MASTERS OF EDUCATION (LITERACY EDUCATION) PROGRAMME - MOUNT SAINT VINCENT UNIVERSITY

I enrolled in the two year Masters of Education (Literacy Education) programme as offered through MSVU, beginning with the third cohort in September 2004. Although I formally completed the programme in July 2006, convocating in October 2006, I am now taking the time to post personal reflections, thoughts, paper positions and responses in keeping with my understanding of new literacies and new technologies. I trust that my collection of writings will give you something to reflect upon.

MYTHS OF LITERACY - CONVERSATION AND UNCERTAINTY RESPONSE PAPER (FALL 2004)

The first two readings as per the Conversation and Uncertainty workshop are wonderful pieces to have begun delving into with regards to Literacy.

I quite agree with Walter MacGinitie when he states that “uncertainty is frightening”. He is quite right. It is this very same fear of the unknown that always seems to invoke our most deep-rooted emotions, thereby putting us on edge. How interesting to read that Andrew Manning correlates this feeling of being on the edge with actual learning. I am beginning to wonder if I can even go so far as to say that existing on this edge might well bring about our best learning.

With regards to literacy and literacy learning, I feel very much in the dark, having never taught in a regular classroom setting. In this light, I feel very much uncertain about this course (in terms of having something illuminating to say), but I am willing to embrace this uncertainty that I feel.

To be a good teacher, one must have doubts. Believe me, I have many of those!

To be a good teacher, one must both accept and acknowledge that he/she will always have much to learn. Believe me, I am far from having all the answers. In fact, I am not sure if I even have all the questions!

There seems to exist much irony between the envisaged (or envisioned) curriculum, as set down by the Department of Education, and the real curriculum. I have often asked myself, how is it that governmental department individuals (whose contact with students is limited or nil) are the ones who create the curriculum that teachers are expected to implement in the classroom? The answer to this very question continues to elude me. I quite agree with Andrew Manning in that it is time to “reclaim the classroom”.

Countless atrocities are committed by individuals who absolutely, and without reservation, believe themselves to be right, as is brought to the fore by Walter MacGinitie. This may invoke visions of war, famine and natural disaster to most. Despite the drastic comparison, can we not philosophically say that atrocities are being committed within our very classrooms when, at the upper levels, regurgitation appears to have more importance than actual learning? This is what creates stagnant learners.

Not only do we all learn different things, but we all have different learning styles. We need to accept and work with these learning styles, be they auditory, visual or tactile/kinesthetic. We need to continue to learn which accommodations best meet these learning needs. This is beginning to happen, courtesy of Pathways, but it is not without its downside. Married with large class sizes and literacy difficulties, can one teach a Math course to 40 students when at least 10 significantly struggle with reading of text? How can we best embrace the Pathways documents? In failing to provide teachers with the much needed supports (i.e. student assistants for academic reasons for the Criteria F and/or Criteria G student), we are also failing individual learners. If, as a result of literacy learning difficulties, they do not meet with success in the school environment, what message of learning does this send?

Life is not a transmission of knowable facts. Life is about learning. As responsible educators, we must learn to create better classrooms that allow for and encourage learning. We must allow for our students to make the much needed connections between personal experiences (what is known) and learning (what is newly experienced). It is only in having experienced this ourselves that allows for the lightbulb moment that Oprah Winfrey is so fond of reiterating.

I appreciate the fact that every new connection changes what we know. How delightful to know that we are dynamic individuals. I welcome the process whereby both the knower and the knowing change on a frequent basis, hoping that I model it well for my students.

How does one do this? By learning to abandon the quest for perfection and certainty.

MYTHS OF LITERACY - LITERACY POSITION PAPER (FALL 2004)

Until beginning this particular Foundations of Literacy Learning course (GLIT 6727), I never would have associated literacy with politics and hidden agendas, nor would I have delved into truly associating that, over time, “political, social, and economic forces have brought us to a place where the working class (and to a surprising degree, the middle class) gets domesticating education and functional literacy, and the rich get empowering education and powerful literacy” (Literacy with an Attitude, page x). I think that this has been the most daunting and profound realization for me.

I went to school already reading (from the “See Dick. See Jane. Run Dick, run!” type
books as denoted in the “Mindsets matter: an overview of major literacy worldviews”
article, a series which was key to the Old Basics mode of literacy learning). As bland as it may have been, I excelled at reading (decoding) and spelling (encoding), but had some difficulty with creative writing and independent thinking. Having been a member of the working class, I am now able to see that I was very much able to personally relate to the literacy model of an authoritarian home and a society of intimates (which merely serves to breed a sense of powerlessness). Very much a loner, I spent my time reading (my means of escape) and listening to music. I believe it was my continued reading of a multitude of material, first from my school library, where I thrived on the antics of The Bobbsey Twins, and later from our local Colchester Regional Library, that enabled me to view literacy as my ticket to a better life. Perhaps this is why I felt a strong sense of kinship with Paulo Freire and his wish to help the Brazilian poor work towards literacy as a means “to engage in the struggle for justice” (Literacy with an Attitude, page 2).

When first introduced to Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working Class Children in Their Own Self Interest by Patrick Finn, there was a quote (on page 8) that clearly stood out for me ... “when I suggest to my hard-bitten students that poor children are not being as educated as they could be, they are not amused”. I was quite shocked to learn that domestic education began about 1800, following the demise of The Corresponding Societies of 1792. I have been even more disturbed to come to the stark realization that it is still continuing to this day, some several hundred years later. Why is it that we have a difficult time facing this fact? Until we come to accept the current state of educational affairs, until one delves into the why’s of the situation, one cannot take a more active stance towards attempting to do something about the social injustices that continue to exist.

I found myself resonating with the Freirean model wholeheartedly embraced by three
individuals living in the United States, namely; Robert Peterson (a Grade 4/5 inner-city teacher in Milwaukee, Wisconsin), William Bigelow and Linda Christensen (both high school teachers in Portland, Oregon). Having accepted the stark reality that “our schools liberate and empower children of the gentry and domesticate the children of the working class, and to a large extent the middle class as well” (Literacy with an Attitude, page 189), I find myself becoming more and more incensed by these truthful remarks; so much so, in fact, that I have upgraded my personal views. I now believe, unequivocally, that the teaching of literacy is necessary so as to empower all. I have never considered myself to be a very political person, but one cannot make a more profound political statement than that.

I have become as “mad as hell” by the inconsistencies and social injustices that continue to plague and prevail, well into the 21st century, and, quite frankly, also feel that I am “not going to take it anymore” as Finn refers to the last chapter title in his book. As Andrew Manning has stated in his “Curriculum as conversation” article, it is time to “reclaim the classroom”. No longer can we afford to teach to the envisaged (envisioned) curriculum as such ties, too heavily, to the Transmission, lecture style, model as discussed in Jim Cummins’s article entitled “Sanitized Curriculum” in which we merely continue to turn out passive students who know naught how to analyze, think for themselves and problem solve with respect to current planetary issues. Instead, this traditional method serves only
to further disable and disempower both students and teachers. The teacher is seen as the deliverer of a service; the student merely the receiver. Can we possibly get any more passive than that?

Our primary discourse is that which we learn, informally, at home. In this light, oral communication is of significant value and importance. As educators, we acknowledge the significance behind the first five years of a child’s life, and yet there are dramatic differences that take place in the lives of our children before they go to school which then serve to further impact upon one’s educational experience(s).

As long as the discourse of the student is in conflict with the discourse of the school, these are the students that shall continue to fail. It is only in introducing them to powerful discourse that we can even attempt to give them a better chance at both access and success. As F. Christie states in “Language, access and success” ... social injustices (such as language dialect(s), understanding of language, use of language, social class, cognitive ability and gender) negatively impact all.

We must brave the uncertainty that we feel in order to venture towards the teaching of the real curriculum (via the Interactive/Experiential model that is culture fair and empowers all students); a method that allows the learner to become an explorer of meaning by way of critical thinking, creative thinking, ability to interpret and analyze the facts, otherwise we will continue to commit countless additional atrocities in the name of literacy.

The comparisons between Roadvillers and Maintowners in chapter 9 of Literacy with an
Attitude really seemed to send the message home for me. Roadvillers were akin to
members of the working class whilst Maintowners were akin to that of the middle class. The discrepancies are shocking, to say the least.

ROADVILLERS (WORKING CLASS
Scaffolding involves the parents staying on a topic long after the child has gone on to something else. Parents are conscious of the importance associated with “pay attention ... listen ... behave”; hence, this is deemed as the primary purpose.

MAINTOWNERS (MIDDLE CLASS)
Scaffolding involves asking questions, rephrasing or stating what has been said, adding new information to extend/support current topic of conversation (exaggerate and repeat new words). Purpose is to keep the conversation going.

Dramatic differences in pre-school entry educational experiences begin here.

