Final Reflection – Leslie

My Reflection: A Working Definition of Literacy

While it would be easy to say, literacy is everywhere, it is everything, etc., would probably be as much of a cop out as saying it is as simple as reading and writing. So if it isn’t one hundred percent inclusive, and yet it isn’t confined to just reading and writing, it could be hard to place literacy on the spectrum somewhere in between the two. With each article we read, a new layer was added to our growing definition of literacy. And as I work my way to a some-what definition as I reflect, I cannot begin to cover all I have learned in the course of semester so will focus on major overarching ideas. To synthesize it into one simple sentence presents a challenge, and each person may have agreed or disagreed with certain parts making it varied and hard to agree upon. For me, the challenge is not simply about how to define literacy, but how to use this definition in my future as an educator.

In the first week or so, we looked at Szwed’s ethnography and pushed our way through, or at least got the overall ideas (hopefully). This was a first glimpse at redefining literacy, and broadened my thoughts on what counts. There exists different types of literacy skills, whether it be academics, like novel reading and essay writing, or informal like e-mail writing and website reading. This idea allowed me to agree that literacy was still reading and writing, but the texts being read and written were more broad than I had previously believed. In my first blog I reflected on the idea that my non-english-major friends read and wrote much less than myself, but what I meant was they did less formal literacy practices. The magazine reading and twitter posting proved they were still practicing literacy, just in a less formal way. I guess, for me formal and informal are not even the right words, and I should probably use traditional vs. contemporary instead. Szwed says, “conventional thinking about reading and writing far too often uses a much-out-dated model of literacy inherited from the nineteenth century middle-class Europe,” or the “book culture” (425). For me this adds a layer of complexity to my working definition, that left me with: To read and write is to be literate, but what you read and what you write can be anything.

We went on to talk about about Brandt and the idea of sponsorship. “Obligations towards one’s sponsors run deep, affecting what, why, and how people write and read.” (168). The idea that literacy is formed through influences, socioeconomics, peers, teachers, parents, etc. seems so obvious and yet so unheard of. Despite the introspection on my own sponsors and literacy practices, it made me realize how deeply I will affect my future students. Through discussing how to get students to read and write, I have wrestled with how I can be one of the positive sponsors in a world of bad or mediocre ones. This has challenged me to have read a lot of teen appropriate books by the time I become a teacher. At thins point, literacy’s definition had become the act of reading and writing anything you choose, but was probably influenced by someone or something.

Expanding off Szwed and Brandt, the New London group introduced me to even farther fetched ideas. Szwed may have been right, describing a multi-literacy, but the New London Group broke it into even smaller pieces. This is when I really discovered how broad literacy could be: digital, social, academic, career-oriented, etc.  We may use all of these, and switch in and out of them seamlessly. One is not better than other, really, only in a certain context is one more appropriate. Then I reflected in my blog, how if school is meant to prepare us for the real world, why wouldn’t school teach us all the literacy practices instead of solely academic? This is where the New London group expanded my understanding from Brandt. Simply being a good sponsor is one thing, but as a good sponsor/educator giving students the tools to succeed in the world would be the most helpful thing I could do for them. To create literate people in all of these contexts, there would need to be a metalanguage for them. “…a metalanguage that describes meaning in multiple realms.”  (77). This article introduced semiotics and opened my eyes to how many different mediums can be used to create literacy, and communication. So now I am thinking, okay, this definition is getting a little long. Literacy is reading and writing anything (usually influenced by a sponsor) that can be made up of many different symbols, falls into many different contexts and should be taught and talked about through a metalanguage.

Book clubs and article groups helped elaborate on how to look into one tiny subtopic of literacy, and really see how detailed and complex they are. For everything subtopic there are several more subtopics. This perfectly agreed with accumulation of literacies. If you are an adolescent, female, sports-player who goes to church, your literacy practices have all those layers to them. As we explored these specific groups and their literacy practices, and also read Brandt’s accumulating literacies, I realized how uniquely personal each person’s abilities and tastes in literacy practices were. So I think I have got it, literacy is reading and writing anything you want (usually influenced by a sponsor), that falls into different context and is often made up of many symbols, talked about using metalanguage that is unique and different for each person.

Now how to use this in the classroom is a whole different question. We talked about ideas and threw around more contemporary teaching practices that I’ll be anxious to use. Throughout my internship, though, I kept realizing so many of our big ideas were hard to put into practice with the limited technological resources in classrooms, as well as the pressure to pass standardized tests. I am eager and excited to be on the cusp of that change, and hope things improve so I can use this long, but detailed definition to teach my students to literate in the real world. From watching Christina Fisher, I was in awe of one thing in particular which really fit the idea of the New London group. Her curriculum followed standards, yet she chose to give them content for the real world. They read magazines, and practiced writings such as resumes and portfolios for the job world. To me this helps student gain ability to literacy practices that are rarely taught and rarely practiced by choice. If school is supposed to prepare us for the real world, more teachers should adopt using several types of literacy contexts in the classroom rather than focusing on academic only. I have taken away a lot of good information from Christina and hope that my complex understanding of literacy practice and the knowledge I gained interning will make me a much better teacher someday.