Facebook Dilemma

You are planning to incorporate Facebook into your curriculum. You have notified parents of its planned usage and have experienced resistance. How would you convince the parents of the educational value of Facebook?

The End

The end of the semester has arrives and so has the end of this blog. Throughout the course of the semester I have been posting blogs about the issues of literacy for diverse learners. Many different concepts have been discussed, but I believe my overarching theme for my blog is that teachers should follow their instincts when it comes to teaching. I have discussed many issues such as pre-made lessons, neoliberalism in schools, epistemological diversity, what it means to be literate, colorblindness, and many other concepts and ideas. Through this class and especially through the blogs I was able to establish in myself a belief of what type of teacher I want to be, which is why the main theme of my blog is what it is.


Only those who are in the classroom know the students. Teachers spend hours of time with students every school year so they know how students learn, how students should be evaluated, what type of assignments students learn best from, and what students want to learn or should learn. A corporate person does not know this so they shouldn’t be making the materials to be taught in class, making the tests and assignments or whatever else they might come out with. The only way to change the education system is by teachers taking control over what they teach—they know the students and they know what topics what lessons will make all students successful—and most likely the teacher is going to have to differentiate the curriculum so all students can be successful. A teacher that listens to his or her students is the type of teacher I want to be.

Death of the Pre-Made Lesson Plan

Lynn Astarita Gatto should be an inspiration to all teachers. She incorporates the different subjects under one theme while making the lessons fun and meaningful to her students. Gatto refuses to use “success guaranteed literacy programs” because she feels that the corporations producing these programs do not know her students… and she is right, corporations are not in the classroom. They do not know what the interests of the students, what is important to the students, what would be meaningful to the students, or what skills the students have or need to develop. The programs that corporation creates leave very little decision making for the teachers. They don’t allow for “teachable moments” such as Jacob Lawrence’s death or for connections between literacy and social practices (the students wrote letters to the Mexican government to implement better environmental practices for butterflies.


Gatto asked a few question at the end of her essay. These questions should be asked by all teachers when they consider using pre-made lessons:
• Do publishing companies and corporation know what’s best for our students?
• Do teachers feel so powerless that they will allow publishing companies and district officials to tell them how to best provide literacy instruction for their students?
• Do teachers really believe that standardized tests measure teaching and learning?
These questions can be beneficial for new teachers and veteran teachers to ask themselves. Teachers should realize that only the teacher, not the corporation or even the school officials know his or her students.



In my future classroom, I will be very weary about using pre-made lessons. These lessons will not create meaning for the students. As the teacher, I should make it a point to see what the students are interested in and incorporate those interests into the lessons. Like Gatto, I would incorporate interdisciplinary instruction into my classroom. This way, students can see how all subjects connect and perhaps interdisciplinary teaching will spark interest in subject areas that may not have always been of interest.


Creating lessons plans should be on every teachers’ agenda. Pre-made lesson plans will not spark interest in students and they will consider it “busy work.” These pre-made lesson plans are geared toward standardized tests and at best they engage students at very low levels of cognitive thinking.

Cookie-Cutter Curricula

Although education tries to stress the importance of diversity, schools are continuously relying on “cookie-cutter curricula.” Why is this? One answer might be the state-wide tests that schools are held to. Usually this cookie-cutter curriculum teaches directly to the test and schools are using these to ensure that students pass. However, these worksheets that are being mass produced are failing most students. They leave very little room for creativity and they only want straight forward answers. What schools need to do is incorporate other methods of teaching. Schools need to diversify the curriculum so all students have a chance to learn in a way that is most effective for them. Some students may prosper with certain lessons and worksheets from these cookie-cutter curricula, however, many students, if not most, will benefit from different teaching methods. Many schools and teachers are worried that they won’t make the grade so that they fall back on these curricula that have been made to coincide with state-mandated tests. Teachers forget that if they are truly teaching the subject, their students will pass. For example, the unit in an English Language Arts class is poetry and a teacher uses a curriculum that is already pre-made and lacks creativity, if that teacher diversifies the curriculum by adding projects such as students creating their own poetry, the students will learn and most likely they will learn more than just a worksheet asking students to define literary terms and themes of a poem. Learning by doing has been proven to be an effective way of learning. If teachers use lessons like this, they shouldn’t be worried about their students failing the test.