ROADVILLERS (WORKING CLASS)
• exposure to books (the alphabet, simple shapes, basic colors, name pictures and parts of pictures)
• parents ask questions (expect answers they taught)
• no special bedtime routines
• stories have morals or lessons
• rarely provide emotional or personal commentary in recounting real events or book stories
• do not understand hypothetical questions
• primary discourse is in conflict with school discourse
• do not see the relevance of school work to their own lives
• society of intimates (powerlessness)
• conformity is expected
• parents are authoritarian
• implicit language (context dependent)

MAINTOWNERS (MIDDLE CLASS)
• exposure to books (natural flow of language that parents engage in with their children)
• reading lessons in school very similar to bedtime routines at home
• primary discourse is similar to and congenial with school discourse
• constant contact with strangers (more at ease with strangers) as in associations and friendships
• society of strangers (do not rely on shared knowledge and information)
• sense they are not without power
• parents are democratic (collaboration encouraged re decision making)
• willing to discuss reasons for rules and decisions if challenged (continuous need for explicit language)

If I may reiterate, once again, as long as the discourse of the student is in conflict with the discourse of the school, these are the students that shall continue to fail. It is only in introducing them to powerful discourse that we can even attempt to give them a better chance at both access and success.

How can one sum up what needs to be done to correct the discourse problem that clearly exists? It appears that the working class, predominantly, needs the following:

• to be introduced into a school community whereby explicit language makes sense
• to be introduced into a school community whereby explicit language is necessary
• to be part of a community where authority is viewed as being a collaboration effort
• to see the relevance between the school community and their personal lives

Robert Peterson managed to create “a positive atmosphere in the classroom through
activities that stressed self-affirmation, mutual respect, communication, group decision making, and cooperation because he knew that these values and skills are associated with the gentry” (Literacy with an Attitude, page 175). One must “master school discourse and powerful literacy in order to struggle for justice and equity” (Literacy with an Attitude, page 206). It remains our job, therefore, as advocates of social responsibility, to “involve students in probing the social factors that make and limit who they are and ... help them reflect on what they could be” (Literacy with an Attitude, page 180).

Are there any Canadian teachers that have also embraced the Freirean model? If we are to make the changes that are necessary, these are the people that we, as educators, need to meet and dialogue with. Nothing short of ... “dialogue, conscientization, and explicitly teaching school discourse and powerful literacy will give all students a chance at an empowering, liberating education” (Literacy with an Attitude, page 190). Is this not where we should be as a planet? The experiences of all people deserve to be validated.

If I may quote from James Paul Gee in “New People in New Worlds: Networks, the new
capitalism and schools”... “The only real solution, of course, is to change the game, that is, to change our society. The only real solution is to imagine and begin to implement a society in which success in school and having access to specialized forms of knowledge are not markers of class and race and, in some cases, gender ... Ultimately, our failure of minority and poor children in school is rooted in our unwillingness or inability to give them the forms of instruction that are theirs by right and that are necessitated by the doors that have and continue to be closed to them.”

Further to this, I wish to end with powerful John Lennon Imagine lyrics ...

Imagine there’s no countries,
It isn’t hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too.
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace ...
You may say that I’m a dreamer,
But I’m not the only one,
I hope someday you’ll join us,
And the world will be as one.

I have never believed myself to be a political person, but I find that the literacy stance that I have taken the time to share here is, indeed, most political in nature. Perhaps all current individuals enrolled in this Literacy Education course should take the time to forward a copy of their Literacy Position papers to our current provincial members of Parliament. Would this not be an interesting way of bombarding them with literacy tidbits to debate in the House of Assembly? I, for one, would be most interested in seeing the literacy stance that they would take for all children, the future leaders of this planet.

MYTHS OF LITERACY - POSITION PAPER (FALL 2004)

A new and important word for me has become that of anomalies: the relating/connecting of new experiences to old, thereby helping one better make sense of the new, becoming that much clearer when allowed engaged and meaningful discourse with others; hence, my theme for this particular paper. In my attempt to synthesize the discourse theme found in the course readings to date, I will do my best to interact with a multitude of authors’ views while also inserting personal observations, to be further substantiated by learning experiences.

Oral language is one’s primary discourse, despite the cultural language of the home. The first five years of a child’s life have been toted as being important and key years. Why, then, is it that the education system seems to rely heavily upon written forms of literacy? These days, this seems to be the pervasive question that keeps reverberating in my head.

It is very true when O’Neil states that oral language emerges naturally and is the key to preschool learning. One’s native literacy must be validated and encouraged. In 1985, I accepted a teaching position within this province, making the move from Nova Scotia. Although I had a most difficult time with the native literacy akin to the areas of Bay St. George and Port au Port, I did my very best to encourage discourse, often asking for additional colleague confirmation after the fact. When insisting upon standard English, it must have been as frustrating for my students as it was for me to attempt to acclimatize myself to their native literacy.

I found myself relating well to Finn when he took the time to differentiate between
implicit and explicit language. There are individuals within my family that tend to rely on implicit language. Having lived away for close to 20 years, I find this most confusing when attempting to communicate, as they make the assumption that I already possess the complete background knowledge to follow the conversation. In comparison, I have always made use of explicit language. Could this be why I always seemed to stick out like a sore thumb at family gatherings?

In keeping with implicit language and the additional relationships that Finn draws,
namely, authoritarian homes, society of intimates (isolation), powerlessness, context dependent scaffolding (pay attention, listen, behave), I can relate personally to these components.

I was a most avid reader as a child. Reading was my personal means of escape from
“reality”. I believe that this is what propelled me to make use of explicit language on a gradual basis, eventually leading to increased and gradual personal empowerment, despite the powerlessness that traveled about with me.

My love of the written word led me to the realization that I would not be content to work in like jobs held by my parents, while also being assisted by Social Services, so off to University I did go. This is where Stuckey began, after a long while, to make sense for me: knowledge leads to better jobs; hence, both class and economy are reflective of one’s work situation. Knowledge occurs as a result of literacy learning, therefore literacy and class are interrelated. This personal upward social movement allowed me to change my perceived reality as I was simply not content to remain confined to the situation as it existed at that time. In having been able to make this change, I was also able to make the transition from an authoritarian home to one that was more collaborative and empowering in nature. To my way of thinking, explicit language is effective use of language. As a result, explicit discourse (which is prominent within our home) clearly leads to both access and success.

It is a marvelous feeling to know that explicit discourse has played a major role in my having succeeded in making a better life for my family. How are we then, as educators, to do the same for the very students that we teach?

Individual experiences need to be validated for individual experiences are what lead to empowerment. Respect and a firm belief in the absolutely essential, as is classroom discourse (as per Christie). Social injustices (language dialect(s), understanding of language, use of language, social class, cognitive ability, gender) impact negatively on all of us. We need to ask ourselves what is it that we are going to do about these injustices?

I have appreciated what I have read about Robert Peterson, a follower of the Frierean tradition. I believe that we need more educators who think along these lines, for they are the ones who serve to help us challenge ourselves so that we can “involve students in probing the social factors that make and limit who they are and ... help them reflect on what they could be” (Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working Class Children in Their Own Self Interest, page 180).

Although I know naught how to go about making this type of teaching my own current
reality, it is my wish to become more like Robert Peterson, William Bigelow and Linda Christenson, all of whom emphasize Freirean dialogue and “conscientization”. In this light, I feel that the readings to date have merely served to whet my appetite.

I am not overly bothered by these feelings of uncertainty and doubt, especially as
MacGinitie has linked them with “good” teachers, for it is a “good” teacher that will readily admit, accept and acknowledge that they will always have much to learn. I would far rather be remembered in this fashion. Manning says that classrooms need to be “places where kids get to answer their own questions”. How does this manifest if classroom discourse is not encouraged?

One way in which genuine and dynamic dialogue can take place is within the interactive teaching model (also referred to as the experiential model). This model is culturally fair in that all students are actively involved in expressing and sharing personal experiences. There is much student-student talk, guided and facilitated by the teacher, whereby all persons are validated and empowered. This takes me back to the classroom of Robert Peterson, a follower of the Freirean tradition, who created a positive atmosphere “through activities that stressed self-affirmation, mutual respect, communication, group decision making, and cooperation” which, to my mind, serves to develop higher level cognitive thinking (explorer of meaning, more critical thinker, more creative thinker, increased ability to interpret and analyze facts) and intrinsic motivation. Unfortunately, within this province, we see few of this type of classroom.

How do we go about embracing this new frontier? We know that language (discourse)
can be used as a means of changing one’s reality. If teachers learn best on the edge, as Manning suggests, then surely our students would learn best in this same manner? There exists much irony between the envisaged curriculum (as established and mandated by the Department of Education) and the real curriculum.

The envisaged curricula is one that has been devised by individuals who have little or no contact with the students themselves, and yet the teacher is mandated to teach to specific programs. Learning is not a matter of accumulating information and adding to one’s knowledge base, as the envisaged curriculum appears to have been created for. One must make sense of the experiences in one’s life for real learning to occur. In this instance, I quite agree with Manning when he states that now is the time to “reclaim the classroom”.

