Final Paper

I have put a bit more thought into the final paper and have pretty much come to a decision about my topic. We have spent a fairly large amount of time in this class on the concept of literacy introduced by James Gee. I feel like Gee's writing on literacy has been the backbone of much of our discussions and writings. So I have decided to hit upon Gee's idea of conflict between discourses and focus not on conflicts that might occur due to socio-economic conditions or language barriers, but rather on conflicts that might occur due to a learning disability. There are many students who possess average or above average intelligence but have difficulty in the school environment because of various learning disabilities, dyslexia for instance. How can we as future educators recognize this and what can we do to facilitate the acquisition of the discourse? Look for these questions to be ultimately and definitively answered in my paper, or at least addressed in a semi-thorough manner.

Final Paper

Since we have gotten a little off schedule and no one else has posted yet, I am not sure if we are still supposed to blog about our final paper topics tonight. Additionally, the final paper topic options have not been made available to us yet, but I am planning to write about the idea I last blogged about, discussing functional literacy and the contemporary focus in US schools on drilling kids on reading skills in relationship to more Freireian ideas about educating for social justice and specific quotes and ideas perpetuated from the Bush administration, for ex. Karl Rove saying openly that there can be too much of a good thing, since people of a certain level of education begin to vote democractically, in addition to contrasting Bush II's approach to "hearts and minds" with that of Myles Horton--the former aiming to change people's hearts, the latter respecting people's hearts and finding them to be in the right place, and moving their formation (education) from that point of understanding. And things. :D

Ideas for final paper- Lucia Torres

After everything we have read about literacy and writing' my only thoughts for a final paper would be to write about what we plan to do with all the information we've learned from the course text. I guess I could see myself write about how my view of literacy has changed or grown stronger, and what i plan on doing to implement my ideologies as a future educator? probably even comparing the pros and cons of both sides, and how my ideologies could effect the mass population of students.

Final Paper

For my final paper i plan i using what i wrote for my last paper. I really like the subject that I discussed and i think that i will be able to use outside information to defend my points. Also i think that i will bring in other essays that we have read to express different positions.

Functional Literacy and Its Discontents: How Limiting Literacy Disturbs Democracy

Basing my paper around The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, I want to talk about undereducation and the idea of 'functional literacy' as a way those in power educate people just enough to be workers and soldiers, perpetuating the current economic and social practices as well as defending them militarily, but not enough to participate in metadiscourse, to critique the dominant culture-- ultimately because it is easier to mobilize citizens to fight other nations or see one another or irrelevent external peoples as enemies if you can convince them, through supposition, that there is not a war going on within their own nation, if you make them believe most of them are not on the front lines of it every day. This argument will be centered of Freire's theories of banking education as a pedagogy of domination that works towards imprinting the oppressed majority with the idoelogy of the people in power. I want to center my paper on Karl Rove's quote that: "As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing." Furthermore, I want to discuss the instructional methods and methods of assessment (particularly standardized testing) which produce a complacent population rather than inciting a critically engaged one.

Writings from the class that I would consider in order to Freire would be Gee, Gere, and perhaps a little something from Bartholomae. Other texts I have been reading or plan to read in the next week that I might bring into my writing-thinking process for this would be We Make the Road By Walking: A Conversation (between Myles Horton and Paulo Freire) of Education and Social Change, some of James A. Berlin's thoughts on rhetoric, writing, and culture (especially as it relates to literature and composition studies) and as many of bell hooks' books on Teaching to Transgress, Teaching Community, and Teaching Critical Thinking as I can get through in the next week or so that school is slowed down to celebrate genocide. I hope this paper is required to be substantially longer than the others because I perceive my brain exploding with ideas.

Final Paper hmmm

I'm just going to ramble here as it might help me think. Literacy and education are the primary topics for the course. We all know this by now of course. James Gee's definition of literacy has kind of been a cornerpiece of the course I feel, so I think I would like to use him again. Eubanks and Schaeffer and Bartholomae I've pretty much moved past. The topics of education, socio-economic status (class and race), and literacy are interesting to me so maybe I can get into that a little bit more. For external sources I really have no clue where to start, but I'm sure I'll figure something out, something local perhaps since this is where I plan to work as an educator. I think that's a start of an idea: Education, socio-economic status, literacy or even illiteracy, and good ol' Milwaukee. I need a question to answer though.

I would be interested in using topics similar to the last paper. I think they were all very interesting and I would be happy to write one of the one's I did not yet choose. It will be expanded too since we will be using an outside source.

Final Paper

Upon reviewing everything from the semester, I think what I would like to focus on for this paper would be about how to apply Discourse and  literacy to being a teacher? How can I use these ideas to become a good teacher? How can I meet all the diverse needs of my students? I have created so many questions while reading each article. After each article, I think about how she would apply these ideas into my own teaching. It has changed how I look at literacy and now how I plan to teach it to my students. It far expends what I previously thought about reading and writing. It is far more in depth that what I previously thought.

The articles that we have read in class have really changed my ideas on literacy and how to apply it in a classroom setting. I think that for our final paper it would be good to see how we all have changed our thoughts about literacy and what we believe is the most important aspect of it and how as future educators we can apply it to a classroom setting. I know that i personally have gained many things that i someday plan on applying to my future classroom and it would be interesting to see what everyone else has gained and how they plan on applying it to their future career.

final paper ideas

After reading all of the articles/essays for this class this semester, I have learned a lot more about literacy and understand it differently than I did at the beginning of the semester. For my final paper I think I would like to write about what I have learned about literacy and education or maybe how I will apply what I’ve learned in my classroom when I become a teacher. This class has had a lot of value for me as a future educator and I hope I am able to use what I have learned from this class when teaching my students.

What's next?

In this class I have really learned a lot. I have found myself pondering what I would do as a teacher many times. I have also found this class a great way to learn from others. A lot of the time, while I was posting, I would just spill all of my thoughts onto the screen. Because I did this, much of what I wrote did not make sense. Because of this it is good to have other classmates who will question what I type, and give their suggestions as well.

I really liked reading about ethnicities. I am basing my 2nd paper on this, and the Magic Door. Because of this, I feel that reading more about disabled children would be cool. I have worked with a child who has Autism for many years now, and love to learn more about it. I think it would be awesome for us to read either teacher, parent, or child written pieces based around disabilities, such as Autism. I feel that many teachers are not prepared for children who have disabilities in their classrooms. It has become the Special Education's teacher's position to help only these children. For this reason, I think it would be good for us to learn and scope out what we would do in situations with children with Disabilities.

Last Paper

After all of the articles we have read and discussed in this class, I think most of our opinions about literacy and its applications have changed. We have learned how literacy is like an ‘identity kit’ made of discourses, which are different for everyone. Now, I think the topic of discussion is how we should apply what we learned this semester in the future. For many people in the class, this is probably going to be through teaching. A helpful article about the teacher-student relationship is the one we read for Thursday by Freire. However, a more complicated topic could be how the knowledge of literacy can affect those of us who are not teaching majors, or English majors. I am going for biochemistry, so how can I apply this material into my future? 