There are a few positive aspects of cookie-cutter curricula. One aspect is that it reduces the amount of preparation time for teachers. However, this can also be negative because teachers aren’t putting in the time and effort into preparing lessons that will be effective for students. Teachers should take time to prepare their lessons plans because it shows students that they care and teachers know their students the best. The teacher knows the different learning styles and the different likes and dislikes and incorporating these into a lesson plan will prove to be effective. The makers of the cookie-cutter curricula don’t know our students so they should have the right to make lesson plans and activities for our students. Only teachers should be able to make lesson plans.

Don't Judge a Book by its Cover

A teacher's misconception of a student can affect the student greatly. Many teachers (although teacher's aren't the only people to do it) make their opinions of students based on how they dress, carry themselves, or some other physical characteristic. This can certainly affect students because physical characteristics aren't the only traits to judge a character.


Too many students are not judged fairly and this hinders their relationship with the teacher and perhaps their academic success. For example, a teacher may base her or her opinion on a student because he is dressed up in clothing that is usually associated with the Hip Hop culture. The teacher may have negative preconceptions towards the Hip Hop culture which will in turn be directed towards the student. The teacher may believe that the student is violent or another stereotype that can be associated with the Hip Hop culture. This could affect the student because the teacher may be more prone to discipline the student than another student who doesn't dress in the same manner. The opinion on of the teacher may also affect the student in their relationship in the classroom. For example, the teacher may avoid calling on the student for answers, which could result in the student not wanting to participate. Teachers should be mindful of the opinions they form before they know the students. Most of the time, these preconceptions are wrong and the affect of those preconception can be detrimental to the student's academic success and to their overall self-esteem.



Teachers can do many things that can help negate their preconceptions of a student. First, they could ask themselves why they hold this opinion. Did they have a past experience with a person displaying similar characteristics? Second, the teacher should remember that each student is an individual and should be judged after they get to know the student. Even then the teacher should keep an open mind and allow for differences in the classroom. Anyways, diversity is what makes the world interesting. Third, the teacher should remember that the students also have preconception you. They hear comments from previous students which makes them form an opinion on you. The teacher should remember that they would want their students to judge them based on their actual character and not the opinions they may hear and the first impressions that they may form.

The Role of the Teacher

The role of the teacher has always been undervalued. The devalued role of the teacher may have stemmed from the notion that teacher has been traditionally a “women’s job” or because teachers have summers off. People believe that teachers are overpaid and that anybody can walk into a classroom and teach. These beliefs need to change. Teachers play many roles during the day. They are a teacher, friend, mother, discipliner or any other role that may come about during the day.


The current trend that is occurring is trying to teacher-proof the education profession. Pre-made workbooks, tests, and quizzes are marketed to teacher lowering the creativity of teaching. What educators need to do is stop buying these pre-made worksheets. Teachers need to create what they are going to teach. The producers of these pre-made items aren’t in the classrooms and they don’t know the students individually. Only the teacher knows the students individually and they should decide what materials they should use in teaching the class.



Standardized testing has also devalued the role of the teacher. The public tends to believe that teachers only “teach to the test.” While this may be true, most teachers would like to change the way they are teaching. Some teachers have little choice in what is taught in the classroom and how much time is spent on preparing for standardized testing. Many teachers have stated that they would like to do more projects and spend more time on certain units. However, this is not feasible in many classrooms. The move to standardized testing needs to be changed because teachers need their power back.


Teachers need to re-evaluate the way they are teaching. Teaching should go beyond “the test.” Teachers should make learning fun and worthwhile and make students experts in the different subjects. Teachers shouldn’t teach just enough to pass the test. If teachers do these things then the view of teachers would change.