It was an incredible experience for me to read about The Corresponding Societies that were established in England in 1792. People were encouraged to “come together in a society of strangers, to question authority and exercise power. Their whole point was for members ro reflect on society and their place in it, to learn what others were thinking, to discuss it, evaluate it, come to conclusions, formulate new ideas and opinions and exchange these conclusions, opinions, and ideas with others in the form of correspondence” (Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working Class Children in Their Own Self Interest, page 133).

To my way of thinking, this is the purpose behind education! This is exactly what needs to be happening within our very schools! If I may further add “... nothing short of dialogue, conscientization, and explicitly teaching school discourse and powerful literacy will give all students a chance at an empowering, liberating education” (Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working Class Children in Their Own Self Interest, page 190).

Clearly, we have our answer to what needs to be done in order to validate every student with regards to both written and oral discourse. It is up to us to begin applying what we know and feel to be true, whilst abandoning our quest for perfection and certainty.

MYTHS OF LITERACY - SYNTHESIS PAPER (FALL 2004)

While I was engaged in the reading of Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working
Class Children in Their Own Self-Interest, by Patrick J. Finn, I found myself resonating with components of chapters 2, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13 and 14. It was here that a central literacy theme became more than apparent; namely, that of discourse.

Our primary discourse is that which we learn, informally, at home. In this light, oral communication is of significant value and importance. As educators, we acknowledge the significance behind the first five years of a child’s life, and yet there are dramatic changes that take place in the lives of our children, both before and when they go to school.

Why is it, in some cases, that discourse is not encouraged? Why is it, in some cases, that discourse is not seen as an important and integral factor with respect to literacy?

One means of attempting to answer these important questions pertains to the study as
conducted by Jean Anyon, introduced in chapter 2. Jean Anyon conducted a study that
involved five public elementary schools in New Jersey. Some schools were situated in rich neighborhoods; others were located in not-so-rich neighborhoods. This made for an excellent cross-reference study. Her focus was on that of the Grade 5 classroom. With regards to the schools studied, there were noted similarities: most students were white; all schools were located in northern New Jersey, thereby adhering to the same state requirements; all schools used the same Math books; all schools were subject to the same Language Arts program(s). That is where similarities end, given the startling differences that were discovered (refer to table that follows).

WORKING CLASS
Knowledge presented as fragmented facts.
Little decision making or choice.
Teachers rarely explained work.
Very little discourse encouraged.
Every effort made to control the student.
Students demonstrate mechanical and routine behaviors.
Theme: resistence

MIDDLE CLASS
Job of teacher is to impart knowledge (socially approved sources).
Getting the answer right was the focus.
Not rewarded for critical analysis.
Creativity is rare.
Decisions made based on known rules.
Knowledge viewed as valuable possession
(to be traded for good grades, credentials)
Theme: possibility

AFFLUENT PROFESSIONAL
Independent thinking and discovery are encouraged.
Creativity and personal development are seen as being important.
School knowledge presented as relevant to life’s problems.
Constant negotiation (means of control).
Direct orders rarely given.
Social strife acknowledged and discussed.
Current events discussed.
Theme: individualism (major)
Theme: humanitarianism (minor)

EXCLUSIVE ELITE
Knowledge is academic, intellectual and rigorous.
Reasoning, problem solving, rationality, and being able to analyze are important.
Insistence upon self-discipline.
Theme: excellence

As I was attempting to make personal connections, within this compare and contrast
model, I was remembering childhood background experiences. Despite my having grown up as a member of the working class poor, my educational experiences revolved around the middle class model as imparted here (courtesy of Jean Anyon). I strived to receive good grades (mostly through rote memorization and regurgitation), knowing, in the end, that going off to University (acquisition of necessary credentials) would enable me to break free of the working class system.

A second attempt at trying to answer these discourse questions is reflected in chapter 7. It is here that Finn writes about Basil Bernstein, an English Sociologist who studied two class systems in Britain; namely, the working class and the middle class. Bernstein talked about the language habits of both class systems, comparing each to success in school. Given that language habits are hinged upon school success, “savage inequalities” result. The findings of Bernstein, as indicated below, also seems to further substantiate the findings of Jean Anyon.

BRITISH WORKING CLASS
• implicit language (context dependent)
• conformity expected
• rigid sex roles
• opinions dictated by group consensus
• authoritarian home/community
• society of intimates that relies on shared
knowledge and information
• powerlessness (dominant theme)

BRITISH MIDDLE CLASS
• explicit language (context independent)
• collaborative home/community
• democratic decisions
• willing to discuss reasons for rules and decisions if challenged (continuous need for explicit language)
• society of strangers (do not rely on shared knowledge and information)

Given that school language is explicit in nature, it is clear that members of the working class are at a distinct disadvantage from day one. As this particular group of children progresses through school, their reading scores appear to fall farther and farther below that of their peer group. It then is presumed, unfortunately, that because they are not making the gains that they should be making, there are somehow lacking in the basics.

How have we tended to respond in the past? Merely by bombarding them with more and
more phonics. Where one’s primary discourse is inconsistent with that of the school
(environment as well as text books), how can these children succeed? Are these the
students that we like to categorize as the “core” special education students? As a teacher in this specialized field, it appears that I must rethink my previous understandings as to what these students actually need.

A third attempt at trying to answer these discourse questions is reflected in chapters 8 and 9. This is where we learn about scaffolding (conversation leading from behind) and make additional comparisons between Roadvillers and Maintowners.

ROADVILLERS (WORKING CLASS)

Scaffolding involves the parents staying on a topic long after the child has gone on to something else. Parents are conscious of the importance associated with “pay attention ... listen ... behave”; hence, this is deemed as the primary purpose.

• exposure to books (the alphabet, simple shapes, basic colors, name pictures and parts of pictures)
• parents ask questions (expect answers they taught)
• no special bedtime routines
• stories have morals or lessons
• rarely provide emotional or personal commentary in recounting real events or book stories
• do not understand hypothetical questions
• primary discourse is in conflict with school discourse
• do not see the relevance of school work to their own lives
• society of intimates (powerlessness)
• conformity is expected
• parents are authoritarian
• implicit language (context dependent)

MAINTOWNERS (MIDDLE CLASS

Scaffolding involves asking questions, rephrasing or stating what has been said, adding new information to extend/support current topic of conversation (exaggerate and repeat new words). Purpose is to keep the conversation going.

• exposure to books (natural flow of language that parents engage in with their children)
• reading lessons in school very similar to bedtime routines at home
• primary discourse is similar to and congenial with school discourse
• constant contact with strangers (more at ease with strangers) as in associations and friendships
• society of strangers (do not rely on shared knowledge and information)
• sense they are not without power
• parents are democratic (collaboration encouraged re decision making)
• willing to discuss reasons for rules and decisions if challenged (continuous need for explicit language)

We are now starting to piece together why such discourse discrepancies exist. It is
becoming clearer that every discourse also involves “values, attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, ways of learning, and ways of expressing what we know, which persons must accept and conform to in order to operate within the discourse” (Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working Class Children in Their Own Self-Interest, page 108). It is also clear that where discourse is consistent with that of school discourse, students cannot fail.

How, then, can we make the primary discourse of predominantly working class children more consistent with that of school discourse?

In reading from chapter 11, I was completely captivated by the degree of powerful
literacy that was prevalent as a result of the inception of The Corresponding Societies, in England, of 1792. Membership was not limited. Unless one were incapacitated as a result of crime activity, no one was excluded. This, then, encouraged “people from different walks of life to come together in a society of strangers, to question authority and exercise power. Their whole point was for members to reflect on society and their place in it, to learn what others were thinking, to discuss it, evaluate it, come to conclusions, formulate new ideas and opinions, and exchange those conclusions, opinions and ideas with others in the form of correspondence” (Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working Class Children in Their Own Self-Interest, page 133).

Every time I reread this particular paragraph, I just want to get up and shout it out to the powers that be. There is no better descriptor of powerful literacy than this! How is it, then, that we cen begin to work towards advancing our students (and ourselves) to this very level?

It is shocking to note that the reaction, on behalf of the British government, was one of panic and repression. To think that one could be tried for treason during this historical time frame is no different from one having been deemed a heretic during the Inquisition.

Both have served to silence open-minded, literate and hence, powerful individuals, so that one could maintain control of the so-called masses.

The Corresponding Societies represented education for liberation. They were
dismantled, never to be seen in over two centuries, until Paulo Freire, a professor at the University of Reclife (northeast Brazil), started an adult literacy program “for the city’s teeming, illiterate poor” (Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working Class Children in Their Own Self-Interest, page 1). It was Friere who observed that education is never neutral. To acknowledge that we are still failing so many children in the 21st century, in this age of technological advancement that relies on literacy, is completely and utterly deplorable. This is a fact that needs to be acknowledged and addressed, on behalf of all.

