My Reflection: A Working Definition of Literacy

While it would be easy to say, literacy is everywhere, it is everything, etc., would probably be as much of a cop out as saying it is as simple as reading and writing. So if it isn’t one hundred percent inclusive, and yet it isn’t confined to just reading and writing, it could be hard to place literacy on the spectrum somewhere in between the two. With each article we read, a new layer was added to our growing definition of literacy. And as I work my way to a some-what definition as I reflect, I cannot begin to cover all I have learned in the course of semester so will focus on major overarching ideas. To synthesize it into one simple sentence presents a challenge, and each person may have agreed or disagreed with certain parts making it varied and hard to agree upon. For me, the challenge is not simply about how to define literacy, but how to use this definition in my future as an educator.

In the first week or so, we looked at Szwed’s ethnography and pushed our way through, or at least got the overall ideas (hopefully). This was a first glimpse at redefining literacy, and broadened my thoughts on what counts. There exists different types of literacy skills, whether it be academics, like novel reading and essay writing, or informal like e-mail writing and website reading. This idea allowed me to agree that literacy was still reading and writing, but the texts being read and written were more broad than I had previously believed. In my first blog I reflected on the idea that my non-english-major friends read and wrote much less than myself, but what I meant was they did less formal literacy practices. The magazine reading and twitter posting proved they were still practicing literacy, just in a less formal way. I guess, for me formal and informal are not even the right words, and I should probably use traditional vs. contemporary instead. Szwed says, “conventional thinking about reading and writing far too often uses a much-out-dated model of literacy inherited from the nineteenth century middle-class Europe,” or the “book culture” (425). For me this adds a layer of complexity to my working definition, that left me with: To read and write is to be literate, but what you read and what you write can be anything.

We went on to talk about about Brandt and the idea of sponsorship. “Obligations towards one’s sponsors run deep, affecting what, why, and how people write and read.” (168). The idea that literacy is formed through influences, socioeconomics, peers, teachers, parents, etc. seems so obvious and yet so unheard of. Despite the introspection on my own sponsors and literacy practices, it made me realize how deeply I will affect my future students. Through discussing how to get students to read and write, I have wrestled with how I can be one of the positive sponsors in a world of bad or mediocre ones. This has challenged me to have read a lot of teen appropriate books by the time I become a teacher. At thins point, literacy’s definition had become the act of reading and writing anything you choose, but was probably influenced by someone or something.

Expanding off Szwed and Brandt, the New London group introduced me to even farther fetched ideas. Szwed may have been right, describing a multi-literacy, but the New London Group broke it into even smaller pieces. This is when I really discovered how broad literacy could be: digital, social, academic, career-oriented, etc.  We may use all of these, and switch in and out of them seamlessly. One is not better than other, really, only in a certain context is one more appropriate. Then I reflected in my blog, how if school is meant to prepare us for the real world, why wouldn’t school teach us all the literacy practices instead of solely academic? This is where the New London group expanded my understanding from Brandt. Simply being a good sponsor is one thing, but as a good sponsor/educator giving students the tools to succeed in the world would be the most helpful thing I could do for them. To create literate people in all of these contexts, there would need to be a metalanguage for them. “…a metalanguage that describes meaning in multiple realms.”  (77). This article introduced semiotics and opened my eyes to how many different mediums can be used to create literacy, and communication. So now I am thinking, okay, this definition is getting a little long. Literacy is reading and writing anything (usually influenced by a sponsor) that can be made up of many different symbols, falls into many different contexts and should be taught and talked about through a metalanguage.

Book clubs and article groups helped elaborate on how to look into one tiny subtopic of literacy, and really see how detailed and complex they are. For everything subtopic there are several more subtopics. This perfectly agreed with accumulation of literacies. If you are an adolescent, female, sports-player who goes to church, your literacy practices have all those layers to them. As we explored these specific groups and their literacy practices, and also read Brandt’s accumulating literacies, I realized how uniquely personal each person’s abilities and tastes in literacy practices were. So I think I have got it, literacy is reading and writing anything you want (usually influenced by a sponsor), that falls into different context and is often made up of many symbols, talked about using metalanguage that is unique and different for each person.

Now how to use this in the classroom is a whole different question. We talked about ideas and threw around more contemporary teaching practices that I’ll be anxious to use. Throughout my internship, though, I kept realizing so many of our big ideas were hard to put into practice with the limited technological resources in classrooms, as well as the pressure to pass standardized tests. I am eager and excited to be on the cusp of that change, and hope things improve so I can use this long, but detailed definition to teach my students to literate in the real world. From watching Christina Fisher, I was in awe of one thing in particular which really fit the idea of the New London group. Her curriculum followed standards, yet she chose to give them content for the real world. They read magazines, and practiced writings such as resumes and portfolios for the job world. To me this helps student gain ability to literacy practices that are rarely taught and rarely practiced by choice. If school is supposed to prepare us for the real world, more teachers should adopt using several types of literacy contexts in the classroom rather than focusing on academic only. I have taken away a lot of good information from Christina and hope that my complex understanding of literacy practice and the knowledge I gained interning will make me a much better teacher someday.