Neoliberalism and the Public Schools

Neoliberalism is a response to dealing with crises in the public sphere such as schools, hospitals, public transportation, prisons, et cetra. The solution to these crises is to increase the role of corporations or private entities. Taking a quick glance at this it may not be such a bad idea for corporations to get involved. Many times these corporations or private entities are donating technology, books, and textbooks. However, by allowing corporations or private entities into our school system is taking the power away from the public. For example, a corporation may support a specific view. The textbooks that this corporation donates will most likely support whatever view they may have. This takes away power from the schools because they are being forced to teach from the textbook and teach the view of that corporation instead of presenting many other views. Another example of this is standardized testing. Corporations are making millions of dollars by supplying study aides to students. While study aides may seems beneficial for our students, our students are studying what these study aides decides is important. These study aides are not being produced by teachers; they are produced by people who have never stepped foot into a classroom.


No Child Left Behind allows for neoliberalism. NCLB mandates that each student passes state mandated tests. This system is set up to fail because those who make the test are not in the classroom. They put questions on a test that they think everyone should know. However, they are not in every classroom, they don’t see the different cultures, and learning techniques. These private businesses want to see the schools fail because they make a profit off of the schools failure. Standardized testing is linked with many review materials. Schools are spending millions of dollars on these materials that are being produced by private companies. Teachers and schools are slowly losing their power because of this. To keep the schools from failing we need to keep the schools private and not allow private organizations into the school system.

Epistemological Diversity

In school, an educator will see that students will be different; they will have different cultures, different languages, different ethnic backgrounds, and different learning and thinking styles. Educators will need to understand these differences and develop a curriculum that will allow all students to learn no matter what their culture, language, ethnic background, or learning and thinking styles.


Epistemological diversity is the study of the different thinking styles. People in general think differently from one another. For example, I like to look at a novel and be able to discover different meanings of that text. I like to know that there may not be a right or wrong answer. Another person on the other hand may only want to know the facts. They want only one answer or idea to be right. Educators will need to develop a differentiated curriculum that will accommodate different thinking styles.


Thinking and learning happens all the time. Our schools system if set up for students to learn different subjects at a certain time of day and then take one test at the end of the year to assess their learning. This style allows many students to fail because they cannot communicate their knowledge in the way that best fits them. Also, this style doesn’t allow for merging the different disciplines. For example, an English language arts (ELA) class and a social studies class would often complement each other. This would also allow for different learning styles to emerge. I always did well in an ELA class when the literature was put into the context of history. Also a person in a math class may benefit from writing out in words the procedure to a problem. Allowing different forms of thinking and assessing students in multiple ways will give more success to the students.



Many different cultures and ethnicities have been either labeled or permitted to fail because of the epistemological differences that they may have. One group in particular is the Native Americans. Native Americans “were assumed to lack verbal, cognitive, even motor skills necessary to succeed in schools” (16). Native Americans were often assumed that they would fail in school; however, schools fail Native Americans because they do not allow diversity in the way which people think.


There are many different characteristics for indigenous education. According to Lomawaima and McCarty, to understand Native peoples, we have to “understand their theories of the origins of life, their ethics to maintain life, and their methods of constructing the past and envisioning the future” (23). Indigenous education will incorporate observation (of the surroundings), organization (of the knowledge of the past), explanation (of what we see and who we are), coping (with circumstances) and planning (for the future). (23). Indigenous education would also include multiple levels of understanding. For example, Native oral traditions at one level are “simple fairy tale [that] enthrall children” but at other levels these oral traditions “direct behavior and stories encode the past as well as the present” (24). Indigenous education often educates for strength. This is to meet the “basic needs of society and the individual, which included leadership, protections, sustenance, learning, and physical well-being” (28). There are many other characteristics of indigenous education such as “education according to gender” and “education according to age.”


There are many differences between indigenous education and US schooling. US schooling most often takes form of “formal” education. Formal education usually occurs in a building with students grouped together according to age during certain hours of the day, Indigenous education if often considered informal because it occurs “out of school” (not in a building). However, indigenous education now occurs “in” and “out” of school.


Mainstream schooling should incorporate many of the characteristics of indigenous education. By doing this, mainstream schools will allow epistemological diversity. Incorporating learning that happens outside of school will merge home life with school life and will also incorporate many different thinking abilities.

