Learning Processes

I found the "literacy event analysis" critique interesting. As I stated in class, my analysis would have been different had I had Jonathon’s paper during the interview. When I read his paper I immediately remembered our class discussion about students being able to relate text to text, text to personal experience, and text to world. Jonathon’s paper accomplished all three of these critical thinking skills. He cited two books about how African American men were forced to join the armed forces or go to jail. He related how his grandfather was forced to join the army, and that Mohammad Ali, the boxer, had to pay money to the government to stay out of the service, while “white” boxers did not. He also stated that today young people have to register for selective service or face a huge fine and possible jail time. He tied all of this information to a song of a singer he likes, who addresses these issues. The content of the paper was rich with ideas and connections, and it will be interesting to see how he develops as a writer.

I learned a lot by my observation experience and by listening to other students’ experiences. What came to mind throughout this observation, discussions in this class, and discussions in other classes, is that as teachers we do not discuss the term literacy. We should explain to students that as they learn they are developing various skills in various literacies. Jonathon, my interviewee, demonstrated critical literacy, rhetorical literacy, digital literacy, and workplace literacy. Geoff Bull and Michele Anstey state in their book Teaching and Learning Multiliteracies: Changing Times, Changing Literacies that engaging students in conversation about their everyday literacies has become a vital component of teaching, because “A multiliterate person must be aware of his or her social and literate practices, or literacy identity, in order to be strategic and flexible in a changing world” (24).

Literacy

Over the last few weeks we have discussed how a person’s literacies are influenced by one’s history, culture, ethnicity, and socio-economic background. This was never so apparent than in my class last night as we listened to three teachers from various high school communities in the U. S.
One school resides in an affluent community, with access to high end educational programs and tools to help students succeed. Many of the students are taking AP courses, and ninety-percent of the students are college bound.
Another school resides in a working middle class community and has restricted access to additional educational programs. A few students are in AP courses, and seventy-percent of the students will seek further education.
The last school resides in a very rural, very poor community, where getting desks for the students is an issue. None of the students are in AP courses, and most failed the state literacy test.
Each teacher discussed their classroom environment and how they adjusted their lessons to accommodate the students. As you can imagine the vast differences in learning environments is amazing. The first two classrooms are deciphering complicated texts in a variety of methods. The expectations of the teachers are comparable and the students strive for excellence in their work. These students are inquisitive, and ask thought provoking questions. The teacher in the middle class community did say that he had to push his students to get to this point but by the middle of the year they are asking more in depth questions and making deeper connections between text to text and text to world experiences.
The classroom in the rural community is a struggle for the teacher. He has a hard time getting students to engage in reading let alone articulate what they have read. Most of the students read at a sixth grade level and have no interest in reading canonical texts. The students’ home lives do not support reading as important to their education. He said they consume erotica novels by the author Zane. He is struggling to get them to engage in texts required by the state. Added to this frustrating situation there are random breaks in the day, like an announcement by the principal for everyone to go to the gym. He said sometimes they are there for several hours.
Kristen talked about how some schools don’t have access to digital technologies, which I can understand, but I struggle with classrooms that don’t even have enough desks for their students, after all we are in the 21st century. President Busch and others were shouting “no child left behind”—these students aren’t even on the radar.

Fostering Adolescents’ Engaged Academic Literacy

I wish I had had Will Brown as my chemistry teacher in high school. I could have used someone who was willing to break down the text in class like he did. The labs were a piece of cake, but deciphering the text not so easy. Brown’s classroom design where students are assigned a team with names like Kinetic Kids, Periodic Pros, and Carbon Cavaliers to name a few, creates a sense of camaraderie in an unknown environment. He challenges the students to become “science learners . . . he builds routines that support their risk taking, sets thoughtful expectations for classroom discourse, and models and supports collaboration in a learning community” (102).
Gayle Cribbs in her Honors U. S. History class paired her students up to decipher the Constitution of the U. S. in regards to the internment of the Japanese during WWII. Here again a teacher supports risk taking by giving students the opportunity to deconstruct a difficult text together and participate in a class discussion about their confusion over terminology and questions concerning the legalities of the internment. It is interesting that as educators we assume students are going to be able to deconstruct difficult texts by themselves, when in fact we as grad students discuss difficult texts together to find meaning, not to mention that many scholars collaborate on their research before publishing their work.

These particular methods of teaching reminded me of Aylen’s comments on what he is doing this semester in his class. His students designed their assignments and rubrics, with his guidance. They are in charge of their learning process. It would make an interesting research study if he continued to keep this method of teaching over the next few years. I actually would like to hear how he feels it is going and if there are any changes he would make for next time.