Paper Ideas

After looking over everything that we have read and discussed this semester in relations to literacy, Discourse and education in general I think the main question that I have is How can I use what I've learned this semester to be a better teacher when I move on in my professional life and I am teaching a class of my own. What are the pitfalls that I need to watch out for? What are the solutions to the dangerous grounds that teachers get stuck in when it comes to making first appearance judgments and integrating different cultures into lessons?

Theory of Evolution

My conception of literacy surely has changed this semester. As I previously posted to this blog I hadn't really given it much thought before. My previous definition was the ability to read and write, or more casually, knowledge of something (e.g computer "literate"). My definition has now expanded more fully into the realm of "knowledge", even expertise, or as James Gee might put it, fluency. By fluency I mean fluency in what you are doing right now, whether that is school, work, playing basketball, or any other activity. However, I don't think I have to abandon the old definition. Being literate on a very basic level means the ability to read and write. As someone looking forward to working in a low income school as a special ed teacher, this definition of literacy remains important. Also important (and more closely related to Mr. Gee) is the notion that we are born to certain literacies (Discourses). As I go forward in my education and career this is something I will have to be mindful of and work to maximize the potential of my students, regardless of the primary Discourse.

I have grown a little in my ideas of what it means to educate too and this class has played some part in that. As I stated above, as an educator my goal is for my students to do everything they are capable of to the best of their abilities. Successful education is not passive, it is involved, and it must look beyond the day the student leaves my classroom. I want to prepare my students for life as it is in this world so that they may prosper to the extent to which they are capable.

I'm not really sure if my writing has changed this semester. Prior to this semester I had not been in school for 17 years, so writing has really been limited. One thing I can be certain of is that in my formal writing I have been careful to include as much bullshit as possible, and in my less formal writing to try to maintain my sense of humor while I discuss the matters at hand with my classmates. I am a firm believer that the sheer act of doing something over and over will improve your abilities, so I must have improved at least a little this semester. I know I have. I am finding it easier to come up with things to say as the semester goes on. Writing exercises that creativity muscle in the brain which only gets stronger the more it works out.

My Evolving Thought on Literacy, Education and Writing: Extensions of Prior Knowledge

Literacy, education and the writing itself: how have my thoughts changed? Well, I guess I am a sort of super-senior...I have been in the academic writing game on and off since 2006 and have been immersing myself very seriously in ideas about literacy, education, reading, and writing for the past year pretty much nonstop. So, I guess, I would say that this class hasn't drastically transformed how I conceptualize those things, but it has pressed me to extend my previous understandings and notions and to make new connections that I had never made before. I find myself drawing a lot on knowledge I have from the linguistics classes I took a year ago, especially English 404: Language, Power, and Identity. I don't feel like my ideas are changing as much as they are growing and evolving with new information and new connections I can make as I analyze the articles, discussing them with peers and writing about them in my papers.

Additionally, I feel the dialogue with other classmates has helped me learn more about group discussion and peer assessment in collaboration with my advanced writing workshop—figuring out how to give feedback that helps without hurting feelings, figuring out how to get the kind of feedback you want and/or need to proceed with your writing process. I thought the peer assessments in here might be easier since it is online and that people might feel more comfortable giving criticism with the buffer shield of the internet, but it seems to have unraveled the same way they tend to in any classroom community: the first time around everyone is wary and does not want to offend, the second time around people have voiced a desire for more pressing feedback...as the class becomes more of a community, students feel more comfortable giving and receiving feedback. Obviously, some people will always have difficulty taking criticism, and some will always struggle to be honest without being hurtful, but in our own ways I think our dialogue has evolved naturally, I can't say the peer assessment process in this class has gone much differently than in my other workshop class despite my other class being f2f.

I am not sure what I want to write my final paper on yet, however. I suppose Freire might give me some ideas...Freire always gives me ideas...something about education as a liberatory project, I am sure that will be the main idea of my paper as some variation of that is always the main idea of my papers. :)

Another long one! READER BEWARE

My ideas of literacy have changed substantially, mirroring changes in my own academic life as I sort of "began anew" this semester.

As I may have mentioned previously, I was a music major for a Really Long Time.  I was about three classes away from completing my degree (well, kind of) after switching voice professors, transferring from University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, and switching (at long last) from voice performance to musical theatre to music education to a plain ol' BA in voice... when I realized it wasn't what I was meant to do.

A few days ago I met with the English department chair to work on declaring a new major.  He legitimately thought I was crazy for wanting to switch, but believed that I'd thought about it long and hard enough to be completely sure it was a change I needed to make.  The truth is, what really drove me to receive three F's last fall semester was a long-standing culmination of teachers not really "getting it" - "it" being literacy.  It wasn't necessarily on my behalf; I was competent enough (and rather more than competent) to get by in classes with little to no extra encouragement.  Teachers were then able to focus their energies (if they so desired) on the development of other students who may have struggled more than I.

As a result, I never learned how to be a good student.  Because I was constantly able to cruise along on the surface, turning out what was my minimum amount of effort, and still be recognized as the "top of the class", I became arrogant in my own abilities.  This started primarily in elementary school, when i recognized that I was naturally doing well what all the other students struggled to do.  I struggled a few times in middle school, but the teachers of those classes recognized my strengths, and allowed me to make up for a semester's worth of slacking off by completing one big assignment.  I came out with A's, and nobody ever knew the difference (could I tell you anything at all about The Crucible, or A Tale of Two Cities, or The Color Purple, or any of those other literary works we read?  Nope.  Didn't really read 'em).  Still, I received praise on everything I did, even those things that I turned out at the last second, without doing any work at all.

In college, coming into music studies, I had even more of an advantage.  I didn't really take any Gen. Ed. classes, and tended to immediately drop those I did sign up for in favor of some applied music class.  My advantage?  I played piano proficiently (nobody else knew how) and I had perfect pitch (nobody else did).  As a result, I was able to entirely skip some courses that all the other freshmen were required to take; I was singled out as a favorite early on in all of my vocal ensembles, and every professor was begging to hand me scholarships.  Keep in mind that this is UWGB, which has no arts school and little music program to speak of.  There were some reasonably talented people around, but most had to spend hours practicing to get there, whereas I was able to walk into my voice lessons every week and sightread a piece on the spot.

What I denied at the time, and what I realize now, is that in music, and in academics, I never really learned anything.  Saving all my stuff for the last minute enabled me to get a good grade, and give a good impression, but I never retained any of the stuff I spewed out in either medium.  I put out some great performances, and wrote some great papers, and scored really high on some Calculus tests, but I couldn't get into the finer points of any of those items with you now.  The only things I ever really retained were the things taught me by people I respected, and people who respected me.  Those people were few and far between.

ANYWAY, (can you tell Sarah influenced me here??!!) coming into this semester, I had a bright new outlook.  I pretty much took a semester off, and centered myself again.  I got out of music (music education can be so toxic) and got away from all the extra distractions inherent to that field - ego playing a LARGE role here - and figured out what it was I would actually like to study.  Music is my favorite pastime, and I had a good four years learning its finer points (though I don't remember them now), but I realized that I cannot take music seriously as a form of study.  It's unfortunate because it was the one thing I was truly passionate about for a great number of years.  However, music and academics truly do not mix, and it took almost a full education for me to realize that.

