This semester I learned that I had a pretty good idea what literacy was and was able to see it in all its glory. I worked with the middle school and was able to see literacy through their eyes, just like I talked about in my IgniteTalk. Of my experiences there, I can say that I now understand the need to keep up with the schools around me to understand what their needs are. It’s shaped the ideas around what it is I need to be expecting my students to do once they get into high school, or respectively, how to prepare them in middle school for everything that comes after. What do I think about teaching literacy now? I think that pretty much I could use any of the lovely vocabulary words that we have been given but it would still amount to: Literacy is important because it is accessible at all levels. It changes, grows, it doesn’t have a standard, but an understanding is made that it is every part of reading, writing, surfing, hacking, presenting, explaining, presenting and networking. Literacy is hackable, creatable, diagram-able, dismantle-able and comes in every shape, size and genre. And if I was to take anything from this course and apply it, I would think about how important it is to acknowledge every kind of genre of literacy and expand my own knowledge of what literacy looks like. There will always be on particular way to do a thing but there are new ways that those things can be done too. It’s realizing that its all about creativity and seeing things from another perspective and as I learned from Gallager, its creating a flood of information and books and technology with the intent to reach out and find other people who think like you or question you. Its knowing how to best take your resources and use them.

My keyword was “literacy as exclusion” and all I saw while I was watching this film was the exclusion that was caused by the participants and those around them. I seriously had flashbacks to the competitions that were put on and if you were one of those participants you were considered “hot sh**” . There is such a big deal made out of the competitions and the competitors who share advice and know how as exclusive secrets to how they are so good at spelling. It excludes everyone else who isn’t in the competition and there exists a great deal of classism where the participants are either granted a great deal of praise or they are told they are the ones to win because they tote private tutors around in their back pockets. A lot of this is based on luck, ladies and gentlemen. And out trumping stage fright. It serves the purpose of…excluding other people and putting children on a pedestal. What did you guys expect me to say? That’s essentially the reason why these children do this. The glory. The money. It’s another way for them to shine and say that they are part of an exclusive group of people. Anyone outside of the circle is just “not in the know”. I had to laugh that those who had more money to spend the time to work on spelling did not win. A thousand people praying on your part does not a winner make. It takes more than talent too, which some of our competitors did not pick up on right away. They work hard, but only hard enough to assure themselves that they will win. The purpose is not to be the winner, but outperform everyone else. But first, you have to get there first and decipher for yourself what works for you instead of making gluttonous choices about what truly prepares a person for the competition.

Once my group got past talking about the middle school days (yuck!) we started talking about all the different things we had to say about how the author was trying to interact with the girls. I thought it was strange that she needed to take them out to pizza in order to get to know the girls but I understood later on why it would be so important for them to bond outside of the classroom in order to get to know their literacy style. The kind of things that she could be informed of while talking to them out of class are the kinds of relationships that they form with the girls that are like them. In my group we mostly talked about how social distinction was really important and how the school at times really didn’t understand the girls or where their families were coming from. A lot of the things we talked about really did relate to where these girls were coming from and trying to put ourselves in their shoes and explaining to each other how important it was for us to know what kinds of girls were interesting and probably provided the most researchable material for the author. This was truly written in order to make it easier to understand what kind of roles books play in the social status of girls. We all pointed out in our group that some of the girls were at a disadvantage because their teachers put them there without understanding that they were doing these girls a disservice and not seeing that the young ladies were going through a hard time and finding themselves through the books they read in order to feel a sense of belonging. What got me most motivated to understand these girls was the fact that some of the less fortunate girls were told that they needed to stay at home and be with their families, yet needed an escape from their lives and their families to discover themselves on their own.

Digital literacies have to be taught first by the initial teachers who are experts in digital literacies. Those pioneers are our guides to learning how to use different forums for digital expression. How to guides is the main way that we create an understanding of the functions of the social media/online medium site. We watch our friends use different sites and we pick the social site that supports the ways in which we express ourselves. These are different from paper literacies because they can function with pictures and videos. They can be interactive and link to different videos, sites, powerpoints and images that move and embody a thought. Similarly, they function as being the basis of understanding and exploration. They encourage experimentation and have rules and negotiations of responses posed with questions. The author and the reader are allowed to ponder questions and make their own connections. But with online digital literacy comes a great deal of reach. You are able to reach further and harder into the ether of the audiences that are connected to what you are connected to. What changes is learning how to relate to all audiences at large and also how to get the attention of people amongst all the shouting voices around you. Making yourself stand out is important. The process of becoming digitally literate is knowing how to use these online sources and sites to your advantage. What makes you literate is learning how to use them to be heard. What sponsors me is the movement towards having to be competent enough to use them to be found and heard so that I can compete against all the other candidates for jobs and so that I am relatable to the kids that I will be teaching once I am cleared to teach in the classroom.

So how did you learn how to do payroll and benefits and the kind of reading/writing you do now?

I had to develop the criteria of what was important and figure out how to read the material and work on how to turn around and retranslate these documents for my team members. I was driven by my need to do well in my job. I can only go forward and master these forms of reading and writing and communication to move on. There is no sense in backtracking; we have to keep learning because typewriters aren’t coming back. If I didn’t learn how to decipher information then I wouldn’t have learned how to use computers for data bases. I have a good handful of people, who are computer illiterate, don’t know how to maneuver computers or their commands. They are at a disadvantage because we are moving forward to create a greener planet and they will be left behind. If I didn’t learn how to keep moving forward, I wouldn’t have my job right now.