Theories and Models of Literacy: Final Reflection

    This course was a perfect combination of theory and practice for me. Just before the semester at City College began, I started working as a Writing Assistant in the CUNY Start program at LaGuardia Community College. I was able to see so many of the theories and trends we discussed in T and M play out in the classroom and I also saw parallels between the methods Professor Gleason used in our graduate class and the teaching tools we use in the Reading and Writing program at LAGCC. In both settings the students are from diverse cultural backgrounds, and in both settings these differences are not only acknowledged but also appreciated as contributing to an interesting dynamic. There are vocalized and transparent goals to the teaching and learning that takes place in both classrooms and an underlying respect that shapes the pedagogical dynamic.

    I am grateful that Professor Gleason reduced the number of writing assignments from the original syllabus for the course. This allowed for more time to complete the vast amount of reading and careful discussion board posts on varying topics. I feel lucky to have learned about such brilliant theorists as Freire, Heath, Gee, and Purcell-Gates, to name a few. The videos of Adam Banks addressing the CCCC and the Freire interview were powerful and will stick with me. The incorporation of technology into the curriculum in the form of digital assignments and videos is still new to me and I am getting more comfortable with these types of assignments and presentations. For that I am also grateful. The visit to the Rare Books Library at Columbia University was also a highlight of the course; it set the stage for learning about literacy from its early beginnings and helped contextualize the readings for the remainder of the course.  

    On a closing note, Professor Gleason and I have discussed possible topics for future L & L courses, and I would like to add a course on Freire to the list. I feel that we only grazed the surface and I would love to delve deeper into his work and explore the implications and applications of his theories on social justice and power dynamics in education. 

Thanks for another great semester!

Emily 

Emily Miller Blog Post #4: Valuable lessons from Victoria Purcell-Gates

11/22/15

In her introduction to Other People’s Words, Purcell-Gates talks about the shift in perspective in explaining why poor minority children cannot read and write as well as middle class children. As Purcell-Gates sees it, and I agree, the failure is with our schools, not with the children or their parents, who are often poor and low literate as well.  More broadly, it is the failure of the political and societal systems that perpetuate the standards by which we measure literacy success and the methods we have historically employed to educate (or not) our poorest children.  To quote Purcell-Gates, “Deficit explanations, however, are being replaced within research and theoretical circles with one that views all learners from a sociocultural theory of learning” (4). Sadly this shift didn’t happen sooner but it’s still good news, and acts to dispel the myth that something is inherently wrong or missing in homes that don’t prepare children for what happens in the traditional classroom. Different is no longer equated with deficient, and, as Percell-Gates says, “We can no longer make judgments about the abilities and/or disabilities of peoples from sociocultural goups different from our own, using “our” group as the standard (no matter which group is ‘ours’)”(4).

Purcell-Gates proceeds to observe, interpret and ultimately impact the lives of two low-literate people, Jenny and Donny. She offers us a glimpse into what’s not working in our schools and what is possible.  Jenny is the true heroine of Purcell-Gates’ book. She imagines a brighter future for her family and recognizes the cycle of illiteracy that will continue unless she intervenes to stop it.  Jenny learns to read and write as an adult, and she advocates for her children so that they will not slip through the cracks of the same system that failed her when she was in 7th grade and dropped out of school. Purcell-Gates provides details about her interactions with Jenny and Donny and we witness her success at helping them learn to read and write, despite the fact that they had limited to no prior experience with printed material. I feel her most helpful advice to educators, though, comes on page 193, where she outlines the realities that separate the poor from the middle class, and what we must do as a society to correct the inequities that exist in education:

First, we must recruit and train teachers who know, accept, and celebrate the cultures from which their children come. .. The second area in which we must change is the way in which we train and treat our teachers (193).

Published almost 20 years ago, Other People’s Words is nonetheless still relevant and insightful in its perspective. Purcell-Gates offers an interesting ethnographic account of her time with Jenny and Donny, as well as presenting valuable suggestions for teachers of low literacy populations.

