While discussing our presentation the other day in class, my group for the solving literacy problems project (Kristie, Ted, and I) talked about something really interesting: taking the citizenship test in another country. First, let me give you some background on how our conversation ended up there…

We are all writing about the issues English language learners (ELLs) face when learning the English language and what can be done to help them. We discussed younger ELLs still in the school systems and why it is so difficult to learn both social and academic English. Not enough support. Not only do a lot of school districts not allow ELLs to remain in specialized programs past a year (it is proven they usually need those programs for four to seven years to fully catch up to their peers), their parents may not speak English either. Who is helping them at home? And for that matter, who is helping their parents? We wanted our presentation to reflect this discussion. I won’t divulge the information now, but we want everyone else to consider this issue the way we are.

Back to my first thought, what would happen if we had to take the citizenship test in another country? We would need to learn the specifics of the government and history of that country, and we would need to know enough language to complete the test in the native language of that country. How long would each of us need to prepare for such a test? I suppose that depends on the difficulty of the language and how well each of us pick up on languages in general, but none of us would be ready immediately. It’s a difficult task! Some of the people in our class couldn’t even pass the United States’ citizenship test!

It’s also important to consider that a lot of the adult ELLs trying to obtain citizenship have to work so much to earn money for their families that they don’t have time to learn enough English to take the citizenship test. Without citizenship and the rights they get from citizenship they cannot earn more money (whether they are legal aliens or not)…so they have to work more…so they take longer to learn English…see where I’m going with this? I’m not saying I have a solution, I’m just saying it’s an unfortunate situation. A lot of the young ELL students take longer to learn too because their parents don’t speak English. The only support they get is during the school day. They aren’t getting help from anyone at home because their parents truly can’t help them. It’s just an interesting cycle to consider. We haven’t figured out the best way to solve this literacy issue yet, but maybe the rest of you guys have some thoughts on the subject.

Friends, we have reached the end of another semester. I am more confused now than I was before I started this course. Huh? I mean, I guess I always assumed I knew what it meant to be illiterate (which I still strongly dislike that term), but I never really knew the depth of the term. Children are illiterate, yes, to an extent, adults are illiterate, I could possibly agree, plants are illiterate, B.S.! No, but plants actually are illiterate; I have learned that, or the idea of that has been implanted in my brain and will forever remain (thanks to…Sean maybe?). Either way, the definition of being literate or illiterate has reached new depths for me. The concept, I am very sure of, is so much more than being able to read or write (however, I do understand that is a large portion of it). Background, support system, resources, daily life…so many factors come into play when determining whether or not someone is literate. Two months ago, I would’ve told you differently. Actually, my definition of literacy was something along the lines of, “resources that help someone read or write,” and by resources I meant books. Not sponsors. Not access to a good education. Not home life. Being literate means only this: you can read and write. False. No. Being literate means an abundance of different things. Comprehension. Repetition. Regurgitation. And actually recognizing what it means to be able to do those different things. So let’s throw in, being able to learn is an aspect of literacy. Of course it is, but I wouldn’t have said that two months ago. This class has opened up doors for me that I never knew existed and has made my opinion of illiterate people more sympathetic. All of the things we have learned this semester have made me realize that many people don’t choose to be illiterate; it is the life they have been given. That’s just my opinion, some are going to disagree. Taking this class, and listening to Becky speak, has really inspired me to help people. It sometimes puts a damper on my day to realize that I do not have a second of free time to do so, though, and then I realize, I want to be a teacher. If I obtain my degree and certificate, I will be able to help people every single day and it makes me happy to feel that I might be able to make a difference someday, and learning from this class, I further understand the sorts of help “illiterate” people need. For that, I appreciate every door this class has opened for me. What doors have this class opened up for you and have those doors made you realize/ appreciate anything more?

Although nearing the completion of a class should feel like progress, I feel this semester that I’ve been spending a lot of time going backwards.

For our first substantial assignment, the literacy narrative, I wrote about why I chose to study English by talking about an influential teacher I had in high school. For the Digital Remix assignment, I’m re-presenting this essay by showing footage of an interview with this influential teacher. It seems that I keep finding ways to return to the place where I started.

It doesn’t seem like this is a good thing–most people have good experiences and move on from them in order to have new (and hopefully better) ones. I’m revisiting old experiences with the ambition of having something new result from them.

This habit of mine reminds me of how often I reread books. If I enjoy something, I will likely read it two or more times after the initial reading. It’s not usually an immediate re-visitation, but something that happens months or years later. It can be good to look over a book again, with more knowledge and ideas to apply to it, but looking back over something takes time away from encountering new things.

Does remembering this teacher’s sponsorship enable me to be a better sponsor? Perhaps, if I can use the same techniques she used, but doesn’t emulating her limit the range I can have as an individual?

How do you feel about revisiting the past in an effort to move forward? A lot of us have shared stories of our literacy practices in this course, ranging from when we were 3 and 4 up until the classes we’re taking at present. While these can be helpful to exemplify ideas, does dredging up memories hamper us from forming new connections or from applying the concepts we’re learning toward future experiences?