Realizing that I would like to study English (my second favorite subject in school, but more challenging than music which was just fun) opened a lot of doors for me this semester.  I was able to consider myself as a writer and as an academic again, not just as a moderately talented person with little chance of succeeding in a career.  This class in particular has really helped me focus my notions of academic learning.  Although I wouldn't necessarily like to pursue a field of study that this class presents, it's helped me so far to broaden my perception of how I approach my studies here.

I've correctly identified myself as a bullshitter - as Dr. O. pointed out to me, I use much clearer syntax in my writing on the blog and in posts than I do in my essays - and I am taking steps to figure out when this is occurring, so i can find more of a personal identity (both in my writing and in my life).  I've also started to expand my perception of other students in my classes.  When I see someone not exactly pulling their weight, I won't automatically assume that s/he is a slacker or is less intelligent or what not.  That person just might not yet be fully literate in the discourse being used, or has special circumstances, and needs to be approached in a different way.

To make a (long, long) story short, my perception of literacy and education has changed drastically over the course of this semester, and in my final paper I hope to explore this with more coherency and other things to back it up.  I always used to think of my case as exceptional, and I think this class has brought about a sense of humility that's taught me that my case is completely typical.  Which, for me, is a good thing.

Change of Literacy

Like others in the class, I associated literacy with the ability to read and write. I thought I was more literate than most, because I am always reading and writing. However, after reading the articles for this class, a lot of these beliefs have changed. Eubanks & Schaeffer and Bartholomae were the first authors to really change my mind on what literacy really was. I didn’t know that it could be the way you act or how you fit into a social group. But now, I can see how literacy works. It is about becoming one with a group or thought process. An example I see in my life is my spanish speaking skills. As far as language and grammar goes, I am nearly fluent in spanish. My father’s parents are Mexican immigrants, so my father and his family have a mexican background. When I am around them, I do not feel literate in spanish. I may be able to speak the language correctly, but I do not know the slang or actions of the spanish culture. I never really knew why I didn’t quite fit in, but now I know it is because I do not have all the same values and beliefs to be literate in spanish. I think this also relates to Gee’s discussion of primary vs secondary Discourses.

Also, my academic work has noticed a difference in literacy due to the idea of bullshit. I see a lot of bullshit in my work that I wish wasn’t there. When I feel myself trying to sound more intelligent in an academic subject than I really know I worry I am bullshitting my work. It has made me take a lot more time to research the subject material, because I know it won’t benefit me to get by in school, only to go out in the world and have no idea what I am talking about.

Overall, I feel that Gee has influenced my idea of literacy the most, with his discussion of discourses. The other articles have taught me how literacy affects most aspects in my life. I believe literacy is more than just a definition of knowing how to read and write, but more of an “identity kit” (borrowing words from Gee).

HOW you feel your ideas about literacy, education, and the *writing itself- Lucia Torres

I really don’t believe that my views on literacy, education, and writing have changed; if anything my ideals have only become stronger. I really believe that as a future educator it really relies on my shoulders to promote the teachings that it is are duty to know how to teach all “types” of students from all different backgrounds; that most likely we will always have in our public school classrooms. Literacy and writing should never self reflect the surrounding community; it should always surround how successful that teacher was at teaching the materials/tools necessary in accomplishing all tasks that are asked by students to accomplish.

ABRIDGED version = LAST 3 PARAGRAPHS. (Everything else just provides context; may be unnecessary ;-) )

Several years ago, I “dropped out” of school. Feeling uneasy about my decision, I wrote a journal entry around that time detailing the “intangible strengths” (as I had called it then) I possessed and had gained through my partial undergraduate education. While lamenting the idea that I would fend through my future without even a 4-year degree, I counted my qualities that I felt would ensure that I would not be without “opportunities.” The qualities I numbered off where my own amateur renderings of many of the forms of “reading capital” defined within the Compton-Lilly reading.

It wasn’t without guilt that I acknowledged that—although I was embarking on a struggle (trying to “make it” without completing my degree)—I was privileged. I was privileged in the way that I was relatively rich in “capital”—particularly, to use Compton-Lilly’s terms, in ‘embodied reading capital’ and ‘economic reading capital’ (I owned and had read a lot of the “right” books, and also had a laptop/internet access, which I could use to help replace the ‘social reading capital’ I was depriving myself of by dropping out of school). I felt that my ‘objectified reading capital’ was above average for non-academic settings; I acknowledged that I would still stand out as a more attractive “choice” to many employers when compared against other applicants who may have only a high school education—or less—or who may possess stigmatized qualities of marginalized communities. Though I didn’t believe I would be completing my education at the time, I knew that I “seemed” educated, and that it would be a vital advantage to me without a college degree. I had titled this journal entry “Survivor’s Guilt.”

This “survivor’s guilt” has long existed in me, though in less conscious ways. When I was an elementary student at MPS, I was often favored by my teachers, and I was a special favorite of the principal of the school (he pulled me out of my fifth-grade class one day to commend my writing abilities and to encourage me to develop them). At the time, as a child, I had an awareness that I had advantages that many of my classmates didn’t (being from a white family that raised me under a lot of middle-class influences). Even in my own family, as the oldest child, my dad told me that he and my mom read to me continuously for the first few years of my life. They tried to do the same with my brother, but, since he was the second child, they didn’t have as much time to read to him as they had to me. My sister, as the third child, had even less reading time with my parents. My dad commented to me that he noticed a trend, and worried that it was because of the different amounts of reading attention each of us had received: I was the best and most enthusiastic reader, while my brother had a lukewarm interest in reading, and my sister wasn’t very interested at all. As a child, I felt simultaneously lucky and concerned for my siblings.

As I got older, though, I began to take these advantages in my early life for granted, and for awhile believed that I had a special inherent “skill” or “gift” for reading and writing. My pride flared in sixth grade, when my mom reported that my Language Arts teacher had praised my reading comprehension at parent-teacher conferences, and had noted that I was the only student in the class to make frequent use of the classroom library. In high school, I was able to ‘effortlessly’ get high grades on many of my papers and reports, thanks to my ability to produce papers high in ‘objectified reading capital.’ I finished high school, and began college, cultivating an ‘elitist’ attitude about reading. I felt a sense of superiority for “naturally gravitating” to more complex texts with high social status—texts that many of my peers had no interest in, and didn’t seek out themselves. I felt a sense of superiority for finding meaning and enjoyment in assigned texts that my peers didn’t seem to have much of an appreciation for (or understanding of). I began to enjoy referencing texts that were unfamiliar to most of my peers—admittedly, I enjoyed the feeling of displaying my exclusive knowledge, and forming cliquish bonds with people who shared it.

Thankfully, UWM promotes more progressive views about education. While I think I am, deep-down, NOT someone who generally desires to dominate over others, I think in my first year of college, I was impressionable enough that I could have been consumed by these immature, elitist attitudes if I had happened to attend to a school that encouraged them. As time went on, I found myself in classes that were impressively pretty even-handed in applying value to the contributions of all class members, despite the relative “reading capital” they may (or may not) have possessed in our classroom. I began to see that my teachers in the English Department weren’t searching for the “right” answer so much as they were trying to teach students to engage with texts, and derive their own meanings from them in their own ways. I saw that independent thinking was valued above “elitist” and “exclusive” attitudes and behaviors.