How can one sum up what needs to be done to correct the discourse problem that clearly exists? It appears that the working class, predominantly, needs the following:

• to be introduced into a school community whereby explicit language makes sense
• to be introduced into a school community whereby explicit language is necessary
• to be part of a community where authority is viewed as being a collaboration effort
• to see the relevance between the school community and their personal lives

In a conscious working effort towards alleviating the problem, what can one do? This is where chapters 13 and 14 began to made sense to me. I was deeply encouraged by the work of Paulo Friere. Here was an individual who was willing to undertake a most radical and dangerous role, in a “country where a huge divide separated a small number of the very rich and a vast number of the very poor” where he asked his students “what they might do to secure justice and suggested that literacy would make them far better able to engage in the struggle they would certainly face if they tried to get a better deal” (Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working Class Children in Their Own Self-Interest, page 2).

In addition, I found it very interesting to read that the poor in Brazil are “so submerged in their daily lives that they have little or no awareness of the possibility for change, much less what they might do to bring about change. They view their condition as natural, the will of God, determined by fate” Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working Class Children in Their Own Self-Interest, page 157). Might this be akin to what the working class feel? Might this be akin to what the Roadvillers feel?

The Frierean Culture Circles recipients are introduced to many concepts along the way, a chief one being that ... the literate are powerful ... you’re not ... what are you going to do about it? This instantly brings to mind a personal reflection regarding the current state of educational affairs ... the working class are not literate ... the working class are not powerful ... what am I (as an educator) going to do about it?

As per chapter 14, I have appreciated what I have read about Robert Peterson, a follower of the Frierean tradition. I believe that we need more educators who think along these lines, for they are the ones who serve to help us challenge ourselves so that we can “involve students in probing the social factors that make and limit who they are and ... help them reflect on what they could be” (Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working Class Children in Their Own Self Interest, page 180). Although I know naught how to go about making this type of teaching my own current reality, it is my wish to become more like Robert Peterson, William Bigelow and Linda Christenson, all of whom emphasize Freirean dialogue and “conscientization”. In this light, I feel that Finn has merely served to whet my appetite.

I am not overly bothered by these feelings of uncertainty and doubt, especially as
MacGinitie has linked them with “good” teachers, for it is a “good” teacher that will readily admit, accept and acknowledge that they will always have much to learn.

One way in which genuine and dynamic dialogue can take place is within the interactive teaching model (also referred to as the experiential model). This model is culturally fair in that all students are actively involved in expressing and sharing personal experiences. There is much student-student talk, guided and facilitated by the teacher, whereby all persons are validated and empowered. This takes me back to the classroom of Robert Peterson, a follower of the Freirean tradition, who created a positive atmosphere “through activities that stressed self-affirmation, mutual respect, communication, group decision making, and cooperation” which, to my mind, serves to develop higher level cognitive thinking (explorer of meaning, more critical thinker, more creative thinker, increased ability to interpret and analyze facts) and intrinsic motivation. Unfortunately, within this province, we see few of this type of classroom.

How do we go about embracing this new frontier? We know that language (discourse)
can be used as a means of changing one’s reality. Manning says that classrooms need to be “places where kids get to answer their own questions”. How does this manifest if classroom discourse is not encouraged? In this light, there exists much irony between the envisaged curriculum (as established and mandated by the Department of Education, deemed socially approved and acceptable sources) and the real curriculum.

The envisaged curricula is one that has been devised by individuals who have little or no contact with the students themselves, and yet the teacher is mandated to teach to specific programs. In addition, these days the teacher is mandated to teach to both CRTs and public exams.

Learning is not a matter of accumulating information and adding to one’s knowledge
base, as the envisaged curriculum appears to have been created for. One must make
sense of the experiences in one’s life for real learning to occur. In this instance, I quite agree with Manning when he states that now is the time to “reclaim the classroom”.

Clearly, “... nothing short of dialogue, conscientization, and explicitly teaching school discourse and powerful literacy will give all students a chance at an empowering, liberating education” (Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working Class Children in Their Own Self Interest, page 190).

We have our answer to what needs to be done in order to validate every student with
regards to both written and oral discourse. It is up to us to begin applying what we know and feel to be true, whilst abandoning our quest for perfection and certainty.

CHILD AS INFORMANT - WRITTEN RESPONSE (SPRING 2005)

Having never been employed as a regular classroom teacher, I have never looked upon myself as a teacher of literacy. In this light, I have never had to apply as much thinking to what literacy entails. This is why I am enjoying this course, despite some of the awkward moments.

As a specialist teacher who works with severe Learning Disabled students, part of my course focus has been to assist these students with skills that will better allow them to break the code (graphophonemic system). In both feeling and seeing how sounds are physically made, we focus on 28 consonant sounds (including the borrowers: c, qu, x and y). We track these sounds by way of mouth pictures, colored blocks and letter symbols. They are introduced to the 15 vowel sounds (vowel circle) and associated mouth picture labels that then lead to CV, VC and CVC tracking of syllables, by way of mouth pictures, colored blocks, letter symbols. Such is applied to both spelling and reading activities. There are also orthographic expectancies to be taught. For each student in question, both Psycho-Educational and S/L assessments indicate a weakness in the area of phonemic awareness/segmentation and pseudo-word decoding; hence, they become a recipient of this program. Generally, they are quite apt with regards to the text participant, text user and text analyst modes of the same model. I enjoy knowing that I am assisting with the remaining piece of the Four Resources Model puzzle, put forth by Peter Freebody and Allan Luke, that they have great difficulty with. In this way, I hope that I am serving to add to their overall literacy education.

Freebody and Luke write that “literacy education is ultimately about the kind of literate society and literate citizens that could and should be constructed”. The emphasis here is my own. A profound statement of this caliber continues to take me back to Paulo Friere and his strong belief system regarding the poor living in Brazil. At some point, I fully intend to do research with regards to Canadian classrooms that may well be applying this model to their classroom teaching.

It is my belief that many individuals do not accurately understand literacy and literacy education, for it is this very segment of the population that believes teaching and learning are mere matters of skill acquisition and knowledge transmission. Therein lies the problem. The question that we must begin asking of ourselves becomes how does one educate individuals to the reverse?

Freebody and Luke state that literacy education is all “about building identities and cultures, communities and institutions ... about access and apprenticeship into institutions and resources, discourses and texts”. The Four Resources Model speaks of four practices (code breaker, text participant, text user and text analyst), with each “being necessary for literacy, but in and of themselves, none is actually sufficient for literate citizen/subjects”.

I see this statement as serving to further the job that I am doing. Becoming a better code breaker, in and of itself, will not allow my students to become more literate, but it does build upon the specific area of practice that they show deficiencies in so that they will be able to better round out their overall repertoire of literacy skills.

In Examining Our Assumptions: A Transactional View of Literacy and Learning, the authors make mention of functional language situations where all components (namely, the graphophonemic, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic systems) are allowed to transact with other systems (such as art, music, math, gesture, drama) which naturally co-occur. This is the state of the world in its reality. This is what needs to be fully realized by the multitude as literacy. I fully appreciated the fact that these authors also took the time to compare/contrast/define the term ‘scaffolding’ (where one assumes the adult is in charge, simplifying, manipulating, structuring the environment for learning) with ‘tracking’ (processes or strategies actively engaged in by both participants who are seen as actively structuring the event). They also made mention of Vygotsky as having helped individuals see that thought and language transact, together becoming more than their individual and independent selves.

Vygotsky was also referenced in the online article, Further Notes on the Four Resources Model by Freebody and Luke ... “all teachers should have a training in: critical discourse analysis and critical literacy, second language acquisition, related critical social theory and Vygotskian sociocultural learning theories” reiterating that the four resources model is “one way of gluing together these approaches.” Just enough to tweak my interest in wanting to do some further research on Vygotsky.

The criteria we hold for what makes a literacy experience good for us cannot be used to judge the value of a literacy experience for another. This must be done by each language learner on his or her own terms. This cannot be stressed enough. Likewise for the fact that the process children engage in is not a pseudo form of the “real” process; it is that process.

In Parallels Between New Paradigms in Science and in Reading and Literary Theories by
Constance Weaver, she writes that modern subatomic physics speaks of transactions between entities. What a reader brings to the text (schemata: lifetime of knowledge and experience) is crucial in determining the meaning. Meaning is the continuous process of transaction between the individual and the environment, between old schemata and new. Due to the fact that there exists constant interplay between and among levels, processing being as much (or more) top-down (schemata to words or letters) as bottom-up (letters or words to schemata), each level potentially affects all other levels at the same time. When the reader interprets a text in a particular way, he or she simultaneously negates, for that particular moment in space/time, all other literary works. This is what they refer to as the “quantum leap”. Thus concepts from science parallel a model of language processing.

In Toward A Unified Theory of Literacy Learning and Instructional Practices by D. Taylor, it bothered me to read that “when an individual does not fit the instructional training program, “problems” are diagnosed and “remediated,” using more intensive doses of linearly sequenced decoding skills. Children are labeled and pigeon holed, and their own learning is denied” (page 33), for this has been my experience as a Special Education teacher. They go further to say that we must “give up the security of prepackaged programs built upon stage theories and stop trying to fit children’s early reading and writing experiences into some model or other. This is the only way that we will ever be able to see how language is both constructed and used by children when adults are not blatantly distorting the process” (page 34). This seems to say, to me, that all children will progress at their own pace, if they have not been disenfranchised, if their experiences have not been marginalized. The development of reading and writing is very complex. As educators, we must try to understand literacy from the child’s perspective, as has been clearly evident in the provided examples of literacy biographies that show the functions, uses, and forms of written language in very personal ways.