Broadening the English Language Arts Classroom

After reading Robert P. Moses’ chapter “Algebra and Civil Rights” from his book Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project, I was surprised to see how much I could relate to this chapter. I always had a hard time understanding math. In high school and college I took the minimum requirements. I also remember my parents not getting as mad as me if I failed a math test. However, if I failed an English test or did poorly on a paper, my parents probably would have been mad.


Moses reflects on how the illiteracy in certain subjects keeps African Americans from being successful in today’s economy. Moses states in this chapter that according to the Department of Labor “70 percent of all jobs require technology literacy; by the end of the year 2010 all jobs will require significant technical skills” (9). This is a very true statement. During my observation in a seventh grade English Language Arts classroom, the teacher has to be pretty savvy with technology. The use of a traditional grade book is now obsolete in this middle school. All grades are posted on the computer and then e-mailed every Friday to the parents or guardians. This classroom also has a smart board. Most of the lessons incorporate the use of a smart board. Teachers now have to understand the computer and all its applications and they also have to understand other technologies such as the smart board.


Our schools are failing African American students. Our students aren’t learning the skills needed to participate in today’s workforce. Many of our jobs require computers skills. For example, an automobile mechanic not only needs to know how to fix a head gasket or a carburetor but they also need to know how to fix the computer under the hood that runs the entire car.


English Language Arts has often been denied to minority groups. Most of the authors that we read in school are from the canon which consists of dead, white men. The curriculum doesn’t usually include minority authors or women authors. Also many students do not succeed in ELA because they don’t speak Standard English. The ELA classroom doesn’t allow different dialects of English to be spoken in the classroom. For these reasons, among many more ELA is often denied to minority groups.


As an educator, I want all my students to know that their culture and languages are important to me and that I respect their culture and language. While there is not enough time in the school year to read and write able all the cultures in the world, I will encourage my students to connect to the stories that we read and explore and share books and other writings from their culture.

Critical Literacy

Literacy in its most basic form is the ability to read and write. However, literacy goes far beyond that definition. Literacy is everywhere. We see it on television, in and out of school, advertisements, and many other places. Critical literacy encompasses a vast array of communication. Ernest Morrell and Jeff Duncan-Andrade’s article “What They Do Learn in School: Hip-Hop as a Bridge to Canonical Poetry,” the students’ critical literacy is hip-hop; the students understand it and relate to hip-hop.


Morrell and Duncan-Andrade engages his students in critical literacy by allowing hip-hop into the classroom. Morrell and Duncan-Andrade realized that “many students could critically analyze complex and often richly metaphoric hip-hop music that they listened to and then effectively articulate that analysis to others. Yet, most of these students were failing to exhibit the same analytical skills in class with regard to canonical texts” (247). Instead of forcing the students to read only canonical texts, Morrell and Duncan-Andrade introduced hip-hop as a bride to canonical poetry.


Youth research played a large role in Morrell and Duncan-Andrade’s research. Many students failed because they felt that the texts they were reading were inaccessible to them. Often times, students not from the dominant culture often struggle to bridge home life with school life. In contrast, those of the dominant culture often yield higher levels of literacies (248). By combining hip-hop with canonical poetry, the students were able to build a bridge between home life and school life.


Morrell and Duncan-Andrade assigned groups a poem and a song. They were to prepare an interpretation of their poem and song with respect to the historical and literary period and provide links between the poem and the song. For example, one group had “Kubla Khan” by Coleridge and “If I Ruled the World” by Nas. This assignment “reflected the basic tenets of critical pedagogy in that it was situated in the experiences of the students, called for critical dialogue, critical engagement with texts, and related the focus texts to larger social and political issues” (265). Morrell and Duncan-Andrade brought in something that their students could relate to. They built a bridge from canonical texts to what the students can relate to. In other words, they made canonical texts more accessible.


Morrell and Duncan-Andrade’s approach for cultivating critical literacy should be brought into every classroom. While hip-hop may not work in every classroom, there are ways that educators can make material more assessable to everyone. Fortunately for me there are many ways to connect students’ lives with English Language Arts.

