Final Critical Literacy Movie

Is there a "New" Vivian in town?

Truth or Myth?

I actually enjoyed reading the articles for this workshop. It was probably because I could relate to them on a personal level. I have found myself often believing some of those literacy myths presented to us in the articles and I have definitely encountered people in my lifetime who believe the myths to be true. Why do these myths exist? Could it be that it is our way of “blaming” one thing or another for our society’s faults-for those students we cannot reach no matter how hard we try? It is almost like we need to pin the blame on something or someone and justify the wrongs in our world. This seems like the easy way out and for all the years that have passed we still cannot get the whole “literacy” thing right. We continuously struggle with the entire “literacy” dilemma and it seems to never get any better.

As teachers we are continuously being inundated with the “latest literacy trend” or the new government initiated program such as “TLCP”-and we all jump on the band wagon-hoping and praying that these will be the answers to our literacy prayers. Yet within a year or so-or even shorter, we jump off that band wagon and hop onto the new one. We allow for the vicious cycle to continue. After reading the articles, I also felt like “literacy” and all of the programs that are offered to us are all about the “bottom dollar” and how rich the publishing companies can become richer. Will it ever be solved?

I especially enjoyed the activity were we had to write down what we were thinking while we read the story “The Discus Thrower”. I did write down at one point “I don’t get it” and was initially afraid to share this with the class. I did eventually build up the courage to share with my peers and was pleased to find out that it was okay not to get something that we read. I want to share this experience with my students so that they too can feel safe to share with me or any other teacher when it is that they “don’t get it”. I will be using this reading strategy in my classroom with my students because I am very interested to see what they would write down while reading.

Overall all of the activities we did on Saturday sparked interest for me personally. Although we did not do much writing-I was in awe with the fact that “oral communication” can lead to a wealth of information. Sometimes we need to refocus our teaching and ask ourselves-are we just trying to find an answer to the literacy myths or do we dare to take on different teaching strategies as we did on Saturday and try reaching our students to the best of our ability.

What’s Your View?

Both Workshop 7 and 8 had me thinking and re-thinking, and also questioning my own personal ways of how I view “literacy” and “reading” in my teaching practices. This especially became evident when reading the article by Lindfors, on how teachers teach and how children learn. The article clearly showed the different views of different people and what each believed reading was about. It wasn’t until he mentioned the differences between teaching and learning, did those individuals become defensive because he was questioning their “COMFORT ZONE” and “BELIEFS” to what was the right way to teach children to read. We as teachers are often so caught up in the “methods” and “formula’s” to create the perfect readers, that we often ignore the fact that children are reading and it’s not only about the children following our prescribed curriculum.

I found myself giggling aloud when reading Brian Cambourne’s “A Sure-Fire, Never-Fail K-12 Recipe for Producing Dependent A-Literate Learners.” At first, I thought he was going to really provide us with a “sure-fire recipe” and not only until I realized his sarcasm did I find it quite amusing. But that feeling quickly turned to a sense of fear because as I continued to read the article I found myself in some of those circumstances or I found myself thinking of other teachers I know that are following his “recipe” and this terrified me.

How do we as teachers, stop ourselves from following the laid out procedures of how to teach children reading and literacy and allow them to explore, experience and stumble upon literacy as a social construct. Literacy is more than just reading books we choose for children, pronouncing vowels and consonants, and ensuring that spelling and punctuation are impeccable. Literacy should be a means for children to discover, familiarize and falter upon at their own pace and comfort zone. We often frown upon children playing video games or reading graphic books-(since these are not real books) or playing with Yu-Gi-Oh cards because surely these are all a waste of time and their brain power. Being a parent of a thirteen year old myself, I often found myself questioning his love of the Japanese Anime books and his completion of video games in a day as a waste of time. It was not until I saw the “critical learning” in all of these activities that I changed my own tune as a teacher in my classroom. Learning is indeed taking place in all of the above mentioned circumstances and children are in fact developing personal experiences that they can take with them for their entire lives.

In order for us to be teachers of “critical learning and literacy” we need to have an open-mind and allow for a plethora of possibilities. The problem with this is the “teacher’s role” in the learning process, that is the constraints we place on the methods we use to “teach” the students. When we ourselves are uncomfortable with the “unknown” we tend to shut down our own pathway to critical learning and disable rather than enable our students to become “critical learners”.

Literacy Movie

A Literacy-Where I’m From by Angela Frydrych

I am from successfully completing “Mr. Whiskers” on my Grade One report card and being able to attack any new word with confidence according to Miss DiGuilio.

I am from taking a ride on the horse pulled wagon with Laura Ingalls and the “Little house on the Prairie” adventures.

I am from beginning my teen years and hanging on to the words printed in “Oh My God, It’s Me Margaret”, learning what was to come.

I am from starting my own tradition of not going to watch what was on the big screen, until I read the book from start to end and was sure then what would appear in the next scene.

I was from reading about two gangs-the Socs and Greasers and feeling the great pang when Johnny died.

I am from reading all about dinosaurs to my two year old son, to now sitting by his side eleven years later and reading about the wizards of Hogwarts and the vampires under four different moons.

What is Literacy?

