Supporting School Readiness of Young African American Boys

Strategies for Culturally Responsive Strength-based Practices

Young boy reading a rain gauge placed against a fence in a playground.

Supporting school readiness and success for African American boys requires thoughtful commitment and focus to offer high-quality learning environments. The ongoing professional development of education staff — like coaches, education managers, and supervisors — is key to this effort. Education staff can use these strategy guides for their own self-directed learning or leaders can support communities of practice for learning together.

This resource offers planning and implementation guidance for the six essential strategies:

  1. Build relationships
  2. Communicate high expectations for learning
  3. Promote social and emotional development
  4. Create learning environments with a focus on play and active learning, including literacy
  5. Implement developmentally appropriate curriculum and instruction
  6. Strengthen home-program partnerships

Each section:

Explore one strategy at a time, or in bundles. Making time to think about each strategy and to plan for how you’d like to do it is well worth the effort.

Download the PDF