Literacy in a Second Language

As more people immigrate into the United States, our education system is seeing an increase in students who do not speak English. These students are often categorized as special needs students or placed in remedial programs. However, most of these students do not need to be placed in remedial programs; they need to be placed in a bilingual program that celebrates both their culture and language while also integrating the English language.


Language can take various forms. We have different dialects of the same language (i.e. British English and American English) and completely differently languages (i.e. Chinese and Polish). All these forms of languages can show up in one school system. The question here is how do we form a curriculum that celebrates the culture and the language of all students? Another question that educators can ask is how do we incorporate the different literacy practices our students use? The answer to this question is very difficult. One school may have as many as forty different languages that are spoken by the students and each student may have a different culture. It may be virtually impossible to incorporate all this into a curriculum. However, there are ways that educators can make students feel that their culture and language are important.


Mari Haneda in her article “Becoming Literate in a Second Language: Connecting Home, Community and School Literacy Practices” offers one way educators can include culture, language, and literacy practices into a curriculum. Educators can research households’ “funds of knowledge.” This will allow educators to create lesson plans based on what is relevant to their students (342). For example, an educator can give a questionnaire to his or her students that ask questions about their interests, after-school activities, favorite books or genres, favorite subject or anything else the educator may find helpful. The educator may also want to give a questionnaire to the parents asking about the different languages spoken at home, if they would like to be involved in the classroom or anything else that may help the educator. From this “funds of knowledge” the educator can form a curriculum that can incorporate the interests and culture of her students. As Haneda states in her article: “[the funds of knowledge approach] is deep respect for, and appreciation of, students’ home languages and cultures and an attempt to make students’ experiences in both home and school coherent and mutually reinforcing” (343).


One main theme that is reinforced throughout many articles is that we need to make education assessable to all students. In chapter six of K.T. Lomowaima’s book To Remain an Indian, the author argues that students will have a higher success rate if educators taught the students to read in their primary first language and then introduce English later (120). One example of this is the Rock Point School. They designed a system call “coordinate bilingual instruction.” The students learned to read in Navajo, then in English. In higher grades they added reading in English. They also learned math, science, and social studies in both Navajo and English (121). Data from this school system showed that the students from Rock Point outperformed Navajo students from English-only programs (121).


To make education assessable to all students, we need to make our curriculum relatable. Ernest Morrell and Jeff Duncan-Andrade’s article “What They Do Learn in School: Hip-Hop as a Bridge to Canonical Poetry” explains how educators need to find a way to relate material to their students. In this article the two teachers connected hip-hop to the district-mandated material. Often time’s students are failing academically when they show high intellectual abilities. What Morrell and Duncan-Andrade found was that students can’t relate to the material. These students are able to critically analyze hip-hop music but they couldn’t analyze the canonical material that they were given in school. By connecting hip-hop music to poems such as Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan" or Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 29” the students were able to relate to the hip-hop music while also learning to critically analyze a hip-hop song and then relating it to canonical poetry.


The main theme that comes from these articles is that educators need to respect the culture and language that students come from. Incorporating their culture and language in school will help close the gap between home life and school life while also showing the students that where they come from is important. This should be the main goal for all educators: allowing students to be themselves, showing students respect for who they are, and allowing students to relate to the material given in class.

Gender

Our society tries to limit gender identities to either male or female. However, there are many people who fall in between these two categories. In Darryl B. Hill’s article “Categories of Sex and Gender: Either/Or, Both/And, and Neither/Nor” he interviews transgendered people, who explains the different categories that Hill had devised. In the either/or category, participants of Hill’s study believe that there is either a female gender or a male gender. This coincides with society’s view of gender. The next category is both/and. These participants believe that there is “actually a large amount of overlap between the genders” (28). This means that there are males with female qualities and females with male qualities. Under the both/and logic, there is also more than two genders and also those who feel “in between” the two genders (29). Other participants of the study suggested that their gender is neither/nor; they are not female and they are not male. In other words, there is thirdness. This neither/nor category rejects gender altogether; they are not female and they are not male.

Before enrolling in the education program I never thought about gender. I always assumed that everyone is either male or female. Assigning gender begins at birth. Baby boys go home in blue and baby girls go home in pink. As children grow up gender is always reinforced. Parents give there boys trucks, baseballs and GI Joes and they give their girls dolls. Society also reinforces gender roles by telling boys that it is not okay to play with dolls.