What can I do to show you that I am literate? First, I would have to be human. Check. Secondly, I would have to be able to communicate in some fashion. Check.

That is as far as I get every time I dive into the debate of literacy. These are the only two boundaries that I have to contain the vastness of literacy. Now that I think about it, I didn’t even know the term “literate” for awhile after I heard of the term “illiterate”. We’ve talk a lot about this during class. This use of the negative side of literacy is much more prominent than the positive side. I have spent so much more time classifying myself and others as not-illiterate, than trying to figure out what it means to actually be literate. Maybe it was my teachers telling me what literate was, maybe it was the literacy technologies around me that taught me what not-illiterate was. Whatever the circumstance that caused me to identify as literate doesn’t matter in the scope of things though.

What matters is the boundaries we set. I got through my years of elementary school, learned how to read and write and thus considered myself literate. Done deal. Instead of attempting to contain the ocean of literacy, why don’t we simply mold our own version of literacy: one where being able to comprehend reading and form written thoughts is literate. For the other senses of “literacy”, like being able to write computer programs or dancing we could simply address them as something other than being “literate.” Maybe an unpopular opinion, but what do you guys think? Can’t it just be this simple?

In this class we read a lot of papers related to how reading and writing is taught in schools. Since this is a required class for a School of Education program, that makes sense obviously. I think these readings had the greatest impact on me. I’ve mentioned before how learning American Standard English was a struggle for me, and I found these readings eye-opening (also they made me feel better and a little less at fault about struggling). I realize that schools sometimes are unable to accommodate the needs of all children. However, as mentioned in a couple of articles, the way reading and writing is taught in schools should change. If we want all students to achieve a certain amount of literacy, we should try to change how it is taught because whatever methods schools are currently using, are not working as well as hoped. I think another way of having students attain a particular amount of literacy is to lower the bar that is set by society to define who is literate. But this forces us to ask “what is literacy” which we all know is a highly debatable topic (recall the first and last class). How can we achieve universal literacy? Is the goal realistic enough to be achievable?

I know a lot of you want to be teachers in the future. What do you think about how literacy is taught in schools? How were you taught to read and write in schools? How do you think this class or the readings in this class have influenced how you may teach in the future? Have they actually changed anything about how you planned on teaching?

Throughout this entire semester, while we’ve been trying to form a definition of literacy, I have been trying to remember my first memories of reading and hearing my parents and being exposed to books; really all of the scenes that we have heard people recounting. I can’t remember any of it. I know my parents exposed me to books; I have the books to prove it. But I don’t know what they did before I was old enough to form memories. For some reason this bugs me. I want to know because I want to know what I should do with my children or how to approach that with my children. While I don’t need to know how my parents did it to teach my kids, I feel like that would be valuable information to have.

I also spent most of my time in this class trying to think of how I would approach these things with my kids. Would I try to teach them their letters and how to write their name and how to read before they started school? If so, before kindergarten or preschool? There is no solid answer to these questions and this causes me some anxiety because I want to know what to do—I want to be given directions. I don’t want to just do that I think would be best and then see how my kids end up doing, that’s too unpredictable. I’ve seen too many preschool children years behind their peers to leave my children’s reading and writing skills up to chance.

I think my time in this class has taught me that to be a great teacher, I need to take every circumstance into account. If one of my high schoolers is a few reading levels behind or struggles with writing, I need to not assume that they are slow or not doing their homework but that there are these developmental circumstances that may be affecting them. I need to consider these things and build a plan for their improvement around those circumstances. I need to be careful not to make snap judgments. That is the biggest lesson that I have learned in this class, and I really appreciate that.

When I first learned about sentences, instead of making them linear, I wrote them in a list-like form:

The

cat

went

down

the

path.

The adults around me were concerned with the practice, one because it seemed I didn’t understand that the words of a sentence needed to be in a certain order, very close to each other, and two, I was going through a lot of paper.

Eventually I grew out of the habit, and I don’t know why it ever started. No one showed me how to write that way and my parents weren’t overly fond of listing. I think it was the different visual statement being made—mine was different from the rest of the class. I write letters much differently than most people—everything is sharp. I angle all the curves in letters, so my printing resembles a Greek (or heavy metal) inspired font. I went through the effort of changing my own handwriting purely for aesthetic reasons.

My relationship to literacy—how I chose to use the skill and adapt what I’ve learned—depends primarily on my preference. This isn’t good considering how many rules govern writing. Everyone looking at the first instance of “The cat went down the path” falling down the post know that this isn’t correct, despite it saying the exact same thing as the second occurrence.

I’m curious to know the ways you all break the rules in literacy. Do you read the last page of a book first so you’re not surprised? Do you write in purple as opposed to blue or black ink? Why do those of us who study English do so when there’s so much about it that doesn’t allow us to be ourselves?

