Incorporating Literacies Part 1

From: http://www.baas.ac.uk/usso/category/skills-development/teaching-skills-development/

/

Michael Gorman is a prominent blogger who regularly posts on transforming role of technology in the classroom. He is partnered with ISTE and various educational, governmental, and business organizations and foundations. Click here to go to his blog!

What captured my attention on his blog was his three part series on technology and education. Particularly, Gorman discusses Tech Resources and Tools for Differentiated Learning for Reading.

In his first post in the series, he describes his experiences in a Project Based learning (PBL) classroom incorporating differentiated instruction for reading. Although the description is fairly short, he goes onto recommend a few of his favourite reading resources (some of my top picks found below) to share with students, which cover a diverse range of reading levels. One common theme that runs throughout all of his recommendations is that they all contain current events and news.

Breaking News - a cool website, dealing with popculture news that allows you to sort articles by reading levels.

Newsela - easy to understand content which looks at current events.

Commonlit - a free digital collection of fiction and nonfiction for the classroom, appropriate for all age levels. 

As a future English teacher, I never gave much thought to what I would actually assign my students to read. Back in highschool, I remember reading mostly Shakespeare and an assortment of classical novels, but we really never paid any attention to the current world events, at least not in English.

I like the idea of getting my students to read current events because it’s an effective way to implement the literacies within the classroom while also fitting neatly into the curriculum. For instance, if I were teaching students journalistic writing, we could examine newspaper articles which, in themselves, deal with a myriad of topics that incorporate the literacies, i.e. articles about environmentalism, multiculturalism, global relations are all reflective of the literacies.

That being said, there seems to be a dilemma about what actually constitutes the incorporation of the literacies. To elucidate, if I give my class an article dealing with  a particular issue, say the Syrian refugee crisis, does exposing them to this contemporary issue signify that I have incorporated multicultural and global literacies into the classroom?

I think incorporating the literacies requires a bit more ‘unpacking’ than simply getting students to read current events. However, how does one ‘unpack’ the literacies in the classroom? How does the teacher ‘teach’ the literacies? Going back to the example of getting students to read an article about the Syrian refugee crisis, just because students have read it, doesn’t mean that they ‘understand it’, nor the literacies which article incorporates.

Is it the job of the teacher to unpack, to ‘explain’ the article, and by extension the literacies? If so, there are a few problems to this approach:

• Firstly, if the teacher unpacks/explains the article and the literacies contained within it, they position themselves as the explicit authoritative figure.  Although there is nothing wrong with the teacher taking an authoritative role, it has the potential to marginalize student voices and opinions, by propagating the teacher’s view as the ‘correct’ view. Consequently, the teacher becomes the dictator of the class whose totalizing power forecloses the possibility of other voices. One way to combat this quasi-dictatorship role as a teacher is to constantly ask questions and involve your students in the teaching process.
• Secondly, there is the question of ideology. What I mean by this is that the teacher, in the process of teaching, will always express their subjective views. The problem being is that these subjective views once again have potential to silence student voices. For example, a teacher raised in an affluent community, teaching in a lower SES neighbourhood will have a different Weltanschauung (world perception), and by processes of cultural hegemony, the teacher’s world view will function as the authoritative worldview within the classroom, which in turn causes the students to conform to this world view in order to adhere to the authority of the
  teacher. Pierre Bourdieu’s book, Distinction is really good at explaining the above in detail.
• Lastly, I return to the problem of constitution. All the literacies are clouded with multiple definitions. Accordingly, what definition is the ‘right’  definition or what definition does the teacher use as a point of departure?

From: uvufacultycenter.blogspot.com

In order to incorporate the literacies effectively, I believe the teacher has to act as a sherpa, guiding students to the summit, by giving them the conceptual tools to reach the top. By  minimizing their symbolic authorial position, teachers foster a space for student voice and involvement. The democratization of the classroom is needed for the incorporation of the literacies, otherwise, any attempt at ‘teaching’ the literacies will end up in expressing the subjectivity of the teacher which residues rub off onto the student, influencing their perception.

The idealistic goal of education is to create democratic, ethical citizens who contribute to society. The broad range of information which the literacies cover, from environmentalism to financial knowledge, prepare students for democratic involvement. But this democratic involvement starts with the teacher democratizing the classroom.

As a future teacher, creating a democratic environment to allow for the incorporation of the literacies is my top priority. By creating an open, collaborative space in which student voices can be freely articulated, I hope to foster students’ critical literacy skills, providing the developmental basis for the other literacies.