Society dictates how each gender should act. Males should be masculine and they shouldn’t show emotions, females are more feminine and are emotional. However, society needs to realize that people fall in between these two genders. Teachers should be aware that students aren’t going to fit easily into the male and female categories. Schools should organize their curricula so we don’t restrict our students’ identity. We should let our students explore all aspects of gender, which means letting males explore traditionally female roles (for example, cheerleading) and letting females explore traditionally male roles (for example, football). Educators should also limit their language that builds these gender restrictions. We should build language skills that support our students and not limit them into thinking that there is only male and females, that there is also an “in between.”

Educators need to also move away from a male-centered curriculum. Most of the English Language Arts curriculum is based off of “dead white males.” We need to incorporate females and transgendered into our curriculum. Our society is mostly male-centered and to “level off the playing field” educators should incorporate other genders. We need to make our education system equal for all identities.

Permission to Fail

Reluctance to Read and Write

There is a reluctance to read and write in our school system today. One reason for this is that some students just don’t like to read and write. They think it is boring and pointless. A lot of people can relate to this, even educators. Many of us had a least favorite subject (mine was math and science), and to have someone tell us that we had to learn something in that subject area was like pulling teeth. As educators, we need to find a way to help students that reluctant to read and write. Educators should respect their students’ opinions. They shouldn’t take it personally when someone states “I hate English,” “I hate math,” and so on. Instead, the educator should ask “why do you hate English?” The answers can vary from “because I don’t like to,” “because everything we read and write is boring,” to “I get frustrated reading and writing because I’m not good at it.” That was my reason for hating math and science; I never understood it and I used get frustrated because I didn’t understand it. If an educator encounters a person that doesn’t find the material interesting, have them list a few subjects or genres that are interesting. For example, if a student states she is interested in Greek Mythology, try incorporating a section of Greek Mythology into the curriculum. If a student is interested in science, assign a project that connects English to science. When the student states “because I’m not good at reading and writing,” extra help could help the student understand. An educator may also be able to connect it to something that the student may understand. For example, a student could be very knowledgeable in the American Revolution. If you give that student a reading and writing assignment he may be able to grasp different concepts than perhaps a worksheet.

Educators need to accept the diversity of students. A student may be reluctant to read or write because an educator may have told them that what they read and write isn’t worthwhile. Many educators frown upon magazines; however, the student is reading. A student may like to write personal essays. In school students are often told to leave any personal references out of essays. Some students may not want to write because they can’t make a connection to the essay.

Many times a student is reluctant to read and write because they don’t find the material interesting, they don’t understand the material and they get frustrated, or that educators have told them that what they are reading and writing isn’t worthwhile. An educator can help overcome a student’s reluctance to reading and reading if they help connects reading and writing to various subjects that students enjoy or understand and if they praise their students whenever they read something—whether it is a magazine, a canonical novel, or a blog on the internet.

Permission to Fail

In Ladson-Billings article “I ain’t writin’ nuttin’: Permissions to Fail and Demands to Succeed in Urban Classrooms” we are introduced to Shannon who refuses to write. The answer that she gets from her teacher is “That’s okay. Maybe you’ll feel like writing tomorrow.” The answer from her teacher is allowing Shannon to fail. Permission to fail is when educators allow students to not do their work. Many times when someone is refusing to do their work, they are hiding the fact they can’t do it. If educators fail to have the students do their work, then we are allowing them to fail. Ladson-Billings states three propositions that every successful teacher should have:

• Successful teaching focuses on students’ academic achievement,
• Successful teaching supports students’ cultural competence, and
• Successful teaching promotes students’ socio-political consciousness (110-11).

