Reflection – Minton

 

English Reflection Paper

Coming into this course I really had no idea what to expect. I am a public relations major with a minor in English and most of my English background is in dissecting Shakespeare quotes into something I could wrap my head around. At first I noticed this class was about teaching, good, seems simple enough. Then I cam across the term “literacy”; okay that means someone can read. I was so wrong. There are a million forms literacy takes shape every day. As I read articles from Street, Szwed, Williams, and Scribner and I started to grasp that literacy has a personality disorder.

In my current knowledge of literacy I believe it to be fluid. It is something that takes the shape of whatever the student; teacher, doctor, or lawyer wants it to be. Literacy is whatever it needs to be at the current juncture. It can come through video games, social media, story-telling, street signs, manuals, public speaking, even the dinner time conversation. There is no one defining factor to literacy.

I liked what Gee had to say about video games and literacy. He states ““Further the combination of the two models communicates things that neither of the modes does separately.” (Gee 18) when talking about the differences between visual cues and audio cues. People may say one thing, but their body expresses something else entirely. Our literacy will decode these two interactions to create a deeper meaning of what the person said.

When reading Brant’s take on literacy we were asked to question our parents about their use of literacy. This was a unique assignment since I hadn’t given it much thought. The results were completely different per parent. My mother read for fun, much like I do, and my dad only read for work. I remember saying I would hate to read for work back then, but now that I have my first post-grad job, I just ordered a book for work. Seems like literacy came full circle. I like that though, the fact that literacy is there and able to help us get ahead in life.

 

One thing that I noted from literacy in our classroom is how it can move people and create relationships. At first, I thought Mike in our class was a psychopath and now I consider him a friend. He is just Mike like how literacy is literacy. Take people for example, they come in all shapes, sizes, and personalities. They field well in certain subjects and each one you get to know unfolds to teach you something new about a subject you did not necessarily grasp the way you though you may have.

Working in article groups might have been my favorite activity. We were the group about digital storytelling and we used popcorn to tell a mad lib story. I loved the way we came together at the end and created in interactive and fun experience the whole class shared in.

While working on our last presentation, the literacy film, our group hit a wall. There are so many ways of explaining literacy that we could not get started. Luckily Poundstone took control and decided that we did not need to focus on an aspect of literacy, but instead present a broad interpretation of what literacy can be. We showed threats to literacy by using scantrons as the leading path towards the downfall of our comprehensive growth. Other objects presented in the downfall of literacy growth were shown such as; alcohol, guns, and on a literal note, a paper shredder.

Being a future teacher is not a job I would ever want to obtain. There are so many different channels in which a teacher can teach and so many different situations a teacher can find themselves in. It seems like the kind of workplace where nothing is granted and plans are thrown out the window before they can even be implemented, In public relations you can’t even lift a hand before having a structured and researched plan that acts to guide you through each step.

I love the course that literacy is taking though. Through social media our literacy can defy time and space with things like WordPress, Prezi, Google Docs, and sites like Twitter and Facebook. Trillions of bits of information just float at any eager mind’s fingertips.

The individual who resists these new developments is doomed to fail. There has to be sympathy for the younger generation by the old and vise-versa, because, like everyone else, I have an expiration date. Soon my children will be professionals on outlets that I cannot even pronounce.