When we were given the book “Literacy with an Attitude” to read, in all honesty my first reaction was “Oh great another boring book to read”. Boy was I surprised at how much I actually enjoyed the reading. There were so many times while reading the book, I thought to myself-that’s what I do and I know teachers and students like that. Coming from a school in a low socio-economic area, I could easily relate to the expectation of where the students will end up as citizens within the community. Often teachers come with the attitude that students are “lazy” or “they just can’t do it” and at times I have had that opinion-but I have learned especially this past school year-that students can actually surprise you and they can actually do more than the simple basic skills.
Finn mentions in Chapter 3 that “there was no attempt to relate the curriculum to the children’s lives. The curriculum was fixed and followed down to the last detail year after year. The same material was given to all pupils without regard for individual differences” (pg. 28). This made me think of our current educational system where we have expectations in place and regardless of what level the students are at-we drill down this same curriculum to all. I think it is very important that teachers take the time to look at the individual differences of their students and where they teach and vary the curriculum accordingly. The problem with this is that it often requires a lot of time on the teachers part and it is much easier to follow the fixed curriculum as is.
Finn’s views on social classes’ hits a personal chord with me, especially within my own school community. It is really frustrating to see how even within our own school board-depending on the area, the amount of resources available to teachers varies drastically from one area to the next. The students in my school often come from single parent homes, or homes that parents are on welfare and cannot even pay their bills. Then they come to school where we do not even have a budget for paper or pencils and there are the teachers who view them as “hopeless”-what chance do they have to move out of this social class and become accepted into mainstream society. This book has opened my eyes to many things and has definitely impacted my own personal views on teaching. I think I just might find it within myself to share it with the teachers I work with.
I wanted to conclude by talking a bit about the whole “interview” process and asking different people the same questions. I found it so interesting when scribing the interviews on paper and then listening to the responses our group shared in class how every response varied depending on the person you asked. I found it especially remarkable to hear the views of those interviewed who were not part of the education field. When taking a look at my own personal responses from the class prior to these interviews, it was evident that my responses had changed based on what I have learned in this course and what “literacy” means to me. The overall responses to “what is literacy” included the belief that it was the ability for a person to read and write. This leads me to the question-is that really all it is and is there any one correct response? One thing I do know for sure is that literacy in a child’s life stems from a combination of what that child learns at home, school and the community. Literacy has to be a constant in all of these places in order for the child to further themselves when it comes to reading, writing and oral communication. After reading this book and doing the interviews, I now am faced with the question-“what am I going to do as a teacher to help my students become better critical thinkers and successful members of society?”

Literacy for All-Or Is It Really???

When reading the articles, I found myself thinking about my own classroom, my school, and the community where my school is located and telling myself “this sounds all too familiar”. The school where I teach is in a very low socio-economic area, whereby the students come from one parent families, where they often come home to empty homes and have no support for school. There is definitely a “clear” distinction between the classes at my school. To top that off, you also have teachers who have the attitude that “they can’t do that” and we have already given up on them before they have even started. These students are clearly at a disadvantage and it is almost like the world as a whole has given up on them. It further made me begin to think what can I do to change this as a teacher and most importantly-am I doing anything to help these students currently?
Most of the articles expressed how children born into classless societies are deemed to fail even before they begin. Coming from teaching in a primary grade, I clearly remembered how we all followed the structured four blocks to literacy and we based the student’s success in reading on the leveled book they read. Comprehension of what the student had just read was not really taken into account at times and if it was we all assumed that students were able to make connections to what they read from their own personal experiences. Parents often questioned their children’s reading grade stating “But my child has been reading since he/she was three or four” not taking into account that decoding words is not all that makes up reading. Since then I have moved to a junior grade and once again, I was faced with following a somewhat structured program. I had to face the wrath of EQAO and TLCP this year and it is becoming really frustrating. We are all attending in-services boasting differentiated learning and reaching our students keeping in mind all levels of multiple intelligences. Yet we have to meet as a grade, discuss a pre and post question that is to be answered on a certain date by all students. Also, in between the pre and post test question, we are to “model” the structured “formula” on how to answer the question. This of course is followed by us all meeting to do “moderated marking”, to ensure that “we” the teachers are all marking alike. A little hypocritical don’t you think. How are my students going to become critical thinkers and how am I supposed to “differentiate” the learning when I am asked to deliver a pre-determined curriculum. Not to mention, I have only a certain amount of time to “train” them on how to write EQAO-a test whereby many of my students struggle since they cannot connect their own personal experiences to what is being asked of them on the standardized test.
The aggravation grew further as I read the articles because it made me question “If everyone is so sure about what leads to failure when it comes to literacy and what is the “best” approach for “success” in literacy-why then are we still struggling with literacy in our schools today-in the year 2009?” These articles were mostly written in the late 1980’s and it seems that we have not even begun to tackle the problems of literacy within our school system, since most of the problems mentioned in the articles still exist today. Teachers need to empower their students with the tools to allow them to become critical thinkers. We are not to assume that because of the place where they come from, automatically means that they cannot do what we expect from them. If all teachers were on the same page and made a contentious effort to put in the time to allow our students to “use” their own experiences, strengths, and ideas within the classroom-that they would naturally develop literacy.
Whether it is- giving students a video camera or asking them to “draw” their story, we need to be more open to accepting this as literacy and the development of the student’s literal abilities. We need to let go of the predetermined notions that literacy is the level of book students read at and where they placed their commas and periods in their writing pieces. Rather that literacy is an individualized aspect of every student’s life and needs to develop accordingly.