarantee social 

mobility and a secure future. One of Constance’s 

children who earned a bachelor's degree in 

mathematics from an Ivy League school now earns 

over $100,000 annually while she is still in her 

twenties. I doubt if she is being asked cash or stamps 

any longer when she shops in her new neighborhood.  

Race 

Sanders (1997) interviewed high-achieving 

African American students from urban areas and 

reported that Black parents' efforts to promote their 

children's positive racial/ethnic socialization helped 

promote academic success as a response to racism 

and discrimination In Yan (1999, p. 2). As a means of 

helping their children excel, these mothers were 

careful about how they taught about racism, or 

whether they mentioned racial discrimination at all. 

Although racism impacted their lives in diverse ways, 

neither family taught about the issue directly. This 

was a part of their strategy to help their children cope 

with a stratified society. Billye Jo says she did not 

present racism as a barrier. She taught her children 

that some people would dislike them for various 

reasons, but that was not their problem; rather, it was 

the problem of those who disliked them. Reasons for 

dislike could be jealousy, because Sybil had a car 

when some of her peers did not, for example.  

According to Constance:  

Even now, my children believe that it’s 

going to be all right, and that’s the sense that 

I wanted to give. I didn’t want them to go 

into any experience anticipating that it’s 

going to go wrong. I want them to approach 

every situation as a human being. So I never 

said that this happened to you because 

you’re Black, or that happened because 

you’re Black. I think I only started to make 

comments like that since they started 

working. And even then, it’s a rare 

occurrence. I didn’t want my children to 

start thinking along those lines…I taught my 

children that most things can be negotiated, 

and either they’re going to negotiate it for 

themselves, or I’m going to negotiate it for 

them.   

Constance 's approach seems empowering, 

particularly in view of Comer's research, in Hale 

(2001, p. 146), which indicates that a "key element of 

academic achievement in schoolchildren is the ability 

to elicit a positive response from school personnel 

and peers. This requires a high level of social skill. 

Often the parents of inner-city children were 

unsuccessful in negotiating the school themselves 

and therefore are unable to impart those skills to the 

children." Constance gave her children advice in the 

form of suggestions such as: “why don’t you go talk 

to them, and this is what you say, or make 

appointment with so and so and do this and this.”  

The children learned well and began to 

coach one another, and Connie only went to school 

when they failed to resolve the problem themselves. 

Connie found the results of her approach rewarding: 

"And it empowered them, it taught them that even in 

their interactions with adults, that they had the 

capacity to affect the outcome. I didn’t tell them that 

they were limited in any way because of racism. If 

something happened that I thought smacked of 

racism, that’s when I became involved. I would show 

up, we’d have a meeting, and we would reach a 

resolution. I didn’t say that White lady was trying to 

do this or that to you.”  

Connie says she expected her children to 

learn about racism through her experiences.  

I talked about my own experiences growing 

up in the South. Because those experiences 

created some negative attitudes, my children 

considered me racist most of my life. I may 

be a racist. I may be a little bigoted, but I 

have never attempted to visit my personal 

perspectives upon my children. I discussed 

politics with them. They did know the 

concepts. But they all attended a very 

diverse high school, and they thought that 

racial problems were a part of the past. 

When they went to college, it hit them. Their 

first years, their freshman years, were 

traumatic. They came back to me and said, 

Mom, you should have told us, (she laughs). 

I said, “well I did talk about these things.’  



Current Issues in Education Vol. 9 No. 7 
 

I have found African American students 

who believe racial problems to be a part of the past 

quite a challenge in my African American classes. 

This discussion helps my understanding of why some 

of them believe as they do. The following from 

Webster (1974, p. 119) illuminates Constance’s 

rationale: the “works of Rotter, Seeman, and Liverant 

(1962) and Coleman (1966) have clearly documented 

the fact that achievement and motivation are 

significantly related to feelings of personal worth, 

competency, or power. In the case of Black 

Americans, second-class citizenship is held to be the 

cause of feelings of stigmatization and unworthiness, 

which inhibit levels of motivation and aspiration.” I 

believe the parents’ approach to racism may have 

played a significant role in developing confidence, 

and this confidence stimulated the self-esteem needed 

to achieve excellence. Research which investigates 

the children’s conception of race and racism and the 

relationship to academic achievement would be most 

informative.  