This class has absolutely fortified, and has definitely expanded, the more temperate regard I have taken towards reading and writing (and therefore “literacy”) in the past several years. I am extremely thankful for that, too, as someone who is pursuing a degree in English Lit. Throughout the course of the semester, I have been confronted with articles that have promoted the idea that reading/writing is more valuable and successful when it is accessible (or made accessible) to a diverse number of people. Academic writing and criticism about canonical literature can easily feed a student’s inclination to try and ‘mimic’ the specialized language, therefore contributing to sustaining it (the specialized language) and enforcing it. Before reading the articles particularly by Bartholomae, Eubanks & Schaeffer, and Gee, I think I would have based my academic “career” more closely off of standards long-sustained by ‘academia,’ without fully realizing the ways that I would be limiting myself, and limiting the potential I have to communicate ideas to others.

To date, the most valuable reading to me personally has been the one by Compton-Lilly. This article has fully addressed the intuitive sense of “privilege” I have acknowledged about my own literary abilities, and I think that reading it has forever put to rest any lingering advantage or favor I may have been prescribing to ‘high’ reading capital in others, and therefore dismissing what I perceive to be ‘lower’ reading capital. It has helped me realize the extent to which society excludes people for many superficial reasons. Compton-Lilly's case study has helped me the most to understand that “literacy” is not static, and should not be something that is gauged and used to define and categorize (and therefore limit) a person; rather, it is something fluid, subjective, and interactive, and my job, as someone who wants to base a profession off of writing and reading, will be to join in enabling others to connect with my writing, as well as other writings I am (or will become) knowledgeable about. I am happy to say that the misguided aspirations of my 18-year-old self (reminiscent of a young Richard Rodriguez!), to ascend to some “higher” level in society, and isolate myself from everything beneath it, are dead. They have been replaced by a more constructive and inclusive way of writing-doing-being-valuing-believing in the world. :-)

(thirtyspokes=Sarah Miller)

Literacy Smiteracy! (that sure has changed)

In the beginning of this course, I was truly unaware of what literacy truly is. Though High School, we were always assigned to read something; whether it be a poem, essay, or anything for that matter. With this we were to write an essay with a prompt that the teacher gave us. If we did not get the right meaning and feelings out of the reading piece, we did not do well on the assignment. Because of this I always believed that literacy was just a simple word or reading, which my head was "literacy Smiteracy!".

After taking this crash course in what literacy really is, my ideas have really changed. Right away in the beginning of the class I knew I would like it. After the first post, I was able to see that it was okay that we all got different messages out of a piece. This only allowed us, as a class, to talk more about what we had read. Because I was actually learning about myself (how I like to write, if my life can relate to the essay, etc.) I was really seeing that literacy had a true meaning. Now in my eyes, literacy is not only reading a piece, but reading it, reflecting, and learning about yourself and others through the piece.

I think this is a very important thing to have learned, especially because I will be a teacher in just a few years. Even though I will be teaching young children, it is still very important to teach them to assimilate reading with something that is fun. Through working with college freshman, I have learned that reading has become something that all students dread. Why is this?? Reading/Writing/Literacy has become too rule bound over the years, causing students not to like it. As a future teacher, I want students to be able to explore within reading and writing.

I also have found the importance of reading for students. Reading, however, is harder for some than others. This also can cause them not to like it. Because of this, I feel that it is important to make reading as fun as possible! This class has really broadened my horizons, and has made me really think about how I see myself as a future educator!!

Views on Literacy

When i first started this class the idea of literacy was extremely unclear to me but since we have read a large variety of essays and articles i was able to expand off of others ideas. When i first started this class i could not even tell you what i though literacy meant you would probably get a beginners definition. Since i plan to go into education i know that it is very important to understand the idea of literacy, all the different types of concepts. i know that as we continue to read more i will develop an even stronger concept of literacy.

11/14 blog

I feel like since starting this class, my ideas about, and knowledge of, literacy have changed and expanded. The articles and essays we have read have made me think about the concept of literacy more than I ever had before. Before starting this class, I just thought of literacy as the ability to read and write. I have since learned several other definitions of literacy, one of which includes the ability to speak and act in a certain way, in addition to reading and writing. Reading the articles about bullshit in academic writing really interested me because I didn’t realize that other people felt the same way about academic writing that I do. As a future teacher, I will try to teach academic writing to my students so that they do not go on to higher education writing “bullshit” because they do not know what else to do. Reading about discourses was also helpful to me as a future teacher; especially learning about the differences between primary and secondary discourses, as well as dominant and non-dominant discourses. This class has allowed me to think more critically about my own writing, as well as the writing of others, and develop my knowledge about literacy and what it really means to be literate.

This class has allowed me to see various views of what it means to be literate and how literacy and the education system effect students consistantly. Having read and written about scenarios that I may not normally consider, I really saw how "literacy" can be misleading and that education (or rather certain types of teachng) can be be less than helpful to students. I have seen that people need space to write what they know and wrte what they love. Students need to have space to be themselves in order to be productive within another Discourse. Likewise, students need to be seen as a diverse population with different families, lifestyles, and experiences. Teachers need to edjust their lessons to the child, not the child to the lessons. When students are given this opportunity they will put more effort nto their writing. They will hopefully see the vaule of what they are learning and what they can accomplish with thier writing. In order to do this, teachers must take a second look at what being literate means to them.

My thoughts

This course has changed my perspective quite a bit this semester about literacy, education and the process of writing. Previously, I thought that literacy was just being able to read and write. I have since come to find out there is a lot more involved with literacy. There is a discourse which students must learn in school in order to be seen as literate. Every child has a primary discourse which they learn in their nieghoborhood, family, community and so on that is learned basically at birth. This is not something that i would consider to be taught but more learned through observing their family and members in the community. Students second form of discourse is then learned in school. This is taught to them by teachers and learned in books. This discourse must be mastered in order to be seen as literate in the eyes of the school and to make good grades. Students need to master this way of speaking, writing and presenting themselves in order to be literate. My ideas of education have changed as well. Since I would like to be a teacher some day I see the value into putting everything I have into teaching my students. I need to go above and beyond what is needed to push my students to excel. We read various stories of teachers who set a bar up high for their students then help them along the way to help them achieve that goal. I know teaching is not going to be easy and I am ready for the challenge. As far as the writing process goes, my views on that have changed some what as well. I value creating a rough draft and having others look it over and help to critique it. I would enjoy the helpful hints on making it better but also would enjoy a few positive points about my paper as well.

11/14

My thoughts on literacy, education, and writing has defiantly changed since I first started this course. At first I thought that literacy was basically just reading and writing but now I have learned that it is so much more. Using Gee's article as an example I learned that there is a lot more to actually developing literacy and that there are different discourses that a person goes through in their life in order to develop this sense of literacy. In terms of education I think that this class has given me many ideas that myself as a future educator can use in a classroom setting. Reading the articles about Rodriguez and Abinder have given me a sense of how to approach students that don't experience the English culture at home and how to make the classroom setting comfortable for them. I think this class has helped changed my writing habits by making me a more cautious writer. Instead of just repeating facts in a paper I have been forced to put myself into my articles and show my opinions about things and how certain things relate to me and I think this has really helped me develop myself as a writer.