Educators should focus on the students’ academic achievement. That means educators should demand that every student learn something and not allow them to refuse to an assignment because they don’t want to or because they don’t know how to spell a word. Educators should also support cultural competence and diversity. In every classroom, there are going to be twenty to thirty different students who have different beliefs and cultural backgrounds. Educators should support the diversity in the classroom. A socio-political consciousness environment will help students to come together and eliminate inequity and injustice. If Shannon’s teacher support socio-political consciousness than Shannon would most likely want to write. Her classmates would also probably encourage her to write. Instead Shannon doesn’t write because she “covering up her inability to read and her lack of phonemic awareness” (110). If teachers possess these propositions then we wouldn’t be giving our students permission to fail.

Out of School Literacies

There are many literacies that are not included in the traditional curriculum of school. These literacies are sometimes more important than those that are learned in school. By looking at these literacies that aren’t in the traditional curriculum, a person would learn about the students we teach, what is important to them, and hopefully that person would be able to find ways to connect to those students.

Jabari Mahiri made it a point to research different types of literacies that aren’t necessarily learned in school. I will focus my discussion on Geoff’s video essay because this section impacted me the most. In school, Geoff is often surrounded by violence. Often times, African American youth are considered violent, juvenile delinquents who are involved in gangs. In his video, he is a suspension hearing. He is dressed in the hip-hop style—baggy pants, and an oversized hooded sweatshirt. He sits across from two white men who are the teacher and the discipline officer. The main point of the suspension hearing is that the teacher felt threatened because Geoff believed that another man shouldn’t put his hands on him. Both the teacher and Geoff where breaking up a fight. Geoff felt that this was just a warning. The main concept of the video is that Geoff feels that is “perception and explanation of what happened was never really taken into account” (29). He believes the decision was already made before the hearing started.

Geoff’s literacy was never learned in school. Hip-hop was never considered a literacy even though it contains many aspects of traditional literacies such as poetry. In Geoff’s documentary the teacher probably felt threatened because of the way he was dressed and the image that he portrayed. As a teacher, it is important to understand the different forms of literacies a student may identify with. This way, you can understand and connect to the student, and hopefully avoid stereotypes.

Trilingualism

According to Judith Baker in her article “Trilingualism,” Americans needs to know three forms of the English language. These three forms are the “home” English or dialect, which is usually the language spoken at home or the language of their peers. The “formal” or academic English is the form that is learned in school and from reading. The last form is “professional” English which is the language of a specific profession. This is either learned in school or while working (51-52).

The Primitive language myth entails that “certain tribes speak primitive language with only 200-300 words, and simple grammar” (71). This myth has been dispelled, but the myth continues to live on. This myth usually encompasses people in low income groups. According to Michael Stubbs in his article “Some Basic Sociolinguistic Concepts”, there have been studies conducted in urban Britain and the U.S.A., that the dialect in these urban areas are “inherently systematic and rule-governed, deeply organized systems of great complexity” (71).

David Bloome and Patricia Enciso’s article “Looking out across Columbus: What We Mean by ‘Multiple Literacies” discusses the different ways people use language and how schools should prepare students to survive in our society. The way a person speaks varies depending on the person they are talking to. A person wouldn’t talk to their mother the way they talk to their friend. Bloome and Enciso believe that to participate in the “economical, social, cultural, political, and educational life,” the individual would have to know how to use language in the way it would be appropriate for the specific social setting.

What all these articles suggest is that educators need to come together so we can teach all students. We need to be accepting of the different dialects, and help students become trilingual so they can succeed in any social setting.

Multiple Literacies

While I still believe that literacy means to be able to read, write, and communicate, I believe to be literate goes farther than that. In David Bloome and Patricia Enciso’s article “Looking out across Columbus: What We Mean by ‘Multiple Literacies,” they outlined what schools need to do to prepare our students for society:

• Recognition of the diversity of ways written language is used by people across social institutions, communities, and social situations;
• Recognition that students must understand both how to adopt extant literacy practices and how to adapt them to new situations and needs;
• Recognition that students must understand how literacy practices connect social institutions with each other, local contexts with national and global contexts; and,
• Recognition that how literacy practices are structured and how they provide meaning constructs social relationships among people and social groups, as well as provides social identities to individuals. (298)

Written language is used differently depending on the social contexts the individual is in. For example, a person will say a greeting differently depending who he or she is greeting. If the person is greeting his friend, they might say “hey, what’s up?” However, his greeting might be different if he is greeting his teacher (“hello Ms. Smith, how are you?”) Also, different dialects are used. You can usually tell when someone is from a different part of the region. Schools should celebrate these different dialects instead of trying to soften a person’s accent.