This article also makes mention of three key questions to ask children in the evaluating of their own literacy development; namely, (1) How have you changed? (2) What do you do well? (3) How do you want to improve?

I appreciate these questions, and see the validity to their very asking, in that serve to show that children and their experiences are valued and have merit. We need to see more classrooms where teachers and children work together, becoming co-informants, as the reading and writing strategies of the “one serve to inform the other”. This particular approach clearly enables teachers to rethink the ways in which they can provide realistic instruction that make sense to the children and to themselves. It also enables the children to become involved in personal evaluations of the ways in which they are becoming literate.

When we arrive at the fork in the road, unsure of which direction to take, clearly, this is the road (approach) that must be taken.

CHILD AS INFORMANT RESPONSE PAPER (SPRING 2005)

I cannot begin to tell you how much I am enjoying this Masters of Education (Literacy) program. Many things are now becoming clear, a key point being that the more I read about the theories and processes of reading and writing, the more I come to the complete realization that I have never truly thought about such until now; hence, I have taken much for granted with respect to the very processes akin to literacy.

While reading and rereading from Beyond Comprehension: Poststructuralist Readings in The English Classroom, I found the first several reading attempts to be frustrating ones in what they were proposing; namely, that “ ... readers do not make meanings out of their personal sense of self in conjunction with what a text says, but rather, the meanings readers assign to texts are already available to them before they begin to read the words on the page (page 64).” They went even further to say that “ ... experience can be read as cultural rather than as personal and that readers fill gaps not with personally created ideas but with meanings that are already available in their cultural at particular points in time or space (page 71)”.

This was a very different argument proposed by many ... that individual readers bring their personal experiences to bear on the texts that they read, which, then, becomes their way of producing meanings for the text in question. I think this may be why I had such difficulty with this particular position. I fully understand that the different ways readers make meaning from texts depend on their access to differing ideas in their culture, and yet I found it reflectively strange to note that, up until this particular reading, I had not really been focusing on culture at all. We are very much a configuration of our culture, but at the same time there exists diversity within cultural unity.

I truly enjoyed reading Readers Recreating Texts, especially with regards to how Evans stated that “ ... a text can be seen as a sort of starting point, which gives every reader an idea of the lines to pursue in reading it. But since every reader will bring to the text a different experience of life and different pictures of the scenes, characters, and activities which are being realized in a particular reading of it, the blueprint will never produce exactly the same experience twice (page 27)”. Such fits wonderfully with Unity in Reading: Becoming Readers in a Complex Society where it is written that the published text is very much a reality that does not change its physical properties as a result of being read. How, then, can the published text change during the reading?

“The answer is that the reader is constructing a text parallel and closely related to the published text. It becomes a different text for each reader. The reader’s text involves inferences, references, and co-references based on schemata that the reader brings to the text. And it is this reader’s text which the reader comprehends and on which any reader’s later account of what was read is based (page 96)”, even to the point that it may well take on a different rendering for the same reader at a completely different time, a result of one’s willingness to rethink and revise.

In reading How Texts Teach What Readers Learn, Meek states that children “... read stories they like over and over again: that is when they pay attention to the words - after they have discovered what happens. Adults, generally, go on to the next book, so that how we read is not part of the consciousness we bring to texts (page 103)” basically because as adults who become experienced in reading “ ... we become less and not more skilled. We read only what we find comfortable, rushing through novels to finish the story and then going on to another one. We may adopt too easily patterns of work which do not encourage us to inspect what we do (page 102).”

What an incredibly powerful statement, but one that I have definitely been able to relate to. Mind you, with regards to personal favorites (specific genre types) that I often reread, I do take the time to savor the flow and dialect of the words.

I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the distinction between what has been called efferent reading and aesthetic reading in What Facts Does This Poem Teach You? In fact, this became the focus of my online Google search.

Louise Rosenblatt states that the “ ... matter of the reader’s focus of attention during the reading transaction is of paramount importance. We must attend to the sound of the words and pulsations of the phrases as we call them up in the inner ear; we must attend to the sensations and feelings and associations triggered by ideas, images, people, and places that we conjure up under the guidance of the text (page 387).” She also believes, as do I, that the “ ... aim is to develop the habit of aesthetic evocation from a text. If the young readers are allowed in the early years to retain and deepen that ability, we can cheerfully leave for later years the more formal methods of literacy analysis and criticism (page 393)”. In fact, “ ... the atmosphere and circumstances of aesthetic reading should make the young reader feel free to pay attention to what is being lived through under the guidance of the text. There should also be the opportunity to talk freely about the experiences with peers and with the teacher (page 393)”.

In keeping, the spontaneous comments of children should be welcomed, encouraged, and, as often as possible, made the starting point for further discussion. If the teacher finds it necessary to spark discussion, questions or comments should lead the reader back, to savor what was seen, heard, felt, thought, during the calling forth of the poem or story from the text. “The current interest in developing children’s ability to compose their own poems and stories offers an important means of strengthening the child’s sense of the aesthetic potentialities of language (page 393).”

I believe, as well, that the “ ... aim is to develop the habit of aesthetic evocation from a text. If the young readers are allowed in the early years to retain and deepen that ability, we can cheerfully leave for later years the more formal methods of literacy analysis and criticism (page 393)”.

In Reading and Reading Strategies, it was written that “the closer the content of reading material is to the life and experiences of the students, and the closer the concepts of reading material are to what students already know, the easier it is for them to understand the meaning relationship in the reading material (page 12)”. At the same time, however, it is important that reading be seen as a means to expand the knowledge of the students. Teachers should, therefore, encourage students to read material that involves some unique experiences and that is to some degree beyond their own knowledge.

I enjoyed coming to the realization that published reading programs have, for decades, placed an emphasis in learning to read on letter-to-sound recoding (phonics) as well as a word emphasis approach (sight word recognition as well as word-shape-word recoding) Such was clearly stated in The Reading Process: A Psycholinguistic View. I work with students who have a severe learning disability (which says nothing about their overall intelligence). Some teachers naively assume that if a child can translate the written symbols from text into oral speech, he/she is capable of dealing with the concepts being presented. The other side of the coin is equally daunting. Some teachers believe that if a student is unable to read the text material being presented, they cannot possibly grasp the material (concept) being taught.

The focus then appears to become ... how does one, as a teacher (or parent), help students (or their children) make their own transactions with the texts that they read? Perhaps this is where we must learn to begin.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Evans, Emyrs: Readers Recreating Texts
Goodman, Kenneth: Unity in Reading: Becoming Readers in a Complex Society
Goodman, Yetta and Burke, Carolyn: Reading and Reading Strategies
Meek, Margaret: How Texts Teach What Reader’s Learn
Patterson, Annette; Mellor, Bronwyn and O’Neill, Marnie: Beyond Comprehension:
Poststructuralist Readings in The English Classroom
Rosenblatt, Louise: What Facts Does This Poem Teach You?
Smith, Brooks; Goodman, Kenneth and Meredith, Robert: The Reading Process: A Psycholinguistic View
Smith, Frank: What Happens When You Read?

CHILD AS INFORMANT - RETROSPECTIVE RESPONSE (SPRING 2005)

Employed as a Criteria teacher, I work with students who fit the profile of an individual with a severe learning disability in both reading and written expression. Found to be weak with regards to phonemic awareness/segmentation and pseudo-word decoding (the grapho-phonemic system), word recognition and spelling, I am availing of the Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing (LiPS) program for reading, spelling and speech. In this way, I am able to provide them with a means to becoming a better code breaker, thereby assisting with the piece of the Four Resources Model puzzle (Peter Freebody and Allan Luke) that they appear to have the greatest difficulty with. As a result, I found these readings to be both enlightening and insightful.

Readers and Writers with a Difference: A Holistic Approach to Teaching Struggling Readers and Writers was a most impressive read. I both enjoyed the style as well as the message. There were many highlights to both chapters 3 (literacy assessment) and 4 (assessing aspects of literacy), but it was chapter 5 (going from assessment to planning and adjusting one’s teaching instruction) that I was able to relate to on both a personal and professional level.

In my role as a Special Education teacher (20 years), I have been required to develop educational plans for each student. Referred to as IEP’s in the past, today they are called ISSP’s. My earliest experience(s) goes back to denoting specific and measurable goals. . I can now see, upon reflection, that such has, at times, led to “fragmented instruction”. These authors state that “ ... if written goals or objectives are going to be useful, they must be referred to often and revised on the basis of ongoing assessment” mainly because “ongoing evaluation aids teachers in adapting instructional strategies in accordance with changing student needs.” Delving further, I read that “ ... our challenge is to offer an alternative to behavioral goals or objectives for teachers committed to holistic approaches to literacy learning but justifiably concerned with accountability and with fulfilling their legal responsibilities”. I felt that I was about to become engaged with the right text for me. As I continued to read, I knew that I was going to have to locate a copy of this book as a means of uncovering what the authors say that they will be offering in later chapters. I have since discovered that Readers and Writers with a Difference: A Holistic Approach to Teaching Struggling Readers and Writers will be the set text for the upcoming summer course, and am looking forward to answering the questions that I have as an educator.