11/14 Blog

How would I describe how my thoughts and feelings have changed about writing, literacy and education in general? Well obviously they have changed a lot from when I first started this semester. I've discovered that there is much much more to literacy than the basic dictionary definition that I always assumed it was. It turns out that it is much more than just the ability to read and write. There are so many other factors that are involved like discourse (a word that if I never hear again it may be too soon :p) and the many layers of it with reading, writing, context and actions and appearance. It's not like I've been totally ignorant of the cultural gaps that are there when it comes to a person being a total literate master in any language. Only a fool would pretend that socially and culturally there may be a struggle but with Gee's thoughts on how the Primary Discourse is the reason for a person being held back in Secondary Discourse I never would have guessed. I've always been led to believe that a person succeeds if they want to sometimes they lose their past along the way sometimes if they're lucky they don't. Now when it comes to education that is one thing that I don't believe that I have changed on. I've always known writing to be important and I've always known that teachers have things that they need to be aware of when it comes to teaching like not being biased or letting first impressions take over. These are challenges and I believe that I am up for facing these challenges. I want to teach social studies courses so I have to be culturally sensitive but the fact that I want to delve into Geography does allow me an easier time to conquer this than other subjects. Obviously I don't know everything, I don't even know half of everything when it comes to writing, literacy and education but lucky for me I love learning and I never tire of it.

Paper #2

This is for the blog assignment last week. At first, I wanted to go with the primary/secondary discourse prompt for our second long essay. However, many people in the class had the same idea. So, I changed up some of my quotes and main points in the essay and chose to write about the definition of literacy and how it will affect my future. I chose to use Gee and Delpit to support my essay. The only problem I had was choosing what to write about because literacy is all we have truly discussed this year. Also, I had trouble connecting the definition of it to my future. All in all, I thought this essay caused me to think more creatively due to the broader prompt and more options. However, I am not sure what to write back to my peers today in our discussion forum concerning the reviews. 

Paper #2

I'm still debating between topics one and three. I know I want to discuss teaching, I'm just not sure whether I want to take an effective teaching route or how these articles have changed my view of teaching route. So far I think 'm kind of inbetween and see what my thoughts lean towards. My essay will probably be a ltitle bit of both in the end. I think I'm going to use Abinader (I think she's got some wonderful quotes) and Gee because I think Discourse is a very important word for teachers. Considering Discourse is like giving a name to ths diffcult-to-define problem kids have when entering school. I also like Rodrigeuz, but I think I'd rather focus on the first two and write more about what thoughts I've formed from them, rather than just spend pages and pages writing on how they relate.

About paper 2

I think for the second paper I want to write about the first topic. Since I am going to be a teacher in a few years I thought this topic would be beneficial to me. The various articles we have read so far have really made me think about what kind of teacher I would like to be some day. I want to be a teacher who inspires her teacher. I want to challenge my students. I want to give them the desire to learn and push themselves to be the best they can be. The article that really spoke to me was Lisa Delpits article. She gave so many great examples of how people through out history have been changed my influential teachers in there lives. I want to compare her article with another one but I do not know which one yet. I might choose Abinder and Mori articles because they both had interesting ideas about discourse. I could use these to compare how an effective teacher could have helped each one of these girls.

paper #2

I chose to write my second paper on topic four—I’m going to be using Gee, Abinader and Mori’s texts to explore the process of moving from a primary discourse to a secondary discourse. I’m going to discuss how Mori and Abinader learned their secondary discourses and whether or not they faced conflict and tension while doing so. I’m also going to discuss whose primary discourses we tend to teach in classrooms, and what the costs and benefits of teaching a dominant discourse to students as a secondary discourse are.

random paper thoughts

Oh the options to choose from for paper two. I really was thinking about going with option four and discussing the transitions from primary to secondary discourses and using Rodriguez/Abindinar/Mori for citations and all that good stuff but now that I have read through the instructions for option three I am just torn. My understanding of literacy and how it is going to affect me personally and professionally is a topic that would really work for me considering I am studying to be a teacher, (history not English but the literacy aspect is still important on the subject). Though after thoughts on the choices I think I still may be leaning toward my original choice of the primary vs. secondary discourse challenge. It was my original choice and I did have more than a few ideas on directions I could take with that paper and now that we have read more examples of transitions I have even more ideas.

Second Paper

For my second paper I think am going to go with topic choice number 3 and talk about what I have learned so far being in this course and how this course has helped me develop as a writer and what ideas i am taking out of this course and hope to one day apply to my own classroom. I think that I will use Gee's article and his concept of literacy and also tie in ideas from Rodriguez's article to back up my statements. I am a little more nervous for this paper than i was for the first one but hopefully using some of my own ideas I will be able to pull out a good paper by Tuesday.

what to do, what to do

For Tuesday's rough draft, I am leaning towards using Abindar and Mori to relate to Gee. I have found these two readings most relatable to myself. I have also found them the most interesting! Personally, when I truly find something that I can connect to, it is much easier to write about. I think both of these authors do a good job of sharing their stories of change throughout life. Because they had gone through the struggles of being accepted by others, and accepting themselves, they were also challenged by primary and secondary discourse. After reading both of these stories, I began to think about my American sign Language class. For people who are deaf, their primary language is sign language, however most people do not know that they are deaf. People in the deaf culture must fight the challenge that others cannot always relate to them, and can rarely speak to them. After thinking about this, I am now trying to connect different discourses in my life, and when I may have had the same feelings as Abindar or Mori; such as when I went to Germany, and lived in a host families home. I also think it is important to recognize the differences between Abindar and Mori. While they both have the same backgrounds in some aspects, they also strongly differ on their views! I am looking forward to letting my ideas float onto the paper, as I work on my essay!

Pondering Discourses

For my second essay, I am going to tackle prompt #4:


4.)  Write an essay in which you use two or more course texts (and perhaps an outside text of your choice if you want) to explore the complicated process of moving from one’s “primary discourse” to a “secondary discourse,” particularly a secondary discourse that is “dominant” in Gee’s terms. Additional questions to consider:  whose (or what kinds of) “primary discourses” do we tend to recognize, affirm, and “teach” in classrooms? Why does this matter? What are the losses that come with the acquisition of a secondary discourse (especially a secondary discourse that is dominant) for some students? What are the costs of that transition? Conversely, what are the benefits of such a transition? Why do educators need to be aware of both the costs and benefits? Try to be as concrete and specific as possible.


I will likely use Rodriguez and Mori (not sure about Abinader) as examples of Gee's theories (which will be the main backbone of my piece in terms of exploring the journey from primary to secondary Discourse), perhaps including Delpit's examples as well (although I am not convinced of the validity of all of her claims).  I will explore what entails a stereotypically "dominant" Discourse, and which Discourses tend to be favored in the classroom.  I am particularly intrigued by the 'losses' mentioned in the prompt in terms of the journeys by both Rodriguez and Mori, as well as the benefits.  I will attempt to answer all of the questions laid out in the prompt (because I find them to be most interesting) but perhaps in the interest of focusing my essay, I will not be able to cover all the areas suggested... I'm excited to write this paper, and hope that I will be able to turn out a more polished first draft than my previous essay.

can someone help me with the citations- where should i go other than course reserve?

