As I stated in my first blog post, I usually have no idea what I’m doing. when this class started in January, I had no idea what i was getting into. my assumptions about literacy were limited to Shakespeare in the classroom or classic literature from Beowulf to Faulkner. Literacy was reading books and articles, was comprehension of difficult texts that would otherwise never be seen outside of an academic setting. Literacy was how well versed you were in the world of books and authors.

Needless to say, this class really slapped me in the face. I was wrong- I was so wrong and I’m glad I was. My vision of literacy was bleak and just…wretched. Current me really wants to smack past me on the back of the head. Literacy isn’t limited to classrooms and libraries, and Hamilton helped me see that it’s all around us- just like rhetoric, but i’m not even going to start on that topic. Literacy is in the cereal boxes we read when eating breakfast before school. it’s the tags on clothing when you’re trying to figure out whether that dress is washing-machine safe or hand wash only. Literacy is on the flyers that are passed out on campus, advertising job opportunities at call centers. It’s in signs on the road and ads on television.

Literacy is constant learning and teaching, no matter if it’s relevant or not to our lives; I learned about the phonetic alphabet from my Linguistic textbook and that Jean Baptiste Grenouille in Perfume: Story of a Murderer is an asshole regardless of how sympathetic to his plight you are. My friends have learned about my day through the letters I write, and my teachers learned about my comprehension of materials through my written essays.

I’ve learned about sponsors of literacy and how they’ve helped and hindered us. how these sponsors aren’t a new concept, but one that’s  been around for ages and only recently been given a name. I’ve learned that my literacy sponsor had a sponsor, and their sponsor had a sponsor, and each one was drastically different from the latter. Talking with my own family about their literacy practices have shown me how drastically different their view of literacy is from mine- my own mother would have never considered texting or twitter as a literacy, and instead would have insisted on the classics just as past me had thought.

Looking back at my old blogs, past me put my frustration with defining Literacy best as learning “that Literacies aren’t just Chaucer or Oscar Wilde. That ‘omg lol thats sooooo funny :)’ can be in the same category as “to be or not to be.” I’ve realized that it would be wrong to give literacy a definition because the definitions of literacy are constantly evolving- just like its practices and forms. When I once smugly believed text speak would ruin the generations of students below me, I now acknowledge that it’s merely a new form of literacy. Change can be scary, and with this change comes the fear of a literacy crisis because ‘the children aren’t reading Faulkner FOR FUN?!'”

Literacy is different for every age group. This misconception of literacy being only Shakespeare and Marlowe can apply to the older generation, but children’s literacies today have evolved to Buzzfeed articles, texting, yearbooks, and television commercials.

Literacy hasn’t changed: reading for knowledge, writing coherently, comprehending the material. it’s physical form and presentation has evolved so dramatically, however, that these ridiculous notions of ‘literacy crisis’ ‘ are popping up everywhere. Mother’s need not fear for their children’s future, however, for their Literacy practices will soon replace their parent’s, leaving them to worry about their own children’s literacy practices and so on.

I hope this made sense. Basically, Literacy is just a hot mess of everything.

 

The presentations were all super fun. I’m really thankful that we did this activity in class mainly because T’m now sitting here, plotting what kind of lesson plans I could use for my own classrooms based off of what the other groups came up with in class. This project has me thinking about my future as a teacher and it’s only rejuvenating my enthusiasm for this major and reassuring the career choice I made.When it comes to take away ideas from other group’s presentations, it definitely reinforces the idea of participatory culture being utilized as a teaching tool in the classroom. There were a few times when I didn’t necessarily remember what the point was behind some of the activities in regards to relevance towards the lessons they were trying to teach/present, but a lot of the ideas we learned  through these activities really did stick with me more readily than if I were to look them up and write a paper. It made me think back on my own high school education and realize that these kinds of awesome lesson plans were created by not only the ‘cool teachers’ on campus, but a majority of my classmates along with myself were able to understand the themes of what we were learning more readily than a worksheet or answering questions out of the book. It’s a style of teaching that actually works.

For our article readings, one aspect my group has decided to look at is  how (or whether or not) our online profiles are reflections of ourselves or if they’re portrayals of the people we wish we were. I find this really interesting because it made me reflect back on my own practices when it came to posting on Facebook or tumblr. For facebook, when I was in middle school and high school, I took many of those dreadful personality quizzes; like many of my other peers, i also cheated to get the result i wanted. I did this because i knew that once i took the quiz, i would have the option to post it to my facebook wall for my friends to see, and there was no way that i- the evil twin in my group of immature students-was going to have Belle from Beauty and the Beast as my Disney Character- i wanted Maleficent and i would do anything to get her, even if it meant answering that my favorite color was black instead of pink.

i had built this persona for my peers and i would be damned if i let any facebook quiz or post would jeopardize it. but this was back in high school. Now, i’m rarely on facebook and i never even see the people who are counted as one of the many ‘facebook friends’ i have on my profile. i haven’t talked to 2/3rds of them in over 3 years, with the exception of the obligatory birthday message that has now become a social etiquette in the realm of the internet. i didn’t wish Gabe a happy birthday on facebook?? clearly, i must be shunned.

