So Far…

Today as I reflect on the past several weeks of school, I find myself wondering what kind of teacher I would be if I had not taken the classes that I am enrolled in this semester. It’s a little bit difficult to separate out what I have learned in this class specifically, because it fits together so well  with the things that I have been learning in English 431, English 534, and in my English 30 workshop! However, Literacy Studies in particular is providing me with a new foundational way to think about the teaching of reading and writing, and the way that those skills are valued in society.

Prior to this class, I didn’t even know what “literacy studies” was, apart from the fact that it was a class I needed to graduate. To be honest, on some level, I’m still not quite sure what it is! So far I feel like the primary role of this class in my life has been to tear down the assumptions that I didn’t even know I had about literacy. I think that Andrea Lunsford’s “Semi-Literate Youth” and  Bronwyn Williams’ “Why Johnny Can Never, Ever Read”  have been among the most impactful articles that I have read so far this semester, largely because of the way that they have challenged the standard rhetoric about youth literacy that I have always pretty much bought into without  question.

While I have always been a believer in the idea of valuing multiple intelligences, I have also always subconsciously judged people who lack the specific variety of literacy skills that I deem important. I remember when I first became an English TA in high school and was charged with grading the homework of younger students, and I am a bit disturbed to recall the weird feeling of joy and self-importance that I received from making marks on their writing. I guess it must have been the stage of life I was in, where I was skilled enough to discover the errors of my peers but not yet mature enough to know how to couch my responses in a constructive and life-giving way rather than in a belittling way. Interestingly, as I have progressed through school and handed in papers to a variety of professors, I’ve found myself wondering if perhaps some of them have never quite grown out of the stage that I found myself in as a TA in high school, receiving a sense of gratification from my ability to notice the mistakes of others.  This makes me a little sad and a little angry, and also a little fearful that I will end up like that one day, although I’d like to think that classes like this one are chipping away at the likelihood of that! Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I think that many teachers have never been challenged to redeem their deficit view of students and their literacy practices. Even a lot of really good teachers, like my mom, are quick to bemoan the downfall of intelligent society by pointing to the poor writing of students.  I am willing to acknowledge that some students – like a few of those in my English 30 workshop, for instance – really do struggle to get their thoughts down onto paper into a culturally and academically acceptable format. What I am unwilling to do, however, is focus on the errors over the ideas, or on the specific skill over the whole person. Literacy skills in the area of academic writing are not an end in themselves, and I want to keep that in mind as I step into a future of helping students become the writers that they are capable of being.