Chapters 5&6

"Many young people feel alienated from community affairs, lacking skills and interest to participate in formal community processes and decision making. Many young people, failing to see 'any direct link between...government...and their own lives' do not register to vote" (Lankshear 79; ibid.: 9, 14).

I was one of these young people that this quote is referencing. I did not vote until the last presidential election, and honestly, I didn't care that much about it then. I have always felt a disconnect with politics. I remember learning in school about how many terms the Senate has, how many people are in the House, and the age limit for the President, but what I don't remember ever learning about are the issues that politicians address. I don't remember ever being given the opportunity to debate my views on things like immigration and abortion, and how my views relate to politicians running for office. I was never taught to think for myself or think about the issues they believe in. No, I simply voted Republican because my parents did. Now, though, I read about the politicians and where they stand on issues that I feel strongly about. Now, I still vote Republican, but I do so because of how I think and feel about certain things.

(I had to put this here in reference to the discussion on empowerment in Chapter 6.)


I feel like the word "empower: is one of those filler words that people use in vague mission statements. "We will empower our students!" That is great, but ow are you going to do that? I agree with the angle that is mentioned in Chapter 6 about the word having too much meaning (Lankshear 104). The problem is that when it is used too much and in too many contexts, it takes away from the word and makes it mean less.

Ch. 3&4

It was hard for me to find anything in the chapter that related to my example case, so I decided that I would just focus on what I thought was the main idea from the reading, which is the difference between proper literacy and improper literacy.

"being able to read means that you can follow words across a page, getting generally what's superficially there [improper literacy}; By contrast,being literate means you can bring your knowledge and your experience to bear on what passes before you [proper literacy]" (Lankshear 39).

I think this is a powerful quote because of the truth it rings. For example, some people cannot read a Shakespeare play, but they can read a car manual; some people can read a medical report, while some people cannot. Most people have literacy to some extent. This actually reminded me of the difference between my husband and I. He can read, and he reads rather well, actually, but in high school he had a hard time comprehending Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. I helped him read through it, explaining each line's meaning. On a different note, I was always awful at Math and could not comprehend the directions in our Algebra II class, so he would sit down with me and go over the directions, step by step. We are both literate, but in different ways.

A Case Study Draft: Frustration in the Library

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to use the site Padlet in my classroom as a means of discussion. I had learned about the program in one of my grad classes, and I love trying new technologies with my students. We were discussing the Dewey Decimal System. I had my students examining particular shelves in the Library, and then they were to log onto the computer, go to the assigned Padlet site, and answer the discussion questions. Every class, students were excited to get on the computers. A lot of my students thought the site was neat, too.

I watched as my students eagerly clicked around the board to begin typing their questions. They were actually discussing the questions before they began to type. As I walked around monitoring, I saw students typing ferociously on their keyboards. They were actually engaged...and with the Dewey Decimal System...this was great. This is where the assignment went south, though.

When they were finished typing, students just clicked off of their text boxes and were to go to the next question. This worked, with some of the students. All of a sudden, I began getting upset hands in the air..."Mrs. Long, everything I typed disappeared", "Mrs. Long, my work isn't there", "Mrs. Long, what did I do wrong?" I kept checking, and some of the students clicked off and their work was there and saved, exactly like Padlet is supposed to work, but there were several students whose work was gone.

I logged on to my Padlet account, hoping maybe everything would show up on my screen. No luck. Not wanting to give up, I still did the activity with all of my classes, but the same thing kept happening...some would save and some would not. My students were discouraged because the work they did was gone. I was frustrated because I was so excited at how the lesson had been going.

To this day, I have not used Padlet again, and I still have never been able to figure out why this happened.

Functional vs Authentic Literacy

Preface: "As a person's circumstances change, so it is likely that the arguments they follow and the places they follow them to will change." (Lankshear xiii)

This is true, not only in the terms of education, but also in life in general. Our circumstances and experiences shape our beliefs and arguments. For example, one's circumstances probably have shaped their thoughts on who should be our next president. My opinions on abortion changed when I had my first child. In the example of education, once a person's circumstances change, like their particular classroom or students, or new knowledge after a training, will alter a teacher's ideas and practices.

Ch.1: "An individual needs a minimum level of mastery in order to 'pass' as literate in public and keep intact his or her self-respect; as schools and literacy programmes become more effective in equipping their students with these skills, the effective threshold of acceptability will be raised accordingly" (Lankshear 11).

Being in a middle school, I see this. Students do not necessarily have to be at a mastery level in order to pass as a literate student. The problem that I have noticed is that a student may have been passed through the grades without anyone noticing a literacy issue.

Ch.2: "Moreover, promoting literacy means more than just ensuring that people can read and write on a particular day--the day of an exam or assessment" (Lankshear 29).

This is such an important quote for people to hear and grasp. We need to stop assuming that students being able to fill in a bubble sheet means they are prepared for life outside of school. Students being test-literate and students being life-literate are 2 different things. In order for our students to thrive in the outside world, we must promote literacy needed to thrive.