Blog #9

Moje’s The Complex World of Adolescent Literacy: Myths, Motivations and Mystery made a lot of interesting observations about adolescent literacy. However, I was most interested by the section that discussed adolescent’s motivation for why they wanted to read and write.

This section was interesting because much of the discussion I have read on this topic is geared towards trying to figure out what the best way is to motivate students and seems to be looking for a “standard” that will work for all students in our modern society. In Moje’s interviews with students, she found that there was an enormous amount of variety in the answers that children gave about why they want to read and write. This struck a chord with me because I feel like educators are often looking for a “cure-all” way to teach that they can apply to every student, and often times they are not flexible if one of their students is struggling and not gaining anything from a reading program etc…

Instead of trying to make a new program that still won’t work for every kid, it seems like educators should be focusing on coming up with multiple ways of teaching literacy to their students. There are so many new tools in our modern society that can be utilized in the classroom, and in my opinion, one tool isn’t any better than another. Many different methods should be employed to try and  help each student.

I also thought that Moje made good points about literacy outside of the classroom. She talked about the fact that some students had a hard time finding  accessing materials or knowing what to read. This seems like an important point as well, because reading and writing needs to extend beyond the classroom and  continue in adolescent’s home lives in order for them to be as successful as they can. This is a trickier area because it depends on the children’s home lives and family situations, however, it seems like an important area to explore and discuss more in the future.