What an effective teacher really is?
One of the most important articles I have ever read was selecting star teachers for children and youth in urban poverty by Martin Haberman. The part I think is most important in this article is when he says that States expect future teachers to go into urban setting to learn how to teach and that only that way they will become perfect teachers , and have the ability to teach anywhere at any time. This is such a bad assumption; it’s just like saying that all children are the same, or worse? Should we really blame students for the misleading interpretations of literacy? Which in this case literacy is defined by correct grammar or proper language; an article that I have found most useful in defining what effective teaching is James Paul Gees Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction and what is Literacy? Gee, literacy is, simply put as, "the mastery of or fluent control over a secondary discourse." This tells me that in order to understand this ideology, we must understand that Discourse is the "saying-doing-being-valuing-believing combination," or how people function within a society and relate to others (Gee 526). Which will imply on what good grammar/ language really is. He also says that, ”Discourses are ways of being in the world; they are forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes” (pg. 526). From everything I have read I can only say that effective teaching is not what surrounds us as educators, but what we do with the surroundings. If proper language/ grammar can only be learned through school why must students feel obligated to never really understand the importance of leaning the norms of literacy?
This brings me to another article which I believe really explains the misconnections of what happens when effective teaching is not implemented (by the teacher) into the understanding and the betterment of the student, just because a teacher refuses to take in mind the surroundings the school is based on. In Richard Rodriguez’s article The Achievement of Desire; he states that “although I was a very good student, I was also a very bad student. I was a “scholarship boy”. A certain kind of scholarship boy. Always successful, I was always unconfident (Rodriguez 432).” This alone shows me that he only did what he was trained to do, pushed himself forward with what he was told and expected to do, never once making the coherency of what he was actually doing. Therefore when he arrived at a more scholastic level of learning, college, it was then when he only understood what he was always meant to do, which was to learn something the way he comprehends the certain subject.
To sum it all up through my field work experience I have noticed good effective teaching. My teacher is so connected with her students that she never loses control of them, and she is never afraid to help them overcome their struggle. Ms. Marguerite Temple is the special education teacher at Bruce Elementary School (north side of Milwaukee) and she has become my all time favorite person when it comes to waking up in the morning and seeing her, she always has a can do attitude and that fresh start of the day smile. Every time I am there I constantly find her deviating from her initial plans to accommodate for her students. The first day that I walked in I saw her teaching the alphabet. She quickly pulled me aside and told me that she wanted to have the kids go up one by one so that she can see who knew the alphabet, who was using their tool on their desk (the tool had their name, a ruler and the alphabet), whom would choose whom to go next and most importantly she was trying to see the attitudes of the two new students she received that day. Ironically I wasn’t the only new person in the classroom, so I quickly adapted to the atmosphere. I could lie to you and say that it was what I expected on my first day, but it wasn’t. I was so amazed to actually see and touch on all the topics of affective teaching we discussed in all of my Currins class’s almost immediately when I walked into that classroom. Ms. Marguerite Temple amplifies all the things I aspire to be, I couldn’t agree more to everything she has said to me and everything I’ve read. Being a good educator, means to be involved in your surroundings, constantly adapting to the things that come up every day in your classroom, and most importantly loving every minute that you’re in front of the class and you have ten little kids with the brightest smiles to learn.

Paper Topic

I've got a vague idea I'm hoping I can translate into a paper by Tuesday. What I would like to do is look at the idea of Discourse in the classroom and the effect if any the primary Discourse has on the ability to acquire secondary Discourses and the conflicts that exist between Discourses. Also whether or not a primary Discourse can inherently be dominant or nondominant and how we can make choices about our primary Discourse. Maybe this is too much. I'll be using Gee, Rodriguez, and Mori as texts. Gee will help to define Discourse, Rodriguez and Mori will help to illuminate how conflicts between Discourses effect how we can acquire Discourses and live in them comfortably, or not.

Conceptualizing Literacy: Make It Plural

I am going to write my second paper on literacy using Gee and Gere's articles along with the ideas of Myles Horton and Paulo Freire in their book We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change, some of Foucault's thoughts on materialism and education, in addition to some rich ideas from James A. Berlin's "Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class." I just wrote a longer paper on the social function of an English education historically and its contemporary importance that I got really into, so I am looking forward to translating some of the ideas generated on that topic into this paper about my own personal conceptualization of literacy and how it will inform my future career as a teacher. I do not have time to generate this draft now, though, so I will hope this basic plan is good enough and that it will be enough to have posted a plan and made good on it by the time the draft is due Tuesday evening. :) I have to type out some midterm essay response questions before my dude gets home from work because he might need to use my computer to do stuff for his classes and I want to make sure he is able to get his work done because he is a procrastinator!

My working title for this paper (I can't start writing until I have a title, my thesis is always a two or three sentence expansion of whatever my title is): "In Search of the Other Three Corners: Making Literacy Plural, Meaningful, and Personal in Collaboration with Students."

I will be utilizing/criticizing this saying by Confucius:

"The Master said: Only one who bursts with eagerness do I instruct; only one who bubbles with excitement, do I enlighten. If I hold up one corner and a man cannot come back to me with the other three, I do not continue the lesson."

Possible Essay Topics

After reading several of the posts already up on the blog, I think a good idea for a paper would be more generalized than what some people have suggested. That way, people can be creative and put their own touches on the ideas of Gee, Delpit, and Rodriguez. I think an essay summarizing one's own ideas of literacy Discourses and their applications would encompass all three authors. 

Also, I was thinking about a second part of the essay perhaps including what we already have learned in this class (Gere, Bartholomae, Eubanks & Schaeffer), and how we can compare it to our more recent articles. 

2nd paper

For our second essay I am not exactly sure what i plan to write about. I was thinking that it may be somewhat interesting to apply Gee's theories of primary and secondary discourse to Rodriguez. I think this will be a good idea because i have a great understanding about the two.

For the Second Paper

I was thinking about what we would possibly write for our second longer essay. I think it would be interesting to compare and contrast Gee, Delpit and Rodriquez. I had a very difficult time writing the last essay because I did not like the previous articles I had to work with. This time I felt using the base understanding this next set of articles would be easier to write about. Also, I like the idea of primary and secondary discourse and how it can be seen through out the articles. I think an interesting topic would be to expand about Delpits article which discussed how teachers influenced students through out history to change their lives. I enjoyed reading about the various stories she told of people who came from rough neighborhoods but with the aid of good teachers were able to become leaders in their community.

Possible Ideas for paper #2- Lucia Torres

I really don't know what i would like to write about, but i would really like to incorporate Rodriguez's article. I really don't have many ideas, maybe i should incorporate gee and her ideologies of literacy discourse. I really believe that most of what I have written already will help me construct a decent introduction, does anyone have any ideas on what i could write about to extend the ideas both articles have on literacy.

Topics

Since our last formal paper assignment we have been picking apart and discussing (sometimes at length) Gee, Delpit, and Rodriguez, how they relate, what they mean. Maybe we can dig into these a little more. Gee vs. Delpit to show the differences or Gee vs. Rodriguez and show how what Rodriguez had to say supports Gee's ideas. We could take Gee's basic point about acquiring Discourses and attempt to prove or disprove his argument based on either Delpit or Rodriguez, or both if possible. I thought Molly's suggestion that we take what we have read and contemplate how we might apply it to classroom teaching. I realize this may not work since not everyone in the class is an education major. If I had my way I think we'd be doing a 4-6 page paper on the feasibility/difficulty of acquiring secondary Discourses, whether we are inside or outside of the primary Discourse.

