Reading together

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Time photoOur course invites you to work with data collection and analysis, readings, and discussion around the field of literacy studies

Author: kschroer

Moje Article

Moje Article

I will admit that I did not read this entire article AND I missed the day in class where we read it together. BUT, I did glance through it ( a little bit) and found the few snippets I read very interesting, especially the part about the girl, I think Adrianna, who spoke about keeping a diary. I have always kept a diary and have them all archived in a big old green trunk in my room. It’s kind of fun to back and not only see the way I was feeling at the time, something that is difficult to keep a hard copy of in my mind, but also how I have developed as a writer. To be honest, I was kind of good at writing even from a young age, but I can see the ups and downs of my creative side shine through in those pages. Anyways, that’s besides the point. The real point is this: I feel like we underestimate kid’s ability to do ANYTHING. We give them the title of “adolecsent” and for some reason that transpires into this stigma of being incapable of grasping new concepts, concepts that older “adults” are supposed to know. What I believe to be the really problem is this: we don’t believe enough in children’s capability to comprehend things that we, as adults, comprehend and in doing this we don’t challenge our young adults, in school or at home. Why do we, as a culture, have such a fear of what we term “failure”? Some of the best lessons I have learned in my life come from trial and error, failing and then accomplishing. In school, because children are graded on their efforts and because schools (public schools only, of course) gain money based on academic achievements of their students, I feel they learn that to get a bad grade or not really understand all the things they are learning means they are failures. So they either give up entirely or they over-achieve and stress out. The teacher I am observing for informed her class to really think about joining the AP course studies at P.V. high school because they are grueling and a high percentage of students have actually committed suicide over the stress (I think she estimated 1 per year, but who really knows). That’s crazy! High school students killing themselves because they didn’t get a good grade or couldn’t handle the pressure. Beyond it being an incredibly sad statistic, it also throws a question into my head: what is the faculty, and furthermore society, teaching our children to make them feel like messing up is the end of the world?

When it comes to literacy studies, I think this is a subject in school that could be condusive to a child’s coping skills. Maybe coping isn’t the best word. There are so many facets that come with literacy skills, such as critical thinking skills, speech skills, writing skills, social skills, etc., that I believe it to be one of the most important subjects you learn in school. But how do we expand the methods of teaching literacy to reach each individual student? This is a problem that I hope to carry with me into teaching and try to come to some conclusion.

The wide-world of technology: group #1- Great Job!

The wide-world of technology: group #1- Great Job!

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I unfortunately missed out on the second presentation group but I really enjoyed the first group’s presentation. With technology progressing the way it is, I felt the topic for this presentation was especially important to the students who are to become future teachers because, as we have read in past articles, teachers will have to learn certain technological literacies in order to operate in the education system. This presentation actually reminded me of the Twitter Essay article and how that teacher used current social media methods of writing to engage his students. And after completing my own groups presentation on the gender gap in reading and writing composition in the education system, I would like to use technology as a tool to try and bridge that gap. Technology appeals to both genders in different ways. Guys, apparently, are better with symbols and visual learning methods, where as girls are better with memorization skills and social methods of teaching. After watching this presentation I am confident there is some sort of technology, game, website, etc., I could use to teach boys and girls. I really liked the website we were given to play with, although the name escapes me. But I will definitely use this website with future students as it would be a good tool to start essays and papers, and also to share ideas and read some ideas you would have never thought of.

Vlogging: The Future of Teaching

Vlogging: The Future of Teaching

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As I was perusing through all the awesome articles, sites, etc., available on the Hybrid Pedagogy website I stumbled across the article by Susan Gail Taylor entitled “Vlogging Composition: Making Content Dynamic”. The article is all about the new trend of vlogging, which is like blogging but instead of writing the vlogger is recording themselves and posting a video online. The article states that this sort of technique for blogging is not new to “pop culture” as we are used to seeing this sort of method on such reality shows as The Real World or Survivor or any other reality show that seems to dominate the television screen.  Hollywood uses this method to entertain, but educators have found a profound use for it over the years and are slowly trying to integrate it into the classrooms. This sort of technology reminds of articles we read about literacy “piling up” and “spreading out” and also the book I read for my group “Words at Work and Play” because it is a tool teachers can use to connect to students and create more agencies within this structure. Gail states, “The National Council of Teachers of English argues for literacies that are ‘multiple, dynamic, and malleable,’ literacies that involve ‘proficiency with the tools of technology’ and that include ‘build[ing] relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally.’ Vlogging can meet those goals much in the same way that blogging can, but vlogging extends the idea of a text to include a more visual and engaged method of expression; while some ideas are difficult to express through written text, vlogging offers an effective medium to talk out those ideas as well as an enticing medium through which vloggers can appeal to a broader audience”. This also ties into the group project I’m working on now about the gender gap in reading and writing. The problem is trying to find a way that engages both girls and boys and also makes them feel comfortable with the social concept of masculinity and femininity. By using vlogging as a tool for learning, this technique could be used as a way of bridging the gender gap in education. Gail also states, “research can help educators create more authentic, meaningful, and powerful learning environments—meeting students at their points of need. Blogging seems to have served a meaningful purpose for the students included in the research, and vlogging could easily extend that purpose as well as reshape the learning environment to prompt students to bring a technology they are comfortable with in their social lives into their academic work”. It does seem that education must catch up, or at least stay on track, with the fast-paced world of technology. I would not be surprised if we future teachers will one day use vlogging as an every-day tool in the classroom.