I was quite impressed with the extensive and detailed explanation provided with regards to miscue analysis in “How Can We Assess Readers’ Strengths and Begin to Determine Their Instructional Needs?” by Constance Weaver. Clearly, this differs from the reading records that we are expected to conduct at school. She was able to share that her miscue analysis form has advantages and disadvantages, while also providing the name of a detailed form for obtaining and comparing a reader’s use of grapho/phonemic cues along with their use of syntactic and semantic cues as a means of better understanding the reader (Taxonomy of Reading Miscues by Kenneth Goodman). She realizes that “... what most classroom teachers need, however, is not more detailed forms and procedures but simpler ones that will be less time-consuming to use, yet still sophisticated enough to yield information useful in planning instruction”. Conducting a miscue analysis is of importance in “determining a reader’s use of language cues and reading strategies”, but so is “an analysis of the reader’s ability to remember and explain what has been read”. An oral retelling is something that I have not encouraged my reader’s to do when conducting reading records in previous years, but it is important to also remember that my training has been minimal. It appears as if I may well have to change my outlook in the future as I continue to work over the course of the next several years with severe learning disabled students and attempt to provide training in the use of efficient reading strategies.

In “Evaluation”, Regie Routman begins by talking about standardized testing, an issue that many teachers in this province have a serious issue with and basically for the same reasons that she cites; namely, “ ... to judge the effectiveness of schools, to place students in special programs, to track students, to pass or retain students, to evaluate teachers, and to plan curriculums”. What does one actually glean (per individual students) as a result of examining CRT results? If I can refer back to the comments issued by Alex McIver, my research informant, as per the Language and Literacy Conference. When asked if the CRT’s were a fair tool, his response was a resounding “NO! I hated the CRT’s. We were only kids”. Alex was exceptionally stressed over participating in the CRT testing, as disclosed by his mother. In reality, standardized testing tells us very little about the actual child. As Regie Routman sums it up ... “Preoccupation with test scores not only robs our students but also harms our teaching” in that “as long as we continue to equate reading progress with high test scores, we have little hope of raising a generation of readers: students who are able to read and reason, who are able to relate and apply ideas to their lives and different situations, and who choose to read for pleasure”.

It was interesting to read about Doris, a competent reader who obtained low scores on the standardized reading test, mainly because she used her background experiences to make sense when reading and sometimes marked an answer that was correct for her but not for the test makers. Doris had been penalized because she was unpracticed with worksheets and word-study skills subtests (both of which do not measure reading in context). Given that she was one to rely on the aid of context, she was clearly at a disadvantage when it came to standardized testing. How often might this be happening with our own students? Given Alex’s reading ability and comprehension, as was denoted in the research date, it may be fair to say that this might also have happened to him. In cases such as these, we have no right to make assumptions about a student based on test scores alone! It was very troubling to read that “special education programs have a disproportionate number of minority students”, especially when disclosed that the result of standardized tests scores was a major contributing factor.

Instead of providing information that could be useful for instructional decision making, the “results are neither credible nor reliable”, and when “interpreted literally, low scores on subtests are responsible for placing and maintaining students in adjunct skills based instructional programs”. Such devalues a student, sending an invalid message to both student and parent that “mastering a discrete set of skills is of primary importance in becoming a good reader” as opposed to “reading and discussing authentic literature, thinking about books, and finding delight in reading”. How right you are, Ms. Routman!

We must help parents put tests into a proper perspective by educating them as to the most valid indicators of their child’s achievement: the observational practices of the classroom teacher(s). But unless “we use the data to inform and guide instruction, we are merely amassing bits and pieces of information”. Through “kidwatching” as Yetta Goodman calls it, we can become excellent observers. To take this to the next level, it is essential to be able to set up the learning environment to maximize student development (based on our observations). Surely this is more important than test results.

Regie Routman also spoke about needing to “keep in mind that grading is not evaluation” because a students’s abilities “can never be described by a certain letter. At best, grading is a narrow, arbitrary measuring system that fosters competition, discourages cooperation, and does little to promote understanding. Like standardized test scores, grades are scores that do not carry any real meaning for instructional purposes”. Once again, I have to commend her for putting it so succinctly. And, yet, unfortunately, grades continue to thrive in our schools. Regie suggests that “when grades are used, they should be used for looking at a child in relation to himself and for comparing and analyzing the child’s growth over time”. Too frequently, however, children compare themselves to each other, not thinking about how they have grown in their learning. The parents of our students are having a hard time adjusting to the rubric that has been in use these last several years, still wanting to see actual marks on report cards. Our report cards have recently been changed so that teachers have to write anecdotal notes for each reporting period, of which there are three. I like the fact that anecdotal notes provide information that has to have been both documented and accumulated over time. Perhaps this change will attempt to ensure that our teachers do become better kidwatchers.

I was not surprised to read about learning styles, as shared in How Can We Help Those with Reading Difficulties? I was, however, surprised by what she refers to as reading styles. Never having come across this term before, I found myself intrigued, especially as the research that is “beginning to accumulate strongly demonstrates the importance of matching reading styles with reading methods”. Reference is continually made to a Reading Style Inventory as devised by Marie Carbo in that “children have differing styles, abilities, and needs, and the most effective instruction will be that which best matches each child’s strengths and preferences”, thereby teaching through their strengths rather than trying to remediate their weaknesses.

It was of interest to read how both hemispheres of the brain are involved someone reads in comparison to someone who has “dyslexia”. I, for one, would be interested in learning more so as to better assist my students. She writes that “since our typical subskills and skills approaches are so left-hemisphere oriented, we might give particular thought to developing strategies that build upon the strengths of those students who are so strongly right-hemispheric in their approach to learning.” She also believes, most strongly, that some people with severe reading difficulties are “created” and not born. Knowing that I will be working with four severe learning disabled students in the fall (support has been granted until June 2007), Constance has tweaked enough of my interest that I would like to further explore some of the readings and authors cited at the end of the article.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
• Rhodes, Lynn and Dudley-Marling, Curt. “Literacy Assessment” Readers and Writers with a Difference: A Holistic Approach to Teaching Struggling Readers and Writers (chapter 3)
• Rhodes, Lynn and Dudley-Marling, Curt. “Assessing Aspects of Literacy” Readers and Writers with a Difference: A Holistic Approach to Teaching Struggling Readers and Writers (chapter 4)
• Rhodes, Lynn and Dudley-Marling, Curt. “From Assessment to Planning and Adjusting Instruction (and Back Again)” Readers and Writers with a Difference: A Holistic Approach to Teaching Struggling Readers and Writers (chapter 5) (pages 81, 82, 83)
• Routman, Regie. “Evaluation” as taken from Invitations: Changing as Teachers and Learners K-12 (pages 296, 298, 300, 303, 309, 333)
• Weaver, Constance. “How Can We Assess Readers’ Strengths and Begin to Determine Their Instructional Needs?” Reading Process and Practice: From Socio-Psycholinguistics to Whole Language (chapter 10) (page 355)
• Weaver, Constance. “How Can We Help Those with Reading Difficulties?” Reading Process and Practice: From Socio-Psycholinguistics to Whole Language (chapter 11) (pages 369, 378, 384)

LITERACIES AND THE NEW TECHNOLOGIES (WINTER 2006)

It is my personal belief that schools, as we currently know them to be, are failing to prepare students for life on the outside. Instead, we have become caught up in the surreal world of teaching to the CRTs, a necessary evil affiliated with a strong political agenda.

Traditional schooling teaches content, leading one to believe that assisting a student in the ingesting and spewing forth of memorized course content facts, s/he has taught something of value. Unless the student is motivated in school, s/he will not learn. Motivation is key. The next segment becomes identifying what appears to be a key factor in motivating the students of today. In answer, none other than technology, digital media and video games.

James Gee poses a very interesting question in Learning by Design: Good Video Games as Learning Machines; namely, “how do good game designers manage to get new players to learn their long, complex and difficult games?” In making the comparison between gaming and education, do student decisions/actions make a difference in the classroom curriculum? Are students helping to design their own learning? “The whole curriculum should be shaped by learner’s actions and react back on the learner in meaningful ways”. Gee also states that we need to look at learner centered learning and “extend the idea to mean learner controlled learning”.

It is a well known fact that different styles of learning work better for different people. One cannot be an agent of one’s own learning if they cannot make decisions about how their learning will work. Classrooms that “allow students to discover their favored learning styles and to try new ones without fear” are those that enable students to better reflect on the nature of their own learning, thereby assisting them in the understanding that there are many different ways to solve problems. “... humans are not good at learning through hearing or reading lots of words” outside of context application (Gee). It is more important that one know how to apply learned knowledge in actual practice.