Indecision

I am not precisely sure on what I would like to write for my paper, but I suppose since I did not get a chance to write in the most recent discussion (...) I have a few things to say relating Gee, Rodriguez, and possibly Delpit (as well as integrating my personal experience, which is most closely related to that of Rodriguez).  One thing that I think would help me would be a slightly longer page limit, because I struggled a bit with the first paper's six-page limit.  I'm a bit stumped as to anything more specific or original (although I would maybe enjoy integrating one of the earlier articles with any of the more recent ones), but I do know that I would like to have more choices available than just one prompt (I think everyone in the class having the same prompt was part of what made peer assessment a bit difficult, because in my group we all wrote about the same two articles, and had differing views on some points).

paper 2

I haven’t come up with a specific topic I would like to write my second essay on, but I think tying together Gee, Delpit and Rodriguez’s articles with the discussion of primary and secondary discourses would be interesting. Also talking about the role teachers/educators have in shaping their students secondary discourses and whether or not teachers actually do help students by doing this.

Paper #2

For the second paper I think that it would be interesting to use all of the articles and how they would relate to us being future educators and how we could apply or not apply some of the concepts that the authors talk about. I also think it would be interesting to compare one or two of the authors articles and how they apply to your life.

For the upcoming essay I am a tad stumped on what I would like to write about. After reading both Gee and Rodriguez' pieces, I think that I would like to touch base on both of them. Because I can relate my nephews to the fact that neither of their parents will have a college degree, and they will have to strive on their own through college, I could connect this to Rodriguez. I have become their role model with going to college, and have decided that because of this I need to make sure that I am doing my best to show them this. I think a paper in relation to my family and to the readings would be most interesting and beneficial for myself. Whenever I can relate a topic to my personal life, I find it easier to learn. Because of this I would like to suggest connecting both pieces to our own lives in some sort of way.

Paper 2 idea

I'm not entirely sure on what I want to write my second paper on but I have a vague idea relating to the last discussion post we had assigned. The post of using Rodriguez's essay to define Gee's article is one that I feel that I could definitely write a ten page paper on. I feel that I did barely anything for the discussion post since it was supposed to be only 100 words or so and I know that I had a lot more things to say. So I guess that is my idea on what I would want to write on. A further analysis on Gee's article about Primary and Secondary Discourse and to use Rodriguez's paper as my main support.

Paper #2 topics

I wish I could come up with something more out of the box, but I am most interested in solidifying my conception of the articles by Gee, Delpit, and Rodriguez. The best way to do this, I suppose, would be to write a paper concerning student identities, and how they can be changed by the experience in the classroom—citing each Gee, Delpit, and Rodriguez, and comparing/contrasting the ideas of each writer.

I feel like there is a more "expansive" suggestion in me somewhere... if I uncover it by the end of the night, I'll make sure to post it!

Paper #2

For this paper I would like to write about the essays we've read and how they relate to teaching. We could pick two(three?) or more essays and discuss what we would do, after having read the essays, in order to be effective English teachers. That way we could incorporate examples from each essay without writing about what the essay means again. The topic we write about is then very open. We could discuss how we would try to filter the B.S. out of our students writing, or try to effectively incorporate ebonics and standard english into a classroom setting, or even write about the need for less impromptus on Heart of Darkness and more impromptus on students interests. I think this allows us, as students, to write about our interests and pull the meaningful bits and pieces out of each essay; we can talk about what really stuck with us and why it's important. Also, we could potentially incorporate multiple topics if we feel like the are related. I would be interested to see what my classmates write about.

Paper #2 Thoughtssssss

Well. I suppose I am not sure what all is coming up in terms of reading material, I haven't read Mori or Abinader yet. However, I have clearly been quite absorbed in the Gee, Delpit, and Rodriguez articles and could write a paper about any of those connections enthusiastically. I would like to write about the cultural differences in disposition towards school and schooling and how it demonstrates Gee's notion (made real through the example of Rodriguez) that it is a difficult process for a student to acquire the dominant discourse without abnegating their sense of identity with the home culture and the primary discourse.

Literacy

So far this semester, all of the articles we have read contained material about literacy and literacy acquisition. After reading them, my idea of literacy has completely changed.  Before this class, I always thought of literacy as either an understanding of something or being able to come off as intelligent. However, the authors of these articles have really shown me how much depth there is to these words.

Literacy is more complex than I ever imagined it could be. I resonated most with the idea of literacy being an “identity kit.” It is made by your “home” discourses and school discourses. I think at home you learn your values and the casual way of talking. School is the more formal idea of literacy that I used to associate with. I think one can improve their literacy by practicing through performances. To me, I think an example of this and literacy acquisition could be traveling to a foreign country and staying with a host family. Through this family, this person will be immersed in that culture and become much more literate in the language and style of life. 

As far as academic discourses for literacy, I found the idea of bullshit very amusing and actually true. I think bullshit is an honest definition for much of the work that students do in the university. A lot of times, students are very knowledgeable in their area of study and are well on their way to gaining literacy for that study. However, when learning something one isn’t going to be a master of that topic and it only goes that bullshit will occur. Like home discourses, practice is needed and a good way to increase performance is through peer reviews.

I never really questioned my idea of literacy and its acquisition. However, through the articles we reviewed I dove into the ideas being presented to me and it has changed the way I look at my own discourses in my life.

An evolving definition of Literacy

When I began this course in September, I had actually not given the definition of literacy much thought. To be literate in my view was to have the ability to read and write language. Other forms of literacy exist. We often hear the term "computer literacy" which refers to the amount of working knowledge one has with computers. There is also musical literacy; written music shares the term "literature" with written language. So, I had heard these terms before, and had a basic idea of what they meant.

From there I have decided that there are different degrees of literacy. Being able to write one's name is a form of literacy, and so is being able to write a graduate thesis, but there is quite a bit of room in between. In the assigned reading so far we have seen very basic literacy develop in the Anne Ruggles Gere article. Writers who may have been discouraged from writing in academia write in workshops and are evaluated by their peers. They acquire literacy in this fashion. The feedback from their peers offers an opportunity to expand and improve literacy.

From Gere we read Eubanks and Schaeffer and Bartholomae who took on the subject of academic writing directly. They posited that academic writing is full of difficult jargon and dense, complicated sentence structure that somehow, someway makes academic writing Very Good and not bullshit at all. If the writers have acquired that level of literacy that is, otherwise they are full of it. Bartholomae suggested new methods of teaching at the college level to help the poor struggling academic illiterate develop this literacy.

Along comes Gee. Gee seems to agree with my current belief that there are different levels (degrees) of literacy. He calls them Discourses. Discourses are acquired, not through classroom learning as suggested by Bartholomae, but through saying-writing-doing-being-valuing-believing. He suggests that to live outside of a Discourse is to be unable to acquire that Discourse, or level of literacy. Gee is taken to task here by Lisa Delpit who gives examples of minority students in poverty who acquired literacy on other Discourses within the school environment.

To me, at this point in the semester, literacy is a level of working knowledge. How literacy is acquired is a tougher question. We have read several viewpoints on this and none of them may be right, and there is very little actual evidence given to support the positions given. My opinion, right now, is that how literacy is acquired may very well vary well, depending on the individual.

