Adolescent Literacy

Once I got past all the analytical material, the reading was worthwhile. I don’t know that it’s necessary for me to summarize the reading. I get the gist. What I think might be more significant is what this research looks like in real life. I just happen to have an example.

A week or so ago, I rode the bus home to Oroville. Something I do everyday. The bus was packed and I was forced to stand at the front. A few stops later, a young boy boarded and stood beside me. By the time we got on the freeway for the 30 minute ride we were having an in-depth conversation. He told me that he was 11, and he got up every day at 5:30 to catch the bus to go to Blue Oak Charter school. I think he said he was in fifth grade. He had recently transferred from a regular public school to this charter school. Feeling like a literacy student, and researcher (Thanks Kim, you’ve turned me into an investigator!) I asked this kid how he liked his new school, and what was he reading. He said they were reading Harry Potter (the first book) in class. I asked if he and his class were reading it aloud or was his teacher reading to them. He alluded to the second one. So he’s telling me that this summer he’s going to read some of the other Harry Potter books. I asked him what other books he liked to read. (I was super excited here, because he was a chatty boy and I thought this would tie in well to the idea of gender and literacy)

Wait for it… He told me that Harry Potter was the first book he’d read. I tried to keep the astonishment out of my face, but I was shocked. Here was a bright, personable, well spoken fifth or sixth grader and he was just now reading his first book. Not on his own, but being essentially read to by his teacher. In my best and most encouraging tone, I told him to keep reading this summer.

So here are a couple of takeaways. This kid was pretty bright; he had a good vocabulary, and could converse with an adult. He’s been educated somehow, just not through conventional reading. I say conventional when I should say something like books. Perhaps book reading is more suitable. Hopefully you get my drift. Having read the Adolescent Literacy article, I can see that this kid I met more or less falls in line with the youth researched. I can appreciate in a fuller way how important just doing the research, and then coming up with some answers, is. You have to identify the thing, and then figure out how to make it work, or make it better.

I think I will save the rest of my observations for my reflection paper. I want to think about the implications some more.