Emily Miller Blog Post #3: Freire’s Impact

11/17/15

One of the most striking things about Freire’s work is the timelessness of his ideals. Pedagogy of the Oppressed was first published in 1970 - that’s 45 years ago! Everything he says is right on the mark and is as relevant to education today in NYC as it must have been in rural Brazil in the l960’s. The oppressed/oppressor dynamic that Freire describes is embedded in every sphere of our society. Our nation was founded in opposition to British oppression, but in reality our government has it’s own sordid history of oppression over many populations by those in power. This is relevant because Friere reminds us that all our actions as teachers are political.  I think that Freire is asking us to continually question the underlying power relationships that exist in and outside the classroom.

The “banking” method that Freire describes is something we all need to guard against as we look critically at the dynamic in our classrooms. When the teacher simply feels that he/she has all the knowledge and it’s his/her job to relay that knowledge to the students who know nothing, that’s the “banking” method. That’s also an example of an oppressed/oppressor dynamic at work in the classroom. This ties in with Heath’s and Purcell-Gates’ work as well because if the students have nothing to offer then there is no need to consider students’ literacy backgrounds or styles when designing and implementing curricula. There’s no room for Adam Banks’ suggestions in the “banking” method (no pun intended!) The opposite of the “banking” method is what Freire calls “problem-posing” education. As Freire says, “Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming –as unifinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality.” (84)

Every Freirian concept is worthy of lengthy scholarly discussion and I am excited to hear everyone’s commentary on Freire’s work. I think that Pedagogy of the Oppressed should be required reading in every teacher-education program. I went to school in the 1970’s and 80’s and I never heard of Paulo Freire until my daughter brought his work to my attention two years ago. I am grateful for the opportunity to study Freire in this context and I hpe to apply his principles to my interaction with my students.

Emily

Emily Miller – Blog Post #2:  Response to Heath’s Research

11/1/15

I believe Shirley Brice Heath’s ethnographic research is valuable in pointing out the differences in literary behavior between three geographically proximate communities. She reports on the interactive behaviors around literacy of adults and children from birth until they are school age. It was interesting to read about the details of the homes, the family and community routines and how reading and storytelling is incorporated into the children’s lives. It was also interesting to read actual excerpts of dialogue between adults and children at home, in the community and at school. The children’s language and literacy development is uniquely similar within but drastically different between the three communities. There are two aspects of Heath’s commentary that I found puzzling. One was that she sets out to disprove or question that the literary traditions in non-mainstream homes is responsible for those children’s failure in school, but then draws that very correlation. The other confusing aspect is that she does not allow race to enter into the comparison between the communities in Way with Words.  I plan to address these contradictions from a personal perspective - as an author of an ethnographic study for a class last spring, and as a teacher of adult students, many of whom are first learning how to read critically and connect personally with what they read.

Having completed an ethnographic project for Teaching Writing in Diverse Contexts  last semester, I approached the reading of Way with Words and What No Bedtime Story Means from a familiar perspective. I expected an unbiased account of the literacy rituals in the three settings Heath explored. However, the fact that Heath correlated the children’s success in preschool and higher grades with the way they derived meaning from and interacted with text sounded like a value judgment. I remember a graduate student who could not grasp that an ethnographic study was by definition an objective reporting of an event or a series of events, complete with photographs and detailed descriptions of setting and dialogue. He/she could not validate the purpose of an ethnographic study without it being an opportunity to evaluate/criticize the setting and the parties involved. The rest of the class observed, transcribed and reported objectively on our chosen settings and learned a great deal from the process. I tried to appreciate Heath’s study as objective but found it difficult. Heath cautioned her audience in the prologue of Way with Words not to view the comparison of literary practices between Roadville (white families) and Trackton (black families) as a racial one. But how can one NOT consider race when comparing two groups who are racially different? How can it NOT matter that discrimination against African Americans is deeply rooted in our nation’s history and has always limited their access to fair and equal housing, healthcare and education? I feel like something was disingenuous about Heath’s narrative. Either she should have simply reported the different literacy traditions in Way with Words, or she should not refer to her work as ethnographic, but rather as a prescription for home literary practices that will lead to the greatest success in the mainstream classroom.

