Okay, let me start with saying this: WHERE DID THIS SEMESTER GO?!

It’s CRAZY to me how fast it flew by and how much I learned from each and every single one of you guys.

I started this semester with very limited thoughts on what literacy is, reading and writing (how boring).

The first thing I noticed on the first day of class is how the class was set up, it quickly made me realized that this was not going to be an average class but at first I thought it wouldn’t be involving everyone since we’re split up in tables but all the different group projects proved me SO wrong.

Literacy and identity were not two aspects that I used to relate but after this semester, I’ve learned that they go hand in hand. This class has taught me so much about who I am and how I want my future as a teacher to play out. It opened up my mind about different ways to involve everyone in the class in a fun way; how fun were the book trailers?! Making the story line of a book into a movie trailer puts a new twist on learning the content without making it boring. In my book club group, we split up the chapters, each read one or two, and we discussed them in class. Giving each other feedback about the rest of the book truly helped us understand it better. With the feedback always came personal middle school stories that put things into perspective and made it fun for us to read the “Just Girls” book and create a movie trailer for it.

Having the choice to research and study different types of literacy aspects really brings out everyone’s passion. You’re not forced to write a paper about something you’re not interested in so the topic you spend your time researching becomes more fun than a task. That’s one of the few things I’m taking with me into my teaching career.

 

All in all, I enjoyed getting to know each single one of you that I had the chance to get to know, and for those I didn’t… sorry yall missed out on me *insert smirk emoji* (ah, another digital literacy).
I’m kidding!

Good luck to you all in everything you choose to do! :)

What have you learned from the presentations? What are some of the take away ideas for you from other groups’ workshops?

The presentations were so fun!! I enjoyed each one differently. I learned, or I’ve been learning this whole semester about how literacy can be found every where in the world and these presentations were great examples. My group did the hip hop and literacy. I personally had a fun time looking at the Epic Rap Battles and the raps made by the middle school students that we showed during our presentation because as fun and upbeat they are, they’re still as educational as a text book, except it’s more catchy and will most likely be stuck in your head all day (or is that a personal problem?)
My favorite group was the fairy tale literacy one, I loved the new perspective that was presented. As our world develops, fairy tales start disconnecting from what realistically is going on in our lives. I loved loved loved choosing an old fairy tale and changing some important parts of the story line in order to make it relatable to today’s world.

After reading some articles from each literacy group, I chose hip hop and literacy because it really caught my attention. Music is a huge part of my life and I’m a fan of hip hop and rap and I love taking the lyrics and finding the deeper meaning to each song (some have very obvious meanings, ahem *Birthday song – 2 chainz* ahem).
One of the articles talks about how rappers come up with freestyle raps and what that says about their brain activity. When put under a study, “what they noticed was that during freestyle, there were significant changes in the prefrontal cortex …  the researchers believe that when they’re freestyling, the artists are actually occupying an altered state of mind.” (HOW COOL!!)
I’m really interested to learn more about how the poetry in the lyrics makes the rap a successful piece. Some rappers like Eminem, Tupac, Biggie, and a few more have songs and raps that go way deeper than what the surface lyrics may suggest.

So here’s the thing, I couldn’t relate a lot to this book for many reasons. I didn’t have the experience of middle school that most students here in the US had. I moved to America in 8th grade and middle school in Syria is so different than here. 8th grade was just a hectic year for me, but not for the same reasons that others had hectic experiences. I was a brand new student from a different country that not many had heard of, I was learning English as a new language and that was the only thing I really focused on.

Throughout the book, the author displays two group of friends; the Social Queens and the Tough Cookies. The section that I read went in depth about the Tough Cookies and how focused they were on their school work as well as their relationships outside of schools which really only consisted of how close they were to their mothers.
The Tough Cookies struggled with fitting in because they couldn’t afford the things that the Social Queens did, they were excluded from a lot of fun things.

This book really highlights the experiences of different groups of people going through the same events and how different each situation was for each girl. It puts into perspective how the term “literacy” doesn’t only differ from one area to another, or one school to another, it truly makes a difference through each person and their lives at home with how they look at or understand literacy.