According to Gee, it is the at-risk learner that needs “horizontal learning”. These students need time to explore what they are about to learn; they need to make the important connection between seeing failure as informative. Such is the way of technology, digital media and video games. And yet, how can we even begin to attempt to prepare young people for the future when we are provided with ad hoc computer systems, systems and materials that are completely outdated?

Joyce Kim, in Practical Challenges to NLS, states that although teachers may well be convinced by the insights of NLS, they must continue to work within the increasingly narrow constraints of the school system. She poses two valid questions that continue to reverberate in the recesses of my mind; namely, (1) How can the field of education develop teachers to be mindful of students’ local practices while honing students’ school literacy skills? and (2) What kind of school infrastructure needs to be in place for such a successful practice?

In the study conducted by Catherine Beavis and Noel Gough, as demonstrated in Magic or Mayhem? New Texts and New Literacies in Technological Times, “unexpected and paradoxical questions arose for teachers about how to support students already fluent with print who seemed disoriented and at a disadvantage in this context through their unfamiliarity or clumsiness with digital literacy”. In addition, “issues of equity and assessment were, in many ways, turned on their heads, as students normally disengaged in school became highly focused and involved, while more print oriented, literary students were for the moment marginalized if they could not also operate in this visual, digital world”.

“As teachers, we must consider ways in which to incorporate” ... the integration of digital media ... “effectively into our teaching if for no other reason than our students will force us to change”, as these very “students are using these technologies, using different writing processes, researching in new forums and connecting critical thoughts in visionary new ways” (New Literacies for the Twenty-First Century by Ilana Snyder). In addition, Ms. Syder goes on to say that “if we are to begin to bridge the growing gulf between ourselves and our students, we cannot afford to remain ignorant of the characteristics of these new technologies and their complex cultural influences”. Certainly, “a more pressing reason to integrate digital media into our teaching relates to issues of power and how we and our students gain access to it”.

Who are we to deem what is an appropriate literacy and what is not? As per Guy Ewing, in The New Literacy Studies, “once people learn a particular literacy they have the tools to learn another. No literacy is limiting; all literacies are enabling”.

Stephen Downes speaks of polyfocal attention, hyper-grammar and multi-threaded interactions as being key operatives in The New Literacy. He also goes on to say that it “may be years before people cease to lament the decline of the literate student. But lament it we should not, because by avoiding the need to codify knowledge into sentences and seminars students today are acquiring not only different modes of learning, but much more efficient and effective modes of memory and recall. The new literacy may not be an even greater grasp of the fine points of language, but rather, a capacity to move beyond the limits of text and to manipulate experience directly”.

I guess it all comes down to what one deems important.

CRITICAL LITERACIES - RETHINKING OUR CLASSROOMS - SEMINAR RESPONSE (SPRING 2006)

I am absolutely astounded at how much I am continuing to learn in association with activities that I have long taken for granted; namely, reading and writing, thereby showing one that such is certainly reflective of the old adage that one never ceases to learn.

In keeping with my Gnostic soul searching, by way of old-fashioned reading and online exploration, I am learning that both critical thinking, creative thinking and critical literacy are important facets related to both mediums. There are many existent texts that simply cannot be verified and/or validated, aside from one’s beliefs. I am beginning to attempt to try and ascertain the agenda of each author that I visit while on my spirituality search.

Critical thinking involves logical thinking and reasoning, including skills such as comparison, classification, sequencing, cause/effect, patterning, webbing, analogies, deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, forecasting, planning, hypothesizing and critiquing, attributed to the so-called “left” brain function.

Creative thinking involves creating something new or original, the aim of which is to stimulate curiosity and promote divergence. Such involves the use of a multitude of skills such as flexibility, originality, fluency, elaboration, brainstorming, modification, imagery, associative thinking, attribute listing and metaphorical thinking, all of which are “right” brain activities.

Critical literacy pertains to the reader understanding the relationships that exist between their ideas and those presented by the author of the text by focusing on issues of power that, in turn, promote reflection, action and transformation. As per Luke and Freebody and the 4 tier model they employ, readers play not only the role of code breakers, meaning makers and text users, but also the role of text critics; a role that is relatively new to my understanding.

In the course of my readings, I was surprised to learn that critical thinking and critical literacy are two different terms, appreciating that distinction that Knobel and Heath were making between the two, especially when they wrote that “you need critical thinking to do critical literacy, but you can do critical thinking without doing critical literacy” (Critical Literacies: An Introduction, p 8).

After having conducted the required Google search, I feel that I have a more concise understanding as to the difference that exists between these two confusing, and oft-times conflicting, terms.

Knobel and Heath drew an fitting comparison when stating critical literacy to being something of a chameleon, “changing from context to context and from one educational purpose to another” (p 2) for this comment is a remarkably apt one, which is precisely why there are so many differing opinions as to what ‘critical literacy’ constitutes and what it involves.

I find it fascinating to make comparisons between North American and Australian models with reference to critical literacy. “For many North American reading educators, the term “critical literacy” refers to aspects of higher order comprehension” (Critical Literacy in Australia, Luke, p 3). As a means of comparison, Luke goes on to day that “in Australia, critical literacy agendas have traveled a different pathway” (p 3) where they begin “from the assumption that reading and writing are about social power and that a ‘critical’ literacy education would have to go beyond individual skill acquisition to engage students in the analysis and reconstruction of social fields” (p 3).

As always, I am amazed at how much farther ahead Australia is with respect to the development of ‘critical literacies’. Why is it that we tend to follow the path of the US when making changes within our own country? How can we go about insisting that Canada look at what is happening, first and foremost, in Australia? Even though there is no set formula that has emerged for engagement of critical literacy within the classroom, we could do well to learn from our Australian colleagues.

I was pleasantly surprised by the conclusion that Luke was able to draw; namely, that “perhaps it is not a question of whether and how government might bring ‘critical literacy’ under an umbrella of state curriculum policy, but rather a matter of government getting out of the way so that ‘critical literacies’ can be invented in classrooms. Perhaps it is absence and silence from the centre that enables” (p 13).

W. Morgan clearly stated that “Freire argued that passive, authoritarian and alienating forms of traditional instruction function to reproduce the material inequalities of a hierarchical society” (Mapping the terrain of critical literacy, p 7). Does this not say it all? In keeping, it is clear that our schools are in urgent need of reform.

It became even more imperative that something needs to change, at least for me, upon reading that “education is one means among many by which the dominant groups in society almost invisibly, almost unconsciously, maintain their hegemony and those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged are persuaded to consent to their inequality” (Morgan, p 7). This bodes that a vital and important question be asked.

Is this dominant hegemony actually maintained in a invisible and unconscious manner, or is it just more blatant to those who suddenly have eyes with which to see the existent reality? For me, such has been the very nature of this course.

There exists a “myth of education” that sees education as being a “great equalizer” (Shor, What is Critical Literacy?, p 5). According to Shor, “critical literacy challenges the status quo in an effort to discover alternative paths for self and social development” (page 1) in that “critical literacy is language use that questions the social construction of the self” (p 2). As Shor shares, “we can redefine ourselves and remake society, if we choose, through alternative rhetoric and dissident projects” (p1). It is both imperative and critical that we begin rethinking our lives in order to better promote justice in place of inequity. How can we act against this violence, the “violence of imposed hierarchy” (Shor, p 5)?

Shor makes mention of Horace Mann (born 1796) as stating, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity” (p 7) due to the fact that “intellectual castes would inevitably be followed by castes in privilege, honor and society” (Shor, p 7).

John Dewey (born 1859) affirmed that “a holistic curriculum based simultaneously in experience and philosophy, in working and thinking, in action and reflection” (Shor, p 7). Dewey saw “any social situation where people could not consult, collaborate, or negotiate” (Shor, p 11) as being “an activity of slaves rather than of a free people” (Shor, p 11).

We could do well to learn from these examples. To be for critical literacy “is to take a moral stand on the kind of just society and democratic education we want” (p 18).

It is also clear that “tolerance and eternal vigilance are the cause for a better world society and environment, now and in the future, for themselves and their fellows” (Morgan, p 15) as I believe this establishes a system of checks and balances that is of the utmost importance. As educators, we have a most evident responsibility to both ourselves and our students to have a hand in producing active and responsible citizens who will critique business, government, the media and other aspects of public life.

CRITICAL LITERACIES - RETHINKING OUR CLASSROOMS - SEMINAR REPORT (SPRING 2006)

The biggest issue that I am having to contend with is the fact that for the majority of my forty-three years, I have not been a critical literacy reader. I am even more shocked by my admittance, on these very pages, of this revelatory truth. Never having been one to question the accuracy of historical fact(s) and figures, I was merely content to absorb the information (history being my favorite subject), believing and trusting in the role models (teachers, book authors) that were dispersing the facts; hence, I found myself identifying with Gina in the Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years text (p 20). Quite simply, I was simply an empty (and yet eager) vessel to be filled. Mind you, I have learned these last 10+ years that when creating a genealogical database, one needs to be able to verify, validate and source information. Aside from my Gnostic soul searching where I am just beginning to employ critical literacy, I find myself easily relating to comments made by students in both Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years as well as Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching for Equity and Justice.

