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We have read quite a bit about literacy learning and teaching. We looked through many articles, conducted interviews, and read books. After all this consideration, my beliefs about literacy and learning have changed. I believe all people are literate to some extent in various subjects. This conclusion is drawn in part from the Szwed piece which showed how we are not seeing a decline of literacy. Szwed did a good job at questioning the decline of literacy. However, I think he could possibly take a more challenging stance and say literacy cannot decline in a first world nation. However, before you can agree with that claim, you’ve got to understand how this class got me thinking about what literacy is.

Literacy cannot decline in our society because literacy is the glue that holds our society together. Maybe that seems like a stretch, but remember, Hamilton called a literacy events “any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the nature of participants interactions and their interpretive processes.”  In other words, this quote means: if reading words is an important step, then that step is a literacy event. We can all see how reading is so inextricably tied into every aspect of life. People are always reading manuals, instructions, social media, and directions. It just seems that there are too many literacy events occurring in daily life for literacy to ever decline. Maybe the way literacy manifests itself can change through remixes. These remixes are transformations, not destruction.

Now, we have discussed how  manifestations and expressions of literacy are transforming as changes in culture and technological advancements extend the affordances of both authorship and reading to more people for use in a growing number of contexts. That’s a pretty big takeaway from this class. But, in this blog, I want to put more stress on what I have come to believe about literacies place in society. I think literacy has a permanent place in society as each person’s tool for the multitude of interfaces that call for reading and writing at this point in history. I’ve learned that literacy is probably only going to spread because it’s useful for any subject that involves using language.

Obviously literacy is everywhere and commonplace in our country. Who would disagree? This is why, as a future teacher, I’m not only aiming to increase the students literacy. I’d like to do more. I’d like to look into authorship and creativity and see how to teach those skills to students. I’ll also like to see how to teach and learn the tendencies and common practices of masterful authors in specific genres. I would focus on genres rather than an entire language( the way students can take four years of English now in high school.) To be honest, my Ideal teaching environment would be about communities of practice rather than a few months of speeches, discussions, and assignments. We have looked at literacy in so many contexts this semester. We’ve looked at games, music, and academics. I think instructors can impact a student’s literacy in a most positive way by having a narrow and clear focus.