Prompt 13: Leaders for Literacy Day Challenge!
How is literacy critical to
the advancement of society today?
It was
6:30 and I was still at school, like many of us, I’m sure. Every other week I only have one class on
Mondays- AP LANG which is always challenging and wonderful (well, most of the
time). I have learned more teaching this
curriculum than I have since the boot camp of year one. Despite only having one class today, I am
always exhausted these Mondays and I am often at school late. Andrew, who teaches AP Chem came in to check
in re: test prep and time going into may.
We got onto talking about books and I was relaying a conversation I had
with my husband about why he disliked the Game
of Thrones series (he knows he is not the norm) after Andrew expressed that
he had not liked them. We moved fluidly
from idea to idea, talking about literature, authors, genre. Then I
told him about today’s April Blog A Day Challenge. “This is what my blog post is going to be
about…”
I have never heard my students
have a conversation about books the way Andrew and I just had. Working in a CS school, I hear conversations
about video games, which in their own right often have complicated and nuanced story lines, characters and each fall into genre of their own. Does this mean that the reading of books is
disappearing? Can students cultivate
literacy in new ways- like through classes like video game design-or do we need
to foster literacy skills the way most of us built them- by reading books?
I don’t
think that video games are a substitution for reading. In AP Lang the majority of the reading
students do is nonfiction. I made the
choice, as I developed my curriculum to anchor each of the 4 units in a novel
that is connected to a larger theme in the context of rhetoric. Our current
unit is Language and Community and our anchor text is the perennial favorite, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora
Neale Hurston. Today was the first day
of a three day sequence and preparation and participation in Socratic Seminar. I had spent the weekend creating a multitude
of documents for students to use and to help them prepare for the two rounds of
discussion they will each have to participate in on Wednesday and Thursday this
week. It’s essentially fancy Book Club
for anyone not familiar with the discussion.
It works and it works well. I am
by no means an expert but I think it provides students to demonstrate mastery
of a plethora of skills in a compact package.
The directions for the prep today were as follows:
1. You will have 2 rounds today, in small groups to break down your assigned
questions and then discuss informally, look for evidence and begin to collect evidence
in your SocSem planning doc I put in your Google Drive.
2. The first round will be in groups of 4 (there should be 8) and we
will all be discussing Question 1
3. The second round you will be in groups of 5-6 to discuss your
second question. There should be 6
groups, 2 for each question.
As I
circulated around, listening in on conversations, I could not help but think, THIS is when the real learning happens.
I could see it: ideas flowing, uncensored, unafraid of making mistakes, to be
right or wrong, to challenge thinking and to BE CHALLENGED. I sat down with a group discussing the
evolution of the protagonist through the course of the novel. It was fantastic. They brought up great points that I had not
ever thought about despite having read TEWWG a dozen or so times. Fresh eyes brings new perspective, especially
important for educators: we don’t know it all. I found myself getting excited
about the discussion and stayed longer than I should have, caught up in the
exchange and listening to the learning happening. THIS is literacy at work.
When my
students come into class on Wednesday, some of them will be nervous, they will
feel the pressure of a grade and having to answer to a parent. They may not have prepared enough, found
enough evidence, been sure enough.
What they don’t know is that you can never be sure enough. Life, knowledge and understanding is fluid
and there is always something new to change what we may have been sure of just
a few weeks earlier.
It’s now
7:30. I am typing away on the R train
and I am ready to be home. This is what
I know: the real power of literacy is
having the ability to read in the first place.
I am grateful that all my students can read. They have this cultural collateral that will
help gain them admission to great colleges, it will help them apply to amazing
jobs after they graduate and it will help them in those moments when they are
at work later than they planned and got to have a lovely conversation with a
colleague about books.
Last Christmas was the first time I had been in my hometown for the holidays since I moved to NYC 10 years years ago. My husband and I flew for a week of celebration and family. My mama and I got to have some great time together that week. I didn't know I had cancer and the most exciting thing coming up was hoping the Seahawks would make a return trip to the now ill-fated Superbowl. This picture was taken on an early morning outing to Starbucks before some post holiday shopping at Fred Meyer.
Thumbs up has been the mantra through out this process. Especially through social media. Quick check ins to let friends and family know that things were okay. 