Schools should also teach students how to use existing literary practices and use them in different situations. Bloome and Enciso use the example of ordering breakfast at a restaurant. The literary practice for a restaurant is that the waiter or waitress seats the customers and hands them a menu. He or she than asks for the order. The waiter or waitress puts in the order and when it is ready, he or she brings the order out to the customer (298). This literacy practice can be adapted into different situations, for example, ordering to-go, or a restaurant that doesn’t have a menu to look at. Schools should teach the student how to adapt this practice into different social contexts that they might encounter.

There are many different tasks or activities that children do that have numerous literacies attached to them. One example might be picking out an outfit in the morning. A child wakes up and starts her morning out by picking out the outfit. Many different variables go into making this decision. For example, it is snowing outside. The child may opt to wear snow shoes, warm pants, a long sleeve shirt, a sweater, and a jacket. Also within this task, the child might want to match his colors. Therefore, the child has to decide what red matches. He or she might also want to wear a scarf, gloves and a hat. Making this decision involves relating different choices together. The child didn’t wear sandals and shorts because it is snowing outside and because it is snowing, he chose to where a jacket because it is cold outside. Schools should teach how different literacies are inter-connected to each other.

How people use literacy practices can construct their social identity and schools should prepare students on how to use literacy practices. An example of this is joining a swim team. In order for a person to be on a swim team, they must know how to swim all four strokes (freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly). They also need to know how to do a swimmer’s dive and a flip to lower the time to do another lap in the pool. This knowledge results in literacy of swimming and therefore the person will be allowed on the swim team. This results in a social identity of a group and as an individual.

Bloome and Enciso’s four tenets of literacy should be adopted by all schools. This will prepare the individual to celebrate diversity of literacy and to adopt literacy in different social settings.

The Culture of Power

What is the Culture of Power?

I recently learned that the culture of power is a white male, in his thirties, in the upper-middle class, heterosexual, and so on. Many people who are in the culture of power, do no realize they are in the culture of power. It is not that they are ignorant (although some may be), it is that they aren’t exposed to certain things. The people in the culture of power don’t realize the opportunities that are presented to them. I know I never realized the opportunities that I had were from the culture of power.

What Can Society Do About the Culture of Power?

My answer to this question may seem very optimistic and maybe unattainable, but I do believe that schools can start to limit the culture of power or at least expand it. Society already started this with our newly elected President.

Teachers should start to expand their students’ mind about who should be in the culture of power— which should be everyone. The culture of power tells society what should be learned, who should do what, and even controls who would be successful. Those in the culture of power try to keep the same type of people on power, which are usually white males. Teachers and society need to change this way of thinking. They need to change the culture of power. Society needs to teach our students to allow a more diverse community in the culture of power.

What Should a Literate Person Know?

In school we are taught social studies, English, science, and math. To graduate from school, the education system assumes that you are literate in these areas and other areas such as art, technology, or anything else the school deems necessary to know. How many people do we know that graduate but cannot multiply, or understand osmosis, or know why the French Revolution happened, or understand Romeo and Juliet? Are these people considered illiterate?

Literacy comes in different forms. Some people are more literate in English but they just can’t grasp the concepts of science. Some people understand math, but they just can’t write a paper. These people aren’t illiterate, they just have preferences or stronger abilities in different subject areas.

So what defines literacy? That depends on the person. If the person wants to be in the field of math, then they should know how to do math. If they want to be a historian, then they should know history, and so on. Literacy also goes beyond just knowledge about the subject areas. A person who lives in the woods and depends on the wildlife in the woods would most likely be literate on what berry is poisonous or which berry can be eaten. If you put that person in another environment that he or she is not familiar with, is he or she considered illiterate?

My answer to what is literacy is that there is no answer. Literacy comes in all different shapes and sizes and whatever path a person chooses, whether it is living in the woods, or becoming a teacher that will define what he or she should know.