In terms of my students in a college readiness program, I feel that many of them did not benefit from early exposure to books as vehicles to entertain, enlighten, comfort or inform. The reasons for this are varied and surfaced on the reading surveys that we asked them to complete during orientation. Many of the students were raised by single parents or parents who worked nights or were too tired to read to them at bedtime. Many don’t have parents who read fluently either in English or their native language. Many grew up in homes with limited children’s book libraries. These same students view reading even now as a means to an end, rather than as satisfying and enjoyable in and of itself.  I feel that as reading/writing instructors it is our responsibility to acknowledge that our students’ families have storytelling and literary traditions that might look very different from those in white middle class families, but are no less valid. We need to acknowledge that our mainstream classrooms ask for a level of close reading, interpretation, participation, and application that may not be a part of our students’ home culture. In order for the students to succeed in college we need to do our best to meet them at their home base and help them grow as readers, writers and critical thinkers.  Heath’s work prompted me to think about my students’ early literacy practices and how the development of language in their homes shaped who they are as learners today. Her research was conducted decades ago and feels dated in many ways but nonetheless it is valuable in looking at the literary practices in the homes of a variety of cultures and how they play out in the classroom.

Emily Miller

10/12/15

Blog Post #1: In the Beginning…Chap 2

By the standards of 14th Century England I would be considered an ignorant barbarian, having no knowledge of Latin or of the Bible. I was raised in the Jewish religion and attended a nonsectarian public school. I was never assigned or encouraged to read the Bible. My limited Jewish education centered on the Ten Commandments, the Holocaust and Reformed Jewish holidays and traditions. The only reference I recall (and not in any detail) to ancient religious writings was to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Consequently, I approached the readings for this course about the Bible with much trepidation. However, even with my limited background, I found the three chapters of In The Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture by Alister McGrath a surprisingly fast and interesting read.

The visit to the Rare Books Library put the reading into context for me because it gave me a visual and tactile starting point. Of course we take for granted that any book we desire is available in English with one-click ordering from Amazon. To read and learn about the political and social influences leading to the first English translation of the Bible was surprising and interesting. It is only recently that I feel native-born Americans are starting to appreciate that English is not superior to other languages. The trend has shifted and it is now common for schools to require a certain proficiency in an “other than English” language. People of my generation are rightfully embarrassed that we cannot communicate in any other language while most people from other nations speak and understand at least some English. All this is to say how surprising it was to read that English was considered “..the language of peasants, incapable of expressing anything other than the crudest and most basic of matters” (McGrath 24).

Equally as interesting to me was the parallel between English Nationalism and the acceptance of the English language as suitable for Bible translation. McGrath describes the dominance of French culture throughout England and all of Western Europe in the 11th through 13th centuries. French was considered the language of the elite and dominated the political and religious domains. It was in the 15th century that English Nationalism thrived under Elizabeth I and the English language began replacing French in educational, political and literary arenas. Until then, Latin and French were seen as the only acceptable languages for Bible translation and religious teachings. England’s military victories over France in the 1450’s contributed to the elevation of the English language. But it wasn’t until the 1500’s that the divide between the language of the Clergy and that of the rest of the people could no longer be justified or ignored. There still remained a resistance from the Church as well as academia to accept English as the dominant language, but in the end it did prevail. The implications of this shift are interesting to me and raise questions about the relationship of power to language. I am curious to apply this concept to the debate about teaching Standard English to teens and adults today.

Multiliteracies Paper

Scribal Literacy Paper

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxhUg0t3XawreFhEU2g3WjE5Wlk