Influence of Culture on Literacy and Mulitliteracies

While reading HALR I was reminded of a portion of my grad thesis, which I have added to my blog. In particular the discussion about how to interpret rap and hip-hop in context of students cultural practices. As well as the quote about male students, which states, "By being open to different ways of being a boy, different ways of being literate, different notions of text, different ways of teaching and assisting students, and by promoting a connection between school activity and literacies from outside the school walls . . ." (369).

While the studies of multimodal literacies are fascinating, what I find more intriguing at the moment is how society has gotten to this point and how culture influences literacy. Heath and Street discuss their approaches to studying language and literacy through ethnography; this made me think about how the first visually recorded history was generated with signs and symbols. Cave drawings and hieroglyphics on stone walls to computer programs sending information by cyberspace—it is mindboggling if one stops to really think about “it.”
This may get a little muddy for the moment, as I navigate through my thoughts, but the culture of a society influences the design of signs and symbols used to communicate in that society. Each family unit brings its culture to society, i.e. education, religious beliefs, heritage, foods, and even how one prepares the food influence lives, therefore impacts the society one negotiates. I use the word negotiate on purpose because when one enters a new environment she/he brings one’s culture into that environment and either knowingly or unknowingly influences what happens in said environment. For example, in Dr. Wood’s speech class each student brought to the table, so to speak, his or her own culture, thereby adding a certain dynamic to the classroom culture, which directly relates to the multiple literacies already in place in the classroom. Added to these literacies are the literacies the students have learned outside the classroom. For instance, DJ had imbedded a YouTube commercial in a montage of photos, charts, and text to be explicated at a push of a button.
Then there were Abby, Alfred, and Jess who combined a skit, poster, handouts, and commentary to illustrate a point. Each student brought three diverse cultures to the project. Abby is a missionary-oriented student, Alfred comes from the Caribbean and has family in South Africa; Jess is passionate about music and music therapy. Their presentation focused on raising funds to dig a well in Africa so the people will have water to drink. An unlikely group—yet their multimodal text presentation was point on and well received. While my personal opinion on the presentation is not relevant to my paper, what is important to understand is that each student brought a different dynamic to the project through their culture and literacies learned outside the classroom.

Ideas for activities

The National Day of Writing event that I attended in 2009 inspired me to use a more creative approach when designing class assignments for first year writing and fundamentals of speech class students. In fact, I want to incorporate digital technology writing/composing as classroom tools to challenge students’ perspectives in writing.

Example 1: Etherpad
Use the Etherpad program, which allows students to type on their computers and have it show up in real-time on the screen in front of class. The one downside to this program is that it only eight people can type live at one time, so in order to alleviate this dilemma have students work in groups. My suggestion is to have students produce a poem using keywords from the class. For an added twist have a student from each group draw out pieces of paper stating the parameters on how the poems will be structured. For instance, one idea is to have each stanza have a rhyming pattern of AB, AB, CD, CD, etc. After all the criteria are established, inform them there is a time limit to complete the poems. This promotes team work and challenges students think quickly. The poems can be silly, but the keywords have to be used in context. The intent of this activity is to show students that writing can be fun while teaching concepts important to the course curriculum.

Example 2: Google Translation
Have students work on a piece of writing, a short story, essay, or poem at home. The students are to either email the document to professor or bring on a memory stick. The professor loads one of the documents into Google Translation program. The students can decide which language they would like the document translated to. After document is translated click the audio tab and listen to the document in a different language. This event can be done in reverse as well. The concept behind this activity is to show students the different programs available, and for students to view the actual script of various languages used in the world.

