Embrace the “wrongness”

It’s hard to believe that it is already the end of the semester and that this is the last post I will be writing for this class. I have to say, this has been one of the most enlightening classes that I have taken during my college career. Before coming into this classroom, I thought that “literacy” was merely a concept that referred to reading and writing. However, I understand now that literacy is so much more than this. Literacy is cultural, autonomous, ideological, situational, dependent on sponsorship, and is something that we all use every day to navigate through our world.

The two concepts that have really altered my perception of literacy have been the ideas of autonomous literacy and sponsorship. From these concepts, as well as my experience in Kim’s ENGL 130 Jumbo, teaching workshops, and being in Peter Kittle’s ENGL 534 class, I have developed a mindset that teachers should not just be shells standing in front of blank faces reciting a text into student’s minds. Teachers must facilitate learning, not dictate it. A teacher should act as a resource, not an answer sheet. This is why I have fully come to embrace this idea of autonomous learning and (self)sponsorship. Learning should be a process that students take ownership over. It should be a trial and error based process. If a student approaches a teacher with a book that the student that they want to read that is “too advanced”, instead of pushing the student to read something else, the teacher should encourage the student to try, and if they find that it is too difficult, to find something else that interests them.

While I believe that autonomous learning and self-sponsorship are key components to a student’s academic development, this does not mean that the teachers has any less responsibilities in a facilitation role. In fact, I would say that a teacher has more responsibilities. Instead of handing out the answers, a teacher must hand out the tools for their students, and act as a resource to guide students through challenges. While students are encouraged to take ownership and responsibility for their learning, it is up to the teacher to make sure that the learning environment is engaging and positive so that students don’t become discouraged. Instead of thinking “I failed”, students should be able to think “well that didn’t work, so how can revise it to make it better”. Even though teachers act as facilitators of learning, they are still sponsors for a students literacy practices.

One of my favorite TED talks to watch is presented by Sir Ken Robinson, and is entitled “How Schools Kill Creativity”. During this talk, he discusses how students have this notion in their head that being wrong about something is bad. Instead, students should be looking at the notion of “wrongness” as an opportunity for revision and rethinking, not as an endpoint that results in self doubt. I believe that by reforming education so that it embraces a multitude of literacy practices (i.e blogging, scholarly articles, wikipedia, tweeting, creating videos, interpreting signs, etc.), we will give future generations of students the opportunities to become more well-rounded, creative academic individuals.