Reflection

Literacy Studies Reflection

I took this course as an elective towards my English Studies degree. My advisor told me it was an extremely interesting class, more directed towards English Education majors but that I should take it regardless due to the excellent and somewhat unconventional teaching methods. I wanted to start this reflection by adding that of all six classes I am taking this semester, this one, that doesn’t directly correlate to my major, was the only class I never ditched. I think that right there says something in itself about literacy studies, and about teaching methods in general (or maybe something about me).

What I walked into class on the first day thinking literacy was and what I was expecting from the class, is much different from the ideas I have when I’ll leave on the last day. Literacy is not just reading and writing, just as there is not just literate and illiterate. Literacy is everything in between those opposites, and then some. The first thing I learned in this class, is basically that you cannot define literacy in one easy compact sentence. There are going to be endnotes, asterisks, ellipses, parenthesis, minuses, pluses, exclamation points, and probably a few paragraphs that surround literacy: because literacy means something different for every single person. And their perception of literacy is what they have gained from the culture and society that directly surround them. Brandt states that “Contemporary literacy learners-across positions of age, gender, race, class, and language heritage- find themselves having to piece together reading and writing experience from more and more spheres, creating new and hybrid forms of literacy where once there might have been fewer and more circumscribed forms”. Literacy is constantly changing, building up and growing out, overlapping what your parents learned and multiplying it by three! More things affect your literacy than you can even imagine, and literacy encompasses more than just words.

Learning is a social process, and is constantly changing with our social sphere. According to Scribner, “literacy is an outcome of cultural transmission”. She states that literacy is acquired through socially organized activities and practices. We learn to read and write through interaction with adults and our peers—or our literacy sponsors. They encourage and motivate us by being role models and supporters. Literacy is maintained through social relationships, but we are also taught literacy by participating in society. Scribner explains that the ”single most compelling fact about literacy is that it is a social achievement; individuals in society without writing systems do not become literate.” (14) But what does she mean by literate!?

I have come to find that being literate is not just the ability to read and write. And it cannot be defined simply. But in a sense it includes the ability to comprehend images, decode symbols, partake in media literacy, to understand certain jargon in your field of work and so on, times infinite. I think Scribner and Cole’s loose definition of literacy hits the closest to home to what I believe about literacy studies: “Literacy is a set of socially organized practices, which make use of a symbol system and a technology for producing and disseminating it. Literacy is not simply knowing how to read and write a particular script but applying this knowledge for specific purposes in specific contexts of use.” Therefore being literate is the ability to apply and understand a certain amount of symbols, and to analyze those symbols in a way that communicates. There are different levels of communication that vary with demographics, but the idea is that literacy is achieving something by using specified knowledge.

In regards to the classroom, I am not on the path towards becoming an English teacher, but still learned valuable lesson concerning students. We live in a society today, where being multi-literate is basically a norm. Since we are capable of understanding and adapting to so many new literacy genres, I think that those should be implemented in the classroom. Bringing in Ipads, or innovative assignments to keep students engaged will help them become more literate in the modern technological world. There is a stigma about children, that they are not capable of certain tasks, and I think this class has taught me that that’s not true at all. Students just need to be excited about something in order to want to participate and understand it. I have also come to understand that even if a student isn’t as literate in a certain area of learning, doesn’t mean they won’t be exceptional at another field. I think the most positive and enlightening instance of literacy that we learned about are the certain people who were able to be their own sponsors, and rise above certain situations that rendered them more helpless towards education than others, and they still were able to succeed with fewer sponsors. That right there reiterates the idea that students can do anything, and we are all capable of more than we first assume.

I have definitely gained a larger worldview when it comes to literacy. And I like to believe in literacy as being ideological. In the sense that Street believes the “ideological model of theory, offers a more culturally sensitive view of literacy practices as they vary from one context to another.” Literacy is diverse, just like human beings. There are going to be barriers and differences depending on certain cultures within different counties, or towns, or even in a singular household. We need to accept that everyone is different and learn to help all students reach their full potential even if it means swaying from the conventional methods of teaching. I sound like such a hippie, but I think its true. We need to be more accepting of others, and embrace the learning differences. It is harder than my nice little rant makes it seem, and there are so many different ways to address literacy and so many things standing in the way of reaching our national, and our individual literacy potential. So in a sense, I’d like to leave here agreeing with Brian Street, that there is no such thing as being illiterate.