Research on the Literacies of AAVE-Speaking Adolescents

I enjoyed reading Jamal Cooks’ and Arnetha Ball’s article on “African-American Vernacular English (AAVE).” Many years ago I heard about “Ebonics” (AAVE) and jumped on the negative band wagon, without really understanding the background information. The argument was about “Ebonics” being an approved language in the school system, thereby creating an inclusive classroom versus an exclusive classroom. Cooks and Ball discuss how “[a] long standing concern has been how to develop classroom cultures and curricula that promote equity in opportunity and accessibility to learning for individuals across boundaries of class and ethnicity” (142). The Oakland school district felt by allowing Ebonics to be an accepted language in the school system it would open the door to equity in the class. With that said, I found it interesting that while schools allow for other cultural languages in the classroom the goal is to shape all students to conform to Standard American English, which negates the inclusive culture concept.
Cooks and Ball in the section on “Curriculum, Instructional Strategies, and Pedagogical Approaches” discuss various ways in which teachers try to incorporate alternative methods of teaching besides the “traditional” structured learning methods. In particular, I liked Cooks use of “hip-hop as a tool to develop expository writing skills” (145). Many of the teachers in my classes have discussed the alternative methods they employ in the class to engage students in the learning process. Dr. Foreman in her CTAC 124 Fundamentals of Speech class used the data from a survey she did at the beginning of the semester to create an inclusive classroom environment. Along with the information she pared up students who were less confident speakers with more confident speakers to help build confidence and camaraderie in the class.
I did have a question on a statement made in the “Assessment” section. Cooks and Ball state that the Georgia High School Writing Test revealed that overall “choice on types of writing chosen on writing tasks didn’t matter . . . except when they focused on female and African American students, choice seemed to positively impact their assessment scores” (146). I found this very interesting and wished that Cooks and Ball would have explained their findings in more detail. For instance, what were the choices? What choices did the female and African American students choose? Why did those particular choices make a positive impact on their scores? What did the male and other ethnic students choose?
It would be interesting to see updated data on the AAVE- speaking students’ retention rates and post-secondary education choices. I also would be interested in reading teachers, administrators, and support staff opinions on the success or failure of their choices. Did the teachers embrace the change? How did they restructure their classrooms? What was successful and not so successful in implementing curriculum that encompassed AAVE students? All of this information could be used in other school districts that have diverse cultures with various languages and/or dialects being spoken. Not to mention being an interesting read.

Texts of Our Institutional Lives: Studying the “Reading Transition” from High School to College: What Are Our Students Reading and Why?

I enjoyed this article for several reasons. First it was interesting to see what students classified as reading, whether academic or nonacademic. Second I liked the in depth questions the students were assigned in their journaling. I was not surprised, that even though they were paid, they did not keep an updated journal. My guess “shiny objects” distracted them. Nor was I surprised that most students did not make a connection from text to text or text to world. At this age their world tends to have a pretty narrow focus, combined with the fact that many students do not find texts in school relevant to their lives. As the GA for the Gen Ed program, I sat in on a few first-year student seminars. Professors discussed how to show students that their classes relate to another, as well as to the world outside of academia. During their discussions several of the professors decided to create a “theme teaching curriculum” thereby reinforcing the cross relationships.
David Jolliffe and Allison Hart addressed this possibility in their “suggested three avenues” approach. In particular the second avenue stated that, “faculty members and administrators need to create curriculums, co-curriculums, and extra-curriculums that invite students to engage in their reading and to connect texts that they read to their lives, their worlds, and other texts” (613). Jolliffe and Hart also stated that there was room for “learning-community programs—in which students are taking two or three courses together, focusing on a common theme—foster this kind of curricular connectivity . . .” (613, 614). EMU has this type of program in place for first-year students. The Gen Ed program in conjunction with “Residential Life” created a grouping of three classes with a theme, which is reinforced and supplemented in the resident halls and apartments. New this fall are several classes offering the same theme as the tri classes with the intent of making connections between classes, dorm life, and outside activities. The goal is to create a cohesive experience with students, professors, and EMU life in order to help students stay focused on their four year program. A program that helps students see the relevance of their learning, as well as how classes combine and build upon one another. Students need to be able to see “beyond the grade” in order to inter-relate their courses, hopefully this program will accomplish these goals.
I find that Kathleen Yancey’s article “Literacy Demands of Entering the University” dovetails well with Jolliffe’s and Harl’s article. She states that there are three basic ways of testing incoming freshmen’s literacy levels, which are Advanced Placement (AP) testing, dual enrollment, and self-assessment testing. She goes on to say that these testing methods have some very real issues when assessing critical and rhetorical literacy levels of incoming freshman. The students who score a 3 on the AP exam tend to struggle when taking sophomore courses. Statistics show that those students that “dual enrolled failed a timed writing task at a third higher rate than those students who completed composition on campus” (259).
The self-assessment method that students (EMU’s method of testing incoming freshman) can take before entering college leads to issues because the questions are too vague and do not allow students to truly assess their ability compared to the expectations of the college. This method in particular creates a gap of knowledge and ability between students in a mainstream composition course. The gap between students’ writing skills and what is required by the college they attend is directly related to their ability to relate from text to text and text to world. If students do not relate to a text or text to world how will they articulate their thoughts on the subjects in the texts, and if they do not have the skills to articulate their thoughts in writing how are they going to learn to make the association from text to the world?