Without resources such as financial aid all 

of these dreams and hard work would be invisible 

epitaphs on the graves of stillborn visions. Billye Jo 

describes her family's financial miracle which helped 

them fulfill their dream and demonstrates their faith 

in God:  

When she got in high school, I started 

dreaming about Sybil going to an Ivy 

League School, and so when it was time, 

God stepped in and a man called me. His 

name is ahm, Silas Parnell, and he usually, 

he helped the Black children get into 

college, and it’s all public school, so I have 

no idea how he got Sybil’s records; and he 

called me the summer of her going--you 

know when she got out of junior year, and 

he said, 'have you ever thought of your 

daughter going to an ivy league school?' I 

said all the time. I said, but I can’t, we can’t 

pay for her to go to an Ivy League school. 

how would you like Harvard, Yale? Yes, I 

want em all, you know. He arranged for 

Sybil to go visit the schools, and she got an 

academic scholarship to Yale, to Harvard to 

Dartmouth. We chose Dartmouth because I 

could not see Sybil at Yale because it’s 

urban. She’d been sheltered and I could not 

turn her loose… Harvard was the same but 

Dartmouth is wonderful. The whole town is 

Dartmouth, if you’ve ever been on that 

campus, it’s phenomenal! So we were glad 

that she went along with us and wanted to 

go to Dartmouth. She was in the first class 

of women that went to Dartmouth and had 

no problems. None whatsoever. She made 

the transition. We had talked to her about 

you know these were very rich people. The 

Kennedys and the Rockefellers were there....  

Constance says she was "savvy enough 

about the financial aid situation--my ex husband had 

been a financial aid administrator for a university, but 

again that’s the advantage that my children had over 

a lot of other children. Their parents went to college." 

Early information about the right courses to take 

early in high school and financial aid are important to 

students’ decision to attend college (Jamilah, 1998). 

An example of Constance's resourcefulness is that 

she was one of the few parents in our community 

with the information and foresight to prepare her 

children in their precollege, even in their preteen 

years, to fulfill scholarship requirements. Working as 

a golf caddy, for example, helped Mabel to enter 

college on a golf scholarship.  

Further investigation of the roles of 

Constance and Billye Jo’s Christian beliefs should 

illuminate our understanding of their motivation to 

persevere. It is clear that their faith under girds the 

worldviews that helped them hurdle the barriers they 

faced, but this is a topic for another paper. To omit 

their source of faith that helped them succeed would 

be untruthful. In discussing some of her most 

challenging moments after her husband left, 

Constance recalls times such as when she had no 

money and a Commonwealth Edison employee came 

to disconnect the electricity. “I would get down on 

my knees and pray sometimes when I just, I couldn’t 

figure out what was goin' happen next. I couldn’t 

figure it out. The next day the sun would shine, I 

mean-----Something would come to me and I know it 

wasn’t me. I knew it wasn’t me. An idea…."  

Four years after the initial interview, 

Constance responded to reading her data with the 

following statement: “My hopes were not built on 

deprivation. I was making over $60,000 a year by the 

time my last child went to college. I never doubted 

for a moment that I and my children would do well. I 

knew that faith in God and hard work would see us 

through. We were “education poor”. At one time, I 

had all three of them in college at the same time. But 

I never, ever doubted the way our lives would turn 

out. It was not need, but faith and confidence in God, 

in each other, and in the future. We expected to 

excel.”  

Conclusion 

Focusing solely on the role of the family in 

the education of African American students would be 

inaccurate, insufficient and thus, inappropriate. 

However, it is critical that we learn from parents' 

educational experiences. Thus, this study examined 

the educational leadership, inclusive of some of the 

specific teaching and learning strategies, of two 



The Pedagogy of African American Parents: Learning from Educational Excellence in the African American 

community 

 

  

21 

 

African American mothers, Billye Jo and Constance. 

A goal of this work is to address the need for 

information that depicts Black parents as proactive 

successful teachers of their children.  

These parents’ pedagogies affirm the 

sponsored independence approach described by Clark 

(1983). In addition, their attitudes and approaches to 

education become acts of empowerment for their 

children. They engaged the system on its own terms 

and won. From positions of seeming weakness and 

powerlessness they ‘flipped the script.’ Since these 

models of teaching in African American families 

exist, there is a need to realign our epistemologies to 

see these parents as producers of useful/valid 

knowledge that can inform other parents and the 

educational community as well.  

This research forms part of the mosaic that 

seeks to acknowledge and document the “great 

diversity found in the teaching practices of African 

American mothers and [demonstrates] that...African 

American mothers of all social status groups have 

been remarkably effective and resilient in preparing 

and helping their children cope with the schooling 

process” (Slaughter, 1987, pp. 7 & 11). These 

families’ achievements are not simply due to the 

natural evolutionary processes of a kind and gentle 

society. Rather, these achievements are the results of 

dreams and deliberate decisions to strategize and to 

work to achieve these dreams. The word “dream” 

was used as a verb and as a noun, repeatedly in both 

women’s narratives. Early in her account Billye Jo 

began with: “When I discovered reading from that 

box my mother had, it was like a whole world opened 

up. You could dream about traveling and dream 

about this and that. So when Sybil was born I had all 

these dreams for Sybil." Billye Jo’s mother and 

grandmother had stressed: “Don’t let your 

circumstances keep you from dreaming and wanting 

to be something.” Part of Constance’s goal is “to 

create a positive environment where people are 

encouraged, where people are convinced that the 

dream that they have is attainable.” Clearly, this 

envisioning of a better life is inter generational, 

begins in the soul, and forms the very environment 

that sustains, invigorates, and energizes these 

families.  

