Have I changed as a reader throughout this semester???

That is the great question and I believe I have an even greater answer. YES! Coming into this semester, I had preconceived notions about certain ethnic and social classes. Through the many class readings, in particularly the readings of Compton-Lilly, I have come to see that I was pre-judging people and students in general. I have realized that I need to begin to step back and not judge a student and think that they are automatically not smart or do not come from a family that thinks education is important. My reading of people has definitely changed and I now notice myself truly trying to get to know people a little bit more before making any judgements on them.

In addition, I have learned to look at everything around me with a new, critical lens. The Stephanie Jones and Hilary Janks articles truly opened my eyes to this. I found that almost everything in our surroundings can be questioned or tilted to one certain perspective. Knowing this, it is my job as a future educator to impart this knowledge onto my students. We must begin to view things critically and included in that critical lens belongs the word and the world...

An example of a Critical Literacy Lesson Plan

Below is an example of a critical literacy lesson plan. This can be catered and changed in order to meet the needs of your students as well as across different grades. In addition, it can be altered to have students investigate any website critically, not just the one provided.

Why is it important to evaluate the source and validity of the information found on a website?

Procedure:

1.Have the students brainstorm a list of criteria which make a Web page useful for research. Answers should include title, author, date of creation, date of update, source of information, contact e-mail address, layout of page, ease of use, fast to load, etc.

2. Discuss the 5 W’s of website evaluation (who, what, when, where, why?) and a critical evaluation tool and go over both. Be sure to emphasize the importance of the credibility of the author and the source of the information on the page. Talk about ways to determine if information is correct (e.g. finding the information in a print source, on another Web page, via an expert)

3. Surf to the Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide page (http://descy.50megs.com/descy/webcred/webcred/dhmo.html) and have students, on their own or in small groups, evaluate the information on the page using the critical evaluation tool.

4.Have the class come back as a group and discuss the pro's and con's of this page. Did anyone know the information was bogus? How could this be determined? Emphasize the fact, with little knowledge of a topic, it is almost impossible to know if the information located is correct.

5.In small groups, have students visit some of the other bogus Web sites listed at the bottom of this page: http://discoveryschool.com/schrockguide/eval.html

6.Have them discuss the methods for finding out if the information is real or bogus.

Assessment:
Have the students create a list of 10 questions to ask themselves when critically evaluating the information they have found.

Have the students write a paragraph explaining why it is important to evaluate the information found on a Web page. Have them include the ways to find out more about the author, the sponsoring agency, or the information itself.

Reflection on Just Girls: Hidden literacies and life in junior high (with comments!)

Below is my reflection of the book Just Girls: Hidden literacies and life in junior high by Margaret Finders as well as my reflection of my group's class presentation on the book. Included along with my thoughts are comments from one of my group members in parenthesis.

In reading and presenting Just Girls: hidden literacies and life in junior high by Margaret Finders, I was able to look, from a different and outside perspective, at high school cliques. Finders was able to put images into my head that made me feel like I actually knew these adolescent girls, but was watching and analyzing them from a place where they could not see me. (I agree that Finders was really able to tap into the girls’ identities and give the reader a sense of who they were and what mattered most to them!)

I was particularly drawn to learning about the social queens simply due to the fact that they have always held a sort of negative stigma in my mind stemming from my own adolescent days. Finders enabled me to step outside of my own stereotypical views of the queens in order to look and study them in a new light. (Its so true that even in adulthood we can hold onto our stigmas over social groups, even from childhood, but I really felt this books was a great read for trying to understand and tolerate those who were seemingly different from us.)

Through the various readings, especially from Hilary Janks and Stephanie Jones, and discussions we have had in class, I knew it was important to critically analyze the study that Finders was presenting in this text. I really zoned in on learning about the three primary literacies that the queens took part in—graffiti, note passing, and teen zines. I realized that these three acts were ways in which the girls used literacy to achieve social power and status among their peers and by subsequently achieving this power, they could do anything they wanted and get away with it. (Yes! The girls could really play with their roles, in that they were able to do so away from the watchful eyes of adults.)

I can personally connect with these acts from my adolescent experience and it was almost as if Finders was studying and writing about my own high school. The social queens, in my case, were called “The Stews” and they were always running around school passing notes, writing messages on the bathroom walls, and wore the latest fashions. At this particular time in my life and up until reading Just Girls, I had never thought too much of these acts, but by stepping back and critically analyzing what was really happening, I can see now how the social queens, just like The Stews, were using these three things to achieve that high power status. (Its small acts that often make the most difference in our lives- even without us realizing it!)

Knowing about these social queens now as an educator, the one question that comes to my mind is should we let these sorts of “underground literacies” and doing only the minimum amount of work in order to pass a class continue? What if teachers persist to close their eyes to these activities as if they are not happening as the teachers did in Finders study? To me the answer is clear—the cycle will continue. (I agree! Nothing will change unless we take steps to change it!) Personally, what I learned from reading this book is that we as educators need to be aware of the happenings of teenage life. Cliques will always exist, but learning how to manage them and acknowledging their existence could help us to get these social queens to want more than a passing grade. For example, it might be a good idea to give reading and writing activities that pertain to the latest pop culture icon or teachers could assign a creative project such as making your own magazine. The options are seemingly boundless, but one truth remains—teachers need to stop allowing these students to sit in class all day long passing notes, gossiping and kissing up in order for them to succeed. (I wonder how the “Tough Cookies” could be challenged as well? )
I felt that my group’s collaborative work on this presentation went extremely well. In order to work around everyone’s schedule, we came up with ways and times that worked for everyone in order to get what we needed to accomplish completed. By staying after class at night and using an email chain, we were able to really pull all of our individual pieces together for what we thought was a successful and entertaