In my Foundations of Language and Literacy course, I recently participated in an interesting discussion on three authors' writings on how to integrate literacy practices and frameworks into the curriculum to bring about the best results for students from all cultures, backgrounds, and experiences. As I reflect on these readings, a video presentation, and our class discussion, I will use the 3-2-1 Writing Strategy to share the highlights of all that I'm learning about literacy.
3 IDEAS I AM NOW PONDERING
a. Yoon (2019) argues that to tap into the boundless backgrounds and experiences of our students when we our designing literacy practices in the classroom, we must not allow the prescriptive literacy tasks, such pre-planned and authorized assessments and worksheets, to overshadow opportunities for our students to participate in authentic language and literacy tasks. The latter tasks open up a world of possibilities, such as playful interactions and using a student's funds of knowledge, as a springboard for literacy learning.
I think that educators must expand their own knowledge and understanding of literacy. We must reflect on our own biases in literacy instruction, to embrace the reality (and incorporate into literacy activities) all that our students bring into the classroom that impacts their abilities to thrive and grow in their literacy practices.
b. In our discussion, we also talked about helping our students to unearth and utilize what they bring into the classroom in their literacy development based on their culture, background, experiences. Gholdy Muhammad (2020) has developed an historically responsive literacy framework which supports this idea of "cultivating the genius" of our students by starting with the "roots" that have already been growing in their lives and nourishing their diverse literacy backgrounds with activities that focus on such things as their identities and intellect. In our class discussion, a word that we began to use was the idea of "restoration" (which is a gradual process) because we all recognize that schools and educators have not been designing curriculum in a way that celebrates, builds on, and prepares the brains of our students for what Hammond (2021) calls "leveling up cognition" so students are ready to deepen and expand their knowledge.
I thought it was eye-opening to consider that for so many years curriculum's have not been structured in a way that all students, no matter their culture, ethnicity, background, and experiences, can be successful in academic pursuits. Instead, Hammond (2021) argues that curriculum has been structured to stymie the progress that black and brown students are able to make in areas such as literacy. But now there are many ways schools and educators can begin to restore what has been lost so that students today and in the future are much better prepared to achieve their goals and dreams. We can achieve this by focusing on one student and one class at a time as we view their situations from what Yoon (2019) says is a resource point of view.
c. Gholdy Muhammad (2020) focused on sharing many lessons we gain from studying Black Literacy Societies. One prominent lesson she highlights is the way the members were very collaborative and learned from one another. This way of learning is in direct opposition to many Western cultures, who focus on the individual achievements and competition with one another. I'm pondering ways in which educators can set a realistic tone in the classroom that balances both ideas of being collaborative and competitive in literacy activities as we recognize that there can be positives and negatives with each mindset. As an educator I can look for ways to balance the two mindsets in the way I present literacy opportunities and activities to my studens.
2 COMMENTS THAT REALLY INSPIRED ME
a. I was inspired by our class discussion on the various connections we made related to the two different authors and the podcast guest's comments. Adeline's closing comment to our discussion was thought proking as she connected some characteristics of Kucer's Cognition Dimension (2015) to what had just occurred during our discussion. As Adeline pointed out, we all read the same texts, but each one of us had a different perspective and way of describing what we read and the connections we made between the texts. Our individual ideas about the texts were evident in our discussion and did not necessarily match what the author wanted us to believe and may have been some of our own newly constructed ideas based on the discussion with one another. This idea reflects that literacy is multi-faceted and diverse. It also is an example of Gholdy Muhammad (2020) discussion of the collaboration and "socially constructed" ideas that came out of the Black Literacy Society meetings, which Muhammad believes need to be used as examples when we teach literacy in schools today.
b. I also was inspired by the discussion on recognizing that sometimes there are questions that can never fully be answered, and they are called the "enduring" questions. I think this connects very well with our discussion on understanding literacy and exactly what it is and what it is not. It is important for educators to be lifelong learners and pass this attitude on to our students in the way we develop activities, instructional strategies, and curriculum. We want our students, as well as educators, to always have an excitement and wonder about learning. In the 21st century, we live in a fast pace, every changing technological and global environment in which students need to be prepared for change and for seeking knowledge, sometimes that knowledge is like having the "enduring question" and is not set in stone and is ever-changing.
1 COMMITMENT I WANT TO MAKE FOR MY FUTURE STUDENTS
***My commitment to my students is that I want to be an educator who is reflective and seeks to be transformative in the way I approach teaching. I want to always be prepared to learn new ideas about teaching strategies and to try to implement these ideas, but at the same time, I want to be reflective in figuring out whether they are appropriate and will help my students to thrive and grow.
References
Muhammad, G. (2020). Cultivating genius: an equity framework for culturally
and historically responsive literacy. Scholastic.
Kucer, S. (2015). Literacy: Varied, Dynamic, and Multidimensional. Journal of Family Strengths, 15(2). http://digitalcommons.library.tmc.edu/jfs/vol15/iss2/1
Yoon, H. S. (2019). Playful Literacies, Creativity, and Multilingual Practices. The Reading
Teacher, 72(5), 551–557. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1788
Zaretta Hammond: Using Neuroscience to Help Students | #PLtogether. (2021). Www.youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiOrIN2oJi8
Lida, what can I say? Your reflections here clearly indicate you have both the knowledge and disposition to be able to meet and exceed the expectations you set for yourself in your 1 commitment. Well done.
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