When I came to this class, I had no clue what I was getting into.  All of the classes that I’ve taken usually consist of teachers standing at the front of a classroom, handing down information from on high that I had to passively write down and comprehend.  I rarely have had a class where I was asked to give my opinion or engage with the material.  On top of this, I never thought of literacy in any context outside of reading and writing.  The first time that we discussed our definitions of literacy, I had no clue what to say.  It wasn’t until Rose’s “I Just Want to Be Average” that I thought of literacy in a deeper context that just reading and writing.  Literacy can open doors and is relevant to everything in my life.  From watching Parks and Recreation to going on the Internet, literacy is important to every aspect of life.  However, I still haven’t come up with a final definition of literacy.  All that I know is that literacy is much deeper than just reading and writing.  I don’t really know where I am going with this post, so I will just end it with this question:  What is literacy to you?

Writing is like water. You can mold it to whatever shape you want, yet without guidelines it is shapeless, free, and random.

You hate that too? Good. Look, it isn’t that I dislike writing without guidelines, its just that there isn’t any  fun in it. You know that feeling you got when you were a kid where you would love the thrill of living on the edge, that “I know I shouldn’t be doing this” high. No? Alright fine, but humor me. Writing isn’t just about the theories and ideas you can craft or the artsy bullshit that comes out of those hipster 80 degree scarf wearers. Most of the fun in writing is knowing you’re getting away with something you shouldn’t. It’s the all or nothing gamble where you throw away the rulebook and hope for the best. Sure, people can write to make themselves feel better or to impress some audience. There is certainly some merit in those practices, but where is your sense of adventure? Back home with my other failing grades, Dylan, now get on with whatever point you’re making so I can comment on it and move on. I guess that’s a fair response from someone as focused and important as you. Whatever, I’ll get to it. You’re wrong. Everything you know is wrong. Your letters, your reading, and most of all, your writing. It isn’t that you don’t try, no you follow directions to the letter and make sure that you’ve covered everything. However in the end, the finished product doesn’t stand out. It doesn’t hook people in or create controversy. It just exists and like the hundreds of millions of other papers written by people like you all over the world, it is wrong.

Writing style doesn’t have to be breathtaking. Sometimes single lines of text are the most powerful. The key thing to remember is to be different. People remember different, they study it and try to fit it into their broken systems so that it can be neatly categorized away and forgotten like last year’s Chem test. Taking risks with writing isn’t easy, you’re going to fail. You’re going to get people that hate it and won’t read past the third line. Fine. Perfect. I wasn’t writing for You anyhow. Not being afraid to take risks is how progress is made. It’s how most advances in technology took place, and it should be the center of your writing process. When you take risks you push yourself and struggle with the systems in place. Risk taking shows that you’re thinking on more than one level. It grows upon the struggle of literacy and branches into every aspect of life. Instead of that bland research paper, you’ve got yourself a series of interviews with children affected by war-torn cities and a narrator that is trying desperately to hold on to a thread of the comfortable past. That is how you write a summary of the children in World War II.

Why is it important? Oh you’re still reading? I thought I’d lose you somewhere in my “wrong” insults. Either way, the importance of risk taking is in the betterment of the writer. Betterment meaning that you step away from that work thinking, “I really like this idea I’ve decided to work with, it isn’t ordinary.” But betterment means more too, it means the unequaled ability to question your surroundings and draw conclusions from every aspect of a work. Betterment means gaining courage to tackle those issues nobody wants to touch and willingness to make enemies. That is how you should write. Write in a fiery defiance that anybody should dare confine your ideas to one space. And above all else, when you write to better yourself, who cares what other people think. They’re all phonies anyhow.

So we do not have reading for this week and I will be honest this blog post may not be my best one yet seeing as I wrote about 30 pages this weekend and read well over 100.

It is nearing the end of the semester. We have read many wonderful readings so far, and some not to wonderful (i.e. Why Johnny Can’t Write) for this class. As i reflect on the ghosts of readings past I am trying to see how i have changed as a student through this class. From Ms. Deborah Brant I learned to reflect on those people who i have been blessed to call sponsors throughout my life as well as those who I have had the privilege to be a sponsor for. This past weekend I had the great honor of being invited to one of my camper’s, let us call her Anna, Urban Impact Choir concerts. As the semester has progressed I have seen many ways that I have been a sponsor of her literacy. It all started back in the middle of summer when I had Anna at Pine Valley Bible Camp for one week. She was a very homesick camper who could barely sleep through the night without crying about missing her mom. It was at camp that I taught Anna to write a letter home. During rest hour each day we would sit near her bunk and work out a simple letter home to her mom explaining what she did that day and how much she missed her family. I did not realize at the time how big of an impact I had on Anna’s life.

Anna writes me letters about once every two weeks. She is nine years old and lives in the North Side of Pittsburgh. She does not go to a really good school and therefore does not get to do a lot of creative writing. It has been incredible watching Anna improve her writing ability just in our biweekly letters. They get longer, more personal, and better in terms of grammar and spelling. When I saw Anna this weekend, I was so proud of how much she has changed since I last saw her at camp. Not only is she taller and has longer hair now, but she is really developing into an incredible young person. She is learning more each day, and I have the unique opportunity to help her grow as a child of literacy.

So my question for you dear reader is do you have an “Anna” in your life? If so please write about it in the comments.