nowadays, i spend more time of tumblr. Ah, tumblr. how beautifully anonymous that website is. there’s no risk of judgement for me there because no one knows who i am among the hundreds of blogs that make up my dashboard. there’s a type of freedom on this website and it allows me to have the ability to post Supernatural references, Literary quotes, and even the occasional artistic photo that would normally be considered nsfw (not safe for work) by our ridiculously embarrassed society.

i will admit that i have gotten friends that i know in real life to follow my blog for updates, and that has changed everything. when i would once reblog a naked photo with some artsy-farsty themes thrown in, i know have to stop and think, “Will they think i watch porn if i reblog this?” i limit how many Supernatural posts i reblog in a day because i don’t want my friends thinking i’m obsessed with this TV show. i have severely cut back on my Shakespeare quotes because i don’t want to give off the appearance of the stereotypical English Major.

what bothers me is not the perspective people get of me through my social networking activities, but why i’m so concerned with how i want them to see me. this topic allows for a lot of introspection, and it’s been really interesting so far. i’m glad my group has gone in this direction because it’ll be an interesting learning experience that’s not only limited to the academic point of view.

 

 

Also, in looking at this prompt i couldn’t help but think of this video for some reason.

When my group discussed the book “Just Girls,” we spent an overwhelimg majority of the time sharing our own war flashbacks from middle school and high school. We talked about how we agreed with certain parts of the book, like the use of literacy as a representation of power and popularity in a small community (in this case, the social queen clique and their holy magazine) and as a limited way to defy authority without overstepping certain boundaries through the uses of bathroom stall graffiti and notepassing in hallways.

Just as expected, the book made me reflect on my own literacy practices. I did pass notes in my math class only so that I could piss off my algebra teacher. I was regarded by my middle school class mates as one of the smarter kids because I did the readings faster and got better grades on my writing projects. I never considered myself ‘popular’ because I never appeared in the year book; therefore, there was no literal documentation or proof of my involvement in the academic setting other than my existence with my ID photo.

My reading sections were focused more on the social queens who relied on magazines for their transitioning from children to adolescence. The influence these types of literacies and medias have over middle schoolers is crazy, and I never fully realized it until Margaret Finder pointed it out in her book. These literacies are “orchestrated by marketers to make these young women into a particular kind of female” and that goes against this idea of teenage youth graduating from the mold of childhood and developing into their own kind of person. Although this book was originally published in 1996, these types of literacies and their effects still are relevant today. There are tweens I see that dress better and far more mature than I do (some even wearing clothes that myh inner old lady  would deem a bit too mature for their age group and social setting), and I see these styles reflected in advertisements and on covers of tween magazines. More often than not, these styles are nearly identical to the magazines marketed to grown women and adults, and it’s sending this message that children need to grow up quickly and start acting their age ( and by ‘ their age, I mean ‘their age plus ten’).

tl;dr – this book gave me a lot of emotions, and the literacy practices and effects expressed in this book are still relevant today.

 

I’ve never had an actual relationship with the term ‘literacy’ before this class. Literacy, to past me, was reading books and articles. I had never pondered the term, nor what constituted as a literacy. Was ‘literacy’ just adult jargon for ‘reading books?’ Were people only deemed literate when they completed reading 5 books? 10? When the genre they consumed was nonfiction or ‘ a classic?’

It’s only been a couple of weeks into the semester and my definition of what is and counts as a literacy has drastically changed. To be honest, ‘definition’ not the right word to use when talking about literacy; it’s too limiting and constricting. It’s far more broader than what a definition would allow. Literacy is passing notes in class, texting friends and family, blogging on the internet, reading a book, reading an advertisement, reading a sign, reading something. Literacy is writing both grammatically correct and nonsensically; it’s spelling words right and horribly butchering them without spellcheck’s aid, it’s writing essays and poems, it’s emojis. It’s hand written letters, billboards, and typed documents.

Literacy is provided and limited through sponsors. It’s learned as a group or individually. Some people pick up different literacies faster than others while some are doomed to remain incompetent (I will never be able to seriously master the hashtag, but I can sure as hell try and have fun with it). Literacies are learned at school or on the road, through bedtime stories and [now] video games. The categories of Literacy are constantly changing and expanding, along with the limitations and availability of these literacies. Banned books in school and magazines with age restrictions, newspapers, private publishers, Internet websites and articles.

I’ve learned that Literacies aren’t just Chaucer or Oscar Wilde. That ‘omg lol thats sooooo funny :)’ can be in the same category as “to be or not to be.” I’ve realized that it would be wrong to give literacy a definition because the definitions of literacy are constantly evolving- just like its practices and forms. When I once smugly believed text speak would ruin the generations of students below me, I now acknowledge that it’s merely a new form of literacy. Change can be scary, and with this change comes the fear of a literacy crisis because “the children aren’t reading Faulkner FOR FUN?!”

It was hard for me to write this blog post because of how much my view of literacy has changed. How could I even begin to articulate the difference? I’ve amazed myself with just the sheer amount or literacy that surrounds me currently in my apartment. Without this course, I would probably still be sitting on my couch looking at my DVD collection across the room and blankly staring at the titles. Now, I’m freaking my room mates by pointing at all the various mundane objects we usually see and shouting “LOOK AT ALL OF THIS LITERACY!”

I’m not very fun at parties anymore.