Blog 1 Amanda

Hello everyone, my name is Amanda and I’m a senior at CSU Chico. I’m originally from Mendocino where I lived my whole life before coming to Chico to study vocal performance. Even though I loved studying music, I realized in my Junior year that it just wasn’t for me anymore so I switched into english studies. Switching to english has been great because I used to read and write all the time, I especially loved writing poetry, and that dropped off once I got busy with other things in college. It’s been great to pick all of it up again. During my time in college here I also started working at a local law firm and have really been enjoying it. I’m getting my paralegal certificate from chico in addition to my BA in english studies and plan on attending law school after I graduate.

The part of  Szwed’s article that I found most interesting was when he was comparing learning in a classroom to learning outside of a classroom and how, in order to achieve literacy, it was imperative that a student is able to take the knowledge that they learned in school and apply it to the outside world. This idea really struck me because I’ve always seen students asking themselves why what they were learning mattered, and so the idea that literacy needs to be able to move back and forth between an academic and a real life situation is important.

He also expanded my idea of what literacy is. I was always excited about reading and started learning how to read before I started going to school so I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t read a little. At the very least I knew the alphabet and could begin to decipher the words. To me, literacy has always been focused around reading and writing, so it was interesting to look at Szwed’s definition and think about how literacy really includes things like reading street signs or a map and being able to function in the every day world not just in a classroom.