My definition of literacy

Through out the course of English 201, I have discovered the meaning of literacy is quite different from what I originally thought it was. I always thought that being literate was having the ability to read and write. I figured as long as you could do that then you were considered literate. Not until I began reading the various articles in this class did I realize that literacy is much more involved than that. To be literate means you have to under how to correctly speak and write in certain situations. As you grow up, you become literate in one certain language or discourse around your community and home. Then later once you enter into the school/academic setting you are forced to learn a new language or discourse. It seems like for the most part being literate stems from school or the academic community. Students are forced to put on a mask in order to speak the proper language in school. As a future educator, these articles are especially important since they seemed to be geared towards me. They write about how we need to change how students are taught in the classroom so they become literate and good writers. This is not only useful in school but in the rest of their lives. It may change the outcome of the child completely. In the Gee article she gives specific examples of students who came from poor neighbors and were not excepted to graduate high school. Then a few inspiring teachers came along and changed the outcomes of these students who turned out to future leaders in the community. I think if I remember that when I become a teacher, I can change students lives as well.

Literacy 10-17- Lucia Torres

Before this course the word literacy means to have the ability to read and write. Now that I have had the chance to experience the readings from the source English 201 I have come to the consensus that academic writing, speech, and the ability to read is what educators define as “proper literacy”, because not just any type of literacy is acceptable. Which is why I choose the quote "If academic writing is bullshit, then bullshit is what we teach” (Eubanks & Schaeffer 374), because this shows where exactly these reasoning’s are coming from. I also came to a different conclusion that literacy is not only something that is more than just reading and writing, but it’s getting students to make that ultimate understanding/ connection of what makes any piece of literature comprehensible. This is what I will call “making the connection” which is why I find the quote from Gere’s article most important; “A Help to Young Writers, a self guide published in 1836, found fault with the rapid subjects assigned by teachers and tendency with the schools to teach composition as though it bore no relationship to good conversation (Gere 81).” The importance from writing not only comes from deriving the abilities of how to read and write, but also to making proper connections to what the acceptable academics. Whether or not we want to accept the fact that “proper academics exist”, they do and as a dominant we have to push them, so as an entire society we can proper in a more common ground, even if it’s wrong.

Literacy October 17, 2010

This English class has been much different from any I have ever taken before. I have learned so much about myself as a writer this semester and have also developed my own take on what literacy means to me. Before this class literacy was simply the ability to read or right. Now taking this class and based on everything that we have read this semester literacy, to me, is much more than the ability to read and write. Literacy can also be the way that you speak or act in a certain situation which before this class those two things would have never fallen under the definition of literacy for me. Literacy can also be something that people use to try and place themselves in a certain social circle. I understand the concept of literacy and literacy acquisition much more now than I did when I had originally enrolled in this course. The various articles that we have had to read have really brightened my understanding of literacy and I think that this will be very helpful for my future career as an educator. I think that knowing that are various opinions on what literacy is will be very helpful when helping struggling children learn to read, write, and even speak the English language. I believe that having a wider range of what the definition can mean is a very good thing for everyone to know. I can’t wait to continue reading more articles to see what else I will end up adding to my definition of literacy.

literacy

This class has taught me that literacy can have different meanings to different people. For example, some can think of literacy as simply the ability to read and write, while others can believe it also includes the way people speak and act in addition to reading and writing. Before taking this class, I never thought of literacy as including speaking and acting in a certain way, but I think it is interesting how that can be seen as a part of literacy. The articles we have read so far this semester have made me think about my own literacy and academic writing as a student. Knowing now that literacy can have different definitions to others is something to keep in mind as I continue my education and my future career as a teacher.

A couple articles we have read this semester questioned whether students are truly literate when it comes to academic writing. All college students are able to read and write, but are they able to read and understand academic writing, and then produce their own equally academic-sounding writing? I think that the literacy of college students is limited when it comes to academic writing. Learning the language of academic writing is the first step for college students to become more literate and able to produce their own adequate academic writing. Another article mentioned the importance of having literacy in more than one discourse; or, being able to be literate as a man or woman, as well as an employee, a member of a club, etc. I think being literate in more than one discourse is an important skill for all people to have. This course’s discussion of literacy has taught me a lot about a subject that I had previously not given much thought.

Literacy

English 20 has helped me learn that everyone has their own definition of literacy, but somehow they are all linked. Unfortunately I do not like English which is why it is harder for me to come to terms with the definition of literacy on my own. I do not like English because of all the rules that come along with writing, I feel like you are writing under someone elses standards. This i the reason why a majority of people do not like English class. Throughout our assignments we have read and written about multiple pieces of writings. They all express what literacy means in their own terms and why it is important to have literacy in your life.

After reading all of these writings the definition I came up with literacy is, not only the ability to read and write but also the ability to read between the lines, to understand what someone is saying without them full out saying it. I may not always fully understand what people are saying but i feel that i have learned more about literacy and use my skills when it comes to reading the articles we have read and any future articles we will read.

Changing definitions

Literacy is a word that can have numerous definitions depending of course who you ask and in what context. Some people believe it is an unobtainable goal that people strive for to better themselves based on social class. Others feel literacy is a writer’s transformation from school to outside writing after critique and review. And then some think that literacy is just how well someone is able to bullshit their way through an essay.
It seems that my understanding of the definition would have to be how well a student is able to grasp basic writing concepts (i.e. grammar and sentence structure), their ability to learn and grow in composition, and a student’s ambition to write like an educated scholar along with being able to read and comprehend complicated meaningful essays. This is different from my first understanding of the word literacy from back before I begun this class. Before I thought literacy was being able to read and write coherent sentences, basically the literal definition.
Now considering the simple definition that I had of the term literacy pre this semester and the more complicated definition that I have now after reading several essays on the subject and I am sure that my definition will once again transform by the end of the semester and the closing of the class. Literacy does not have one simple definition; again it does matter considering the context in which the word is brought up in.

Literacy/Acquisition

Prior to starting this semester, the concept of "literacy" was not something I had much considered.  I really only thought about it in terms of ability to read language.  However, my definition has developed through the course of this class into something that has much more meaning.  I currently define literacy as the ability to competently read or speak (and comprehend) at a specific level.  This broadens my previous perception quite a bit by implementing levels of literacy.  A person who can read and speak at a basic level is literate in the most basic sense of the word, but may still be illiterate at different levels of comprehension.  That is to say, a student who has the capability to read English in children's books may still be illiterate in terms of his/her ability to read and comprehend texts within the classroom.  This can relate to the analogy used by Gee of the acquisition of a second language: a student of a language, e.g. Spanish, may well be able to use or read the language at a basic level, but would be illiterate within the setting of native speakers because the ability to use the language in context would be missing.

My basic understanding of literacy acquisition is that in order to fully and successfully acquire literacy at a certain level, a student must be immersed in the use of the discourse, rather than being taught specifics in the classroom.  I am experiencing this myself as I explore the world of academic discourse for the first time in a concerted fashion.  I have found that my ability to effectively and correctly use the discourse is improving as I read articles and respond to classmates - something that I wasn't able to master when I was simply given the tools to use the language.