The remaining key issue appears to be how one passes along critical literacy knowledge to their children, current students as well as prospective students, for it is imperative that they learn to ......

• examine meaning within texts
• consider the purpose for the text and the composer’s motives
• understand that texts are not neutral (they represent particular views, silence other points of view and influence people’s ideas)
• question and challenge the ways in which texts have been constructed
• analyze the power of language in contemporary society
• emphasize multiple readings of texts (as people interpret texts in the light of their own beliefs and values, therefore texts will have different meanings to different people)
• have readers take a stance on issues
• provide readers with opportunities to consider and clarify their own attitudes and values
• provide readers with opportunities to take social action

...... if only to

• dismantle old values and reconstruct new ones, thereby challenging the status-quo
• critique portrayals of hierarchy and inequality
• dismiss the myths that exist with regards to various peoples
• eliminate the biases that exist in the curricula being taught
• to reverse the legacy of injustice (especially as it pertains to people of color, women, working-class people, the poor), thereby learning from history
• appreciate the diverse culture of which we are a part
• discover new ways of understanding relationships based on mutual respect and equality
• discover the excitement that comes from asserting oneself morally and intellectually
• encourage social action by dismissing apathy

How one goes about this, I am still not sure, especially as it is so new to me, but endeavor to learn I must.

As Joan Wink writes in Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the Real World, “... critical literacy involves knowing, lots of knowing. It also involves seeing, lots of seeing. It enables us to read the social practices of the world all too clearly. Critical literacy means that we understand how and why knowledge and power are constructed. By whom. For whom.”

She goes further to make the comparison between reading the word versus reading the world.

Reading the word pertains to
• decoding and encoding words
• bringing ourselves to the pages of the text
• making meaning from the text as it pertains to our experiences/cultures/knowledge base

Reading the world pertains to
• decoding and encoding the people around us
• decoding and encoding the community that surrounds us
• decoding and encoding the visible and invisible messages of the world
It is clear that I have much to learn.

CRITICAL LITERACY QUESTIONS

TEXTUAL PURPOSE(S)
What is this text about? How do we know?
Who would be most likely to read and/or view this text and why?
Why are we reading and/or viewing this text?
What does the composer of the text want us to know?

TEXTUAL STRUCTIRES AND FEATURES
What are the structures and features of the text?
What sort of genre does the text belong to?
What do the images suggest?
What do the words suggest?
What kind of language is used in the text?

CONSTRUCTION OF CHARACTERS
How are children, teenagers or young adults constructed in this text?
How are adults constructed in this text?
Why has the composer of the text represented the characters in a particular way?

GAPS AND SILENCES
Are there ‘gaps’ and ‘silences’ in the text?
Who is missing from the text?
What has been left out of the text?
What questions about itself does the text not raise?

POWER AND INTEREST
In whose interest is the text?
Who benefits from the text?
Is the text fair?
What knowledge does the reader/viewer need to bring to this text in order to understand it?
Which positions, voices and interests are at play in the text?
How is the reader or viewer positioned in relation to the composer of the text?
How does the text depict age, gender and/or cultural groups?
Whose views are excluded or privileged in the text?
Who is allowed to speak? Who is quoted?
Why is the text written the way it is?

WHOSE VIEW - WHOSE REALITY?
What view of the world is the text presenting?
What kinds of social realities does the text portray?
How does the text construct a version of reality?
What is real in the text?
How would the text be different if it were told in another time, place or culture?
INTERROGATING THE COMPOSER
What kind of person, and with what interests and values, composed the text?
What view of the world and values does the composer of the text assume that the
reader/viewer holds? How do we know?

MULTIPLE MEANINGS
What different interpretations of the text are possible?
How do contextual factors influence how the text is interpreted?
How does the text mean?
How else could the text have been written?
How does the text rely on inter-textuality to create its meaning?

CRITICAL LITERACIES - RETHINKING OUR CLASSROOMS - RETROSPECTIVE RESPONSE (SPRING 2006)

How does one, at age 43, start to embark, for the very first time, on the critical literacy trek? They say that it takes 21 days to create a new habit, thereby destroying an old one; hence, although such is difficult, it is not impossible. Something has to die (be destroyed) in order to be resurrected (born again). This is exactly how I am feeling as a result of this course.

As stated in my previous report, I was never one to question the accuracy of historical fact(s) and figures. Instead, I was quite content to simply absorb the information (history being my favorite subject), believing and trusting in the role models (teachers, books) that were dispersing the facts. In this way, I found myself identifying and agreeing with Gina in the Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years text (p 20). I looked upon myself as an empty vessel to be filled, in much the same way that a sponge absorbs and retains water. Memorizing facts, if only to regurgitate them back on a test or exam, was something that I excelled at. Unfortunately, the educational system still appears to reflect this very format.
The same can be stated for a great many University level courses; at least, until I enrolled in this particular Masters program.

Although there have been moments of frustration, exasperation, disillusionment, anger and bewilderment at exploring beyond my safety net, I find that I am learning to enjoy the challenge invoked by the critical literacy approach. Much like the Gnostic soul searcher that I am in terms of my personal spirituality, I feel like I have been in a deep sleep for most of my life, only to be part of a current global awakening. I am finding this to also reflect how I am feeling with respect to critical literacy.

We are what we say and do. The way we speak and are spoken to helps shape us into the people we become. Through words and actions, we build ourselves in a world that is also building us. In keeping, we can redefine who we are. In essence, this is where critical literacy begins. In a world viewed by as neither finished, just or humane, depending on one’s belief system, it is of the utmost importance to question power relations, discourses and identities.

Critical literacy challenges the status quo. We know we are on the right track when we begin to question the social construction of the self, for it is in this approach that we are serving to challenge the status quo. In rethinking our lives, as a means of doing our best to better promote social justice in place of social inequity, the world of critical literacy connects the political, the personal, the public, the private, the global, the local, the economic and the pedagogical. Nothing escapes the re-vamping of one’s pedagogy.

Critical literacy, then, is an attitude towards history, as Kenneth Burke might have said, or a dream of a new society against the power now in power, as Paulo Freire proposed (What Is Critical Literacy, Shor).

Critical literacy is a pedagogy for those teachers and students morally disturbed by “savage inequalities” as Jonathon Kozol named them, for those who wish to act against the violence of imposed hierarchy and forced hunger (What Is Critical Literacy, Shor).

Friere was of the belief that the teacher had to be the expert; that the teacher had to be the most knowledgeable. The difficulty herein lies in thinking that the teacher is the only one with knowledge, for in saying too much or too little, too soon or too late, ultimately damages the group process.

Although I wholeheartedly adhere to the definition of critical literacy as attributed to Friere (cited above), I believe that there are different means in which one can go about working towards achieving this goal. In keeping, I believe that each of us has a dual role to play, for all are both teachers and students, experts and novices.

As one explores the relationships between texts, contexts, relevance, authenticity and diversity, one can see that there exists a connection between critical literacy and reading. Originally, Freebody and Luke (1990) argued that reading involved four chief roles; namely, (1) code breaker (translation: How do I crack this?), (2) text participant (translation: What does this mean?), (3) text user (translation: What do I do with this, here and now?) and (4) text analyst (translation: What does this mean to me?)

In more recent iterations of their model of literacy, Luke and Freebody (1997, 1999) have changed the terminology from “roles” to reflect a sociological, rather than psychological, approach to literacy. They have moved from four roles, to four practices, to four resources, which are considered elements of literacy as a cumulative and socially situated repertoire.

Their key argument remains that a social view of reading directs teachers’ attention to socio-political contexts and issues in reading instruction. They suggest that critical literacy practices might include, amongst others:

• asking in whose interests particular texts work
• examining multiple and conflicting texts
• examining the historical and cultural contests of discourses in texts
• reading texts against one another
• comparing the vocabularies and grammars of related texts
• investigating how readers are positioned by the ideologies in texts
• making multiple passes through texts
• transforming and redesigning texts

(Critical Literacy: Maximizing children’s investment in school learning, Comber).

Children begin schooling with different literacies and they leave school having taken up, discarded, adapted and appropriated others (Critical Literacy: Maximizing children’s investment in school learning, Comber).

There is no neutrality associated with critical literacy.

The manner in which it shall be achieved is multiple, dynamic and forever changing. There are no set techniques that have been developed that one can follow with ease.

To be for critical literacy is to take a moral stand on the kind of just society and democratic education we want for our children, our students, ourselves (What Is Critical Literacy, Shor).

I see the mere identification that such an approach to literacy, both crucial and critical, is of absolute necessity. I shall continue to embrace the newness of this literacy approach, both for myself, and my prospective students.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years
Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching for Equity and Justice

Critical Literacy: Maximizing children’s investment in school learning
(website article by Barbara Comber)
http://www.unisa.edu.au/cslplc/publications/Critical%20Literacy%20Comber.html

What Is Critical Literacy (website article by Ira Shor)
http://www.lesley.edu/journals/jppp/4/shor.html