 

http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/Vlogging_Composition.html

Exploring the gender gap: male literacy

Exploring the gender gap: male literacy

 

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Okay, this post is mucho late, but I was so interested with our topic and the article I read that I had to write SOMETHING on it. Our group had gender and literacy as our topic and since there was four of us (all with busy schedules) we broke up each gender to two people (2 researched girls and two researched boys) and then shared what we learned on a shared Google Doc. What I learned from the article I read on boys and literacy was there is some sort of gap occurring when it comes to boys and literacy and there are two schools of thought as to what might be causing that gap. Some believe the gap is biological and that everything can be traced to how boys’ brains are developed in comparison to how girls’ brains are developed. The article quotes Michael Gurian from an article he wrote on neurobiology and the gender gap. Gurian states female brains are “designed” for “sensory detailed memory storage, better listening skills, and better discrimination between the various tones of “voice” than boys have. These particular skills are key in detailed writing. In contrast, he states that the male brain “is better suited for symbols, abstractions, diagrams, pictures, and objects moving through space than for the monotony of words’. This is why male students tend to “zone out” because their brain is actually geared to ‘renew, recharge and reorient itself’ by entering a rest state”. This hypothesis uses biological differences to determine what might be causing male students to test low on the English portion of standardized testing. Another hypothesis focuses on social differences, stereotypes, and expectations (meaning what is considered “masculine” and what is considered “feminine”). I thought it was interesting that research shows boys in secondary school consider reading and writing to be feminine, and therefore do not enjoy or even feel comfortable participating in these disciplines, let alone excel at them. I also found it interesting that boys were more willing to excel at reading and writing in school when their English teacher was a male and not female (this article states there is a higher percentage of female teachers as opposed to male teachers). Many of the books read in secondary school were considered “feminine” to male students and so they didn’t feel comfortable participating in reading and writing assignments, nor were they interested in story itself. Bottom line to this argument: society dictates what is “feminine” and what is “masculine” and to cross those gender lines is unacceptable.

I believe the situation could be both, but I tend to believe the social argument as opposed to the biological argument. Peer pressure and social stigmas can influence an impressionable teenager’s attitude towards academic pursuits. I just don’t believe that an individual’s ability to memorize data could be based on biological differences. And with the way technology is developing and becoming more important to academic, as well as every-day life, I find it hard to argue that boys’ brains are programmed to understand symbols. In my opinion I believe that an individual’s ability to learn is influenced by social stigmas, economic advantages, ethnic biases, and personal interests. I would recommend any future teacher to read this article because it opened my eyes to the other gender’s point of view.

Stories telling Stories

Stories telling Stories

story

 

The book I am reading is Words at Work and Play by Shirley Bryce Heath. The main reason I chose this particular book is because of the way Bryce uses stories of individuals to “demonstrate how the nature of self-identification of individuals and families morphed in relation to when, where, and how they worked and played” (pg. 10). I have found through my years of schooling that I understand a concept or point better when it’s backed up with an example of a story.

I must admit that Bryce’s book is hard to follow because you forget sometimes that you are reading a book that is trying to relay the academic concept of how society, technology and familial sponsors influence the next generation, and then the next generation, and then the next generation, and so on. And Bryce does this by telling us in descriptive detail the stories of Jerome who was orphaned at an early age (11) and took it upon himself to get on a bus from the Bronx and travel to Chicago to choose his own foster family. He became his own sponsor by choosing his sponsor. Incredible. Then you are told about Zinnia, Jerome’s mother, who moved from South Carolina at age 16 because she was so overweight and depressed. She moved to the projects and raised three more children, without ever learning to read and write. She became her own sponsor when she joined the church and moved out of the projects. She taught herself how to pay bills, balance a checkbook and use a computer. Lisa escaped an abusive relationship after her husband threw their two-year-old son against a wall, causing brain damage. Lisa became her own sponsor by putting herself through college so she could better understand her son’s condition and help him. She graduated with a Masters in Sociology, an incredible accomplish from somebody with a troubled past. There’s Brandon who was bilingual due to is mixed heritage. He learned how to change his persona and language depending on what ethnic group he was hanging out with.

Woven into these stories are messages are examples of social practices and, most importantly and intriguing (at least to me) these are stories about people who sponsored themselves simply by wanting a better future for themselves and their children. This was a concept our group talked about a lot: self-sponsorship. These stories, we realized, were incredible and inspiring because each individual was responsible for their own “piling up” and “spreading out” of literacy.

Two really interesting points made in the story: society and family are huge sponsors for children when it comes to literacy, and those adults are usually influenced by their need for a better life, which in-turn, required them to seek a higher education to aquire a better job, and thus, a better life. That’s why I believe that Bryce entitled this follow up book: “Words at Work and Play”. We see the different social aspects of sponsorship: work, a job, higher education, a better life, religion, passion vs. playing around with friends, school clubs, theater, Boys and Girls Club, the playground, peer pressure.

It’s amazing the impact individuals have on each other. We always hear about peer pressure, but I’ve recently realized that peer pressure is usually discussed in a negative manner. Peer pressure to do drugs, pressure to steal, pressure to ditch school/play truant, pressure to lie, pressure to bully, pressure to fit in. But Bryce focused on the good and bad aspects of peer pressure, and for the most part she showed examples of the good. Pressure from family to want more in life, pressure for a mother to love her children so much she wants to achieve and set a good example, pressure to come up with plays and perform them in front of audiences, pressure to be a team leader, pressure to be a group leader- whether for a group of kids or for a club, pressure to be self-motivated, self-reliant, confident.

This book is pretty incredible and I am only half-way through it. There is a lot to grasp, but I enjoy it because it doesn’t read like an academic, philosophical text that I have to drone through to give a presentation. I am actually really enjoying and am excited to discuss it and share the knowledge I have gained from it in an Ignite Talk.