 

I will admit that after watching my adolescent family members play video games and repeatedly tell me reading is stupid, I too, believed that kids are not reading like they used to. Throughout this class, I have been more open minded to the idea of reading, and what that actually looked like. My younger cousin says he doesn’t read but what he means is that he doesn’t read books/novels. He does read cheats and gaming instructions online, though. He also reads about nerd gun modifications on the web (I didn’t even know nerd gun mod sites existed, and most of them are run by jr. high boys! Kind of cool.) Anyway, I am realizing that for him reading novels is not cool, or girlie, but reading other things is perfectly fine. Either way, I am just happy to see that kids are reading, it just looks different from the old school way of opening up a book.

As someone who writes stories, it concerns me a little, but in the big scheme of things, I am just glad the younger generation is continuing to read and if anything, they read more because there are so many options these days. In Moje’s article children talk about their favorite thing to read whether its books or magazines or articles, and it helps me see how varied the reading preferences are.

In Moje’s piece it becomes clear that as a future educator, I must be aware of all reading material and genres. Somehow the students need to learn literacy practices, yet forcing the practices I like won’t be effective for them all. This article made me realize something, I was usually the teacher’s pet because I have always liked the things teachers like (Surprise, I am becoming a teacher!). But really, I was always interested in reading classics, and novels plus I wrote for fun at home, and found ideas like theme and meaning in a book to be fun. These are the things teachers like to do, so they give them to their students. But what about the other 25 kids in the class that weren’t the teachers favorites? It wasn’t because they weren’t smart. Many of them were much more intelligent and capable than I. What made me stand out is that coincidentally I have always had the same interests as my white, middle aged, female English teachers. The ones that didn’t show interest in their ideas looked like slackers or lazy students, but at home they were avid readers and writers with original thoughts.

The questioning done in the article isn’t necessarily something that gives me a solution to this problem, but it makes me really think about how to tackle it when I am the teacher.

The article groups have been fun, and also informative for me as a future teacher. Since I am always trying to gain ideas on how to be an effective teacher, these lessons have helped me see some platforms of learning I hadn’t necessarily thought about.

The first group did a great job and I had fun looking at the online platforms. We used Ujam and I thought it was really fun. Since I was in the Hip Hop group it actually fell directly into what we were talking about. When we started to talk about letting kids record music in a way that inspires learning, we felt that UJam could be a fun way to do that.

The gaming group was also interesting, and of course I believe that there is always room for fun and games in the classroom. I liked that the game wasn’t centered solely on literacy but focused back by the sentence-making competition. I will say that I have more questions about gaming and literacy now. Since I am not a “gamer” I do not know how a digital/video game could used in the classroom, other than the basic educational computer games most of us had in school. This lesson was good, but gave me a lot to think about and left me with questions. I will have to check out their site and see if it helps me understand video game uses I could bring to the classroom.

During our own presentation, I think we learned a lot about hip hop and music in general. There is a need for music in the classroom, but it can be easily misused. Of course, lyrics are like poetry, and etc. We have all heard that before, but what I think makes music so important is the fact that kids (well everyone really) seems to love it. Students listen to music as often as possible now that most can play it from their phone, iPod, or similar device. It can be tricky to take something students love and integrate it into a lesson, so as we learned about this I had to think a lot about how to use it without ruining it for them. As a group we were happy with our presentation, and I think we were really impressed with the ability of our peers to quickly write and preform. We brought iPads because we thought people would be too shy to rap out loud. Little did we know, because most people found live performance more favorable. Clearly, I didn’t realize the amazing rapping/spoken poetry skills our class had.

http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/Vlogging_Composition.html#unique-entry-id-108

For some reason the idea of vlogging in the classroom jumped out at me. I read this short article because honestly a composition class does not seem like a good place to vlog. Since the whole point of composition is to write, and a video blog gives you the ability to just talk rather than write anything down.

I do agree with some of the thoughts of the article. Vlogging can be a cool way to get thoughts out there, especially in an online class. It is also a good way of expressing oneself. Of course, it can include writing because some students will write what they are going to say, or use visual text along with the audio. In those cases the video is supplement to the writing.

In the three years I have been in college, i have noticed a gradual increase in classes that use the blogging platform for routine responses. In fact, I do not have one class this semester that requires paper reflections turned in on a regular basis. All regular writings are posted via blogging sites, or private class sites. Why not take it one step further and allow us to video record ourselves expressing these ideas? I see the fun in it, and see how it can make the writer more involved, but in reality the lives of students do not always comply with the necessary factors to create a vlog. We are often in noisy, hectic places where writing is much easier than trying to record video. And really who wants to see all their peers or students in their PJ’s with messy hair recording their blogs at 11PM? Because honestly, I don’t want to have to change into regular clothes just to do my homework.

I guess I am being a little harsh. Vlogging could be a really cool way of integrating presentation with composition, but as a regular practice I don’t think I am quite on board with it yet.