Billye Jo's explanation that she wanted her 

children to attend Ivy League schools because “they 

would be able to have contact to do whatever they 

wanted to do," illuminates another facet of these 

parents' goals of empowerment by means of a certain 

type of schooling. Connie's discussion with her 

children in which she linked education with the 

ability to travel to exotic places denotes a similar goal 

to that of Billye Jo's. I observed substantive evidence 

of how organizations such as The Dartmouth Club 

served as mechanisms for these goals. Before 

attending law school, Sybil sought a career in 

international banking, and Dartmouth Club members 

helped open doors for her. Semesters in Spain and 

Brazil, Wall Street internships, backpacking across 

Europe, and particularly for Sybil, lifelong 

friendships with other women who are also at various 

levels of the legal profession are some of the social 

capital enjoyed by Dartmouth graduates.  

These parents’ open communication with 

their children bonded the family together in 

partnerships to achieve educational goals which were 

made explicit and which were strategically 

operationalized throughout the school years. 

Education was both formal and informal as well as 

didactic and experiential. Billye Jo’s statement that 

“experience is the best teacher” is indicative and 

illustrative of these parents taking their children to 

the projects and neighborhood hangouts to 

demonstrate what deviation from their educational 

goals could mean for their futures. Children and 

parents agreed on the out of school curriculum and 

the rigor needed to implement it. Clearly, the early 

years were foundational and preparatory to these 

academic achievements. Non-school learning was 

valued as much as school learning, or maybe even 

more so, because the informal curriculum harnessed 

the totality of their lives to develop realities which 

ensured/supported school achievement.  

That both mothers did not work outside the 

home in the early years of parenting meant that time 

was available for critical foundational training. On 

the other hand, it is quite clear that these parents' 

achievements cannot solely be attributed to their 

remaining at home during their children’s infancy. 

For numerous reasons many parents with more 

resources, time, formal education as well as other 

forms of social and human capital fail to attain the 

results these parents have attained. Children's 

cooperativeness should also not be underrated, and in 

some cases, competitiveness was a factor, at least in 

Billye Jo’s family.  

Early literacy, diligently providing and 

pursuing an enriched curriculum, particularly as is 

demonstrated in the case of Billye Jo's 

granddaughter, Jill, also enhanced educational 

achievement for these children. Alluding to the 

benefits of an enriched curriculum Berry mentions: 

“Excellence for Black students will not become a 

reality unless and until they receive enriched 

curricular opportunities in elementary and secondary 

schools..." (Berry, 1989, p. 293). Connie and Billye 



Current Issues in Education Vol. 9 No. 7 
 
Jo referred to their pedagogy as giving their children 

a "little leg up," and clearly this allowed the children 

to make giant strides forward. The parents' discipline 

and love for learning, enthusiasm, and 

encouragement helped to build confidence and 

competence and shaped contexts in which these 

children fulfilled the goals they and their parents set. 

I interpret Billye Jo and Constance's definitions of 

parent involvement to include responsibility for 

exercising leadership in their families’ education. 

They saw themselves as their children's first and most 

important teachers, and they were unintimidated by 

teachers and schools in their advocacy for their 

children. The approach to knowledge, particularly 

exemplified in Billye Jo's words, is that the answer to 

every question exists somewhere--in an individual, a 

book or in some other resource. This approach is 

liberating and frees the individual to be a seeker of 

information, a self-educator and a producer of 

knowledge. Clearly communicating goals and having 

open communication were indispensable. Faith that 

they could succeed was also important.  

An interesting finding of this study is that in 

the process of educating their children the mothers 

themselves were transformed. Winters (1993, p. 99), 

observes that a basic thesis of her book--African 

American Mothers and Urban Schools: The Power of 

Participation--is that “participation and its 

educational benefits contribute to personal 

development." Accomplishments such as teaching 

her granddaughter, Jill, Geometry when Billye Jo 

herself had never studied the subject brought a sense 

of accomplishment that was transferable to other 

areas. Billye Jo says she began to think, "I made a 

doll’s dress, maybe I can make a dress!" An Origami 

workshop in an alternative high school, a 

commissioned quilt for a graduating class, being 

consulted on decorating an apartment for visiting 

Soviet scientists, coordinating weddings, in addition 

to designing and making dolls and, of course, 

teaching a bus driver to read, are accomplishments 

which continuously spiral into other areas for Billye 

Jo. Recently two parents, both of whom hold 

doctorates in the sciences, sought Billye Jo's advice 

and tutoring services to prepare their eight-year old 

son to gain entrance into a school for the gifted. 

