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.