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.
The same quote stuck out for me, too! Bringing it all to bear....it's what I want my students to be able to do, although I recognize it's not necessarily high on their priority list at their age (12-13).
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