Validation of her expertise is apparent in that she has 

never advertised her services.  

I have suggested to Billye Jo that attending 

college might have limited the development of her 

potential. By this I mean that her creativity and 

confidence in her ability might have been stifled 

through socialization to a field, profession, or a 

discipline in a traditional classroom. Billye Jo's life is 

an advertisement for the value of literacy. Under the 

auspices of a University of Illinois research team, she 

conducted a workshop to help parents at a Chicago 

public school which serves a nearby housing project 

teach their children . A workshop for university 

teachers in a field master's program, one for 

undergraduate students, and another for students at an 

alternative high school are illustrative of the range of 

Billye Jo’s contributions to both parents and 

educators. One of the teachers in the master’s degree 

in education program commented:  

The last class we just had allowed me the 

pleasure of meeting Billye Jo. What an 

experience! I couldn’t wait to get home to 

tell everyone I know about her. She was so 

inspiring in so many ways. I tried to explain 

her to my family, but they did not quite get 

the same impression as I did. As I tried to 

describe her and talk of her 

accomplishments to my audience, they could 

not truly understand her prestige. They too 

wondered why she wasn’t “college 

educated” as did I before I met her. When 

she first started speaking of her childhood 

and her family, I started making 

assumptions in my mind. The wrong 

assumptions at that. I was wondering what 

was so special about her that would have 

you ask her to come speak to us. But as time 

past, [sic] I became quickly absorbed in her 

life experiences and views. I was truly 

inspired. She spoke modestly as if she’s an 

average person, but she is not…. I am very 

appreciative for having the opportunity to 

have listened to her life story. I wish 

everyone could also, too. I hope to 

remember her for the rest of my life and lead 

some of my decisions in a more productive 

way. She is a perfect example of self-

determination...Thank you for bringing 

Billye Jo into my life. As life goes on, I am 

sure that I might forget some of her words, 

but I will always remember her spirit to 

strive to succeed.   

While there are things any parent can do to 

improve her children's education, not all parents can 

overcome societal challenges to produce the results 

these two parents and others have achieved. As much 

as they want their children to excel in school, not 

many fathers can work or maybe even find two jobs 

as Matthew did. Not every parent possesses the 

information and ability to teach and supervise 

children while coping with external pressures, as 

Constance was able to do. We need to continue to 

find and implement solutions that will make quality 

education available to all students.  

I am curious about these parents' definitions 

of worthwhile or useful knowledge. What type of 



The Pedagogy of African American Parents: Learning from Educational Excellence in the African American 

community 

 

  

23 

 

curriculum do they see as being most worthwhile for 

various groups in American society? What type of 

curriculum would they advocate as ideal for public 

schools? Do they uncritically accept mainstream 

society's conception of education and the public 

school's definition of knowledge, as well as the 

curriculum being offered? How would they change 

the educational system to accommodate all children? 

Do the successful outcomes for their children mean 

that the educational system works for African 

Americans? Do their philosophies and practices 

indicate acceptance of the current educational 

system? Do they hold different ways of 

conceptualizing/defining knowledge that would be 

more liberating for society?  

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The Pedagogy of African American Parents: Learning from Educational Excellence in the African American 

community 

 

  

25 

 

2006 Article Citation  
Watkins A.P. (2006, March).The Pedagogy of African American Parents: Learning From Educational Excellence in 

 the African American community. Current Issues in Education [On-line], 9(7). Available: 

 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume9/number7/ 

 

Author Notes  
Audrey P. Watkins, PhD., 

Assistant Professor  

Western Illinois University  

Department of African American Studies  

Macomb , Illinois 61455  

AP-Watkins@wiu.edu   

 

Ph.D., Education, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1996, 

Curriculum and Instruction/Curriculum Design. Dissertation topic: "Educational Experiences in the Family, School, 

and Work Lives of African-American Women." 

M.A., Communication, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1983, 

Research Area: Culture and Communication -- wrote, produced, and directed video documentary on Jamaicans in 

Chicago. 

B.A., Communication/English emphasis, with High Honor, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, 1981.  

 

Research interests include: 

Schooling and education of Africans in Diaspora; Education of Women of Color; Social Justice and Education’ 

Christian Schooling and Education; Transnationalism of Caribbean women 

 

 

Note from the 2015 Executive Editor, Constantin Schreiber  
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2015 Article Citation  
Watkins, A. P. (2006). The pedagogy of African American parents: Learning from educational excellence in 

 the African American community. Current Issues in Education, 9(7). Retrieved from  

 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1599   

 

 

 

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