Moje: Adolescent Literacy

I think that the majority of us could agree that once you sift through the technical jargon of this case study, some of the findings are actually quite interesting. I find myself especially drawn to adolescent literacy, simply because I question how we can engage students in new literacy practices during this digital age. I’ve been lucky enough to get an idea of what these practices can look like by mentoring in Kim’s ENGL 130P Jumbo class. I’ve become quite accustomed to communicating with my students text through googledocs, watching them tweet about what’s going on both in and outside of school, and helping them navigate through website platforms so that they can showcase their writing in a final e-portfolio. It makes me wonder what it would be like if younger students were exposed to these literacy practices. How would schooling be different if 3rd graders could write a poem on a googledoc, share it with a classmate, who would then comment on the student’s work? What practices can I provide for my students that will make reading/writing/whatever more engaging for them.

One section of this article that I found exceptionally interesting was the section that discussed how students can create connections amongst text and popular culture. Moje states that:

“Popular culture is a unique kind of network because it is not held together by a gathering of people, but rather by information, ideas, and practices generated in and from popular cultural texts. The best example of popular cultural networks may be online “fanfiction,” in which participants write alternative storylines for popular television shows and movies. However, although many of the youth participants in our study had heard of the practice, few acknowledged writing fanfiction with any regularity. Still, when faced with a selection of unfamiliar texts, youth often usedelements of popular culture (e.g., movies, television shows, musicians) to establish connections” (18).

I think the reason why I was drawn to this section in particular is because I find myself drawing connections between my reading and television shows, movies, music, etc. constantly. For example, I am currently reading a novel called We for my Great Books class. The book is basically about a mathematician named D-503 who rebels against his totalitarian society the values conformity, rationality, and logic above all else (including personal choice and freedom). As I’ve been making my way through this book, I kept finding myself thinking “Wow, this plot is very similar to the ‘Aeon Flux’ movie that I watched a few years ago”. As I thought more and more about the movie, I began making connections with character identity, major themes, important symbols, etc. This not only helped me navigate through the themes of the book, but it also made reading much more enjoyable. So why don’t we do this with our students!?!? Fanfiction can be a way fro students to integrate both popular culture and their own creativity into their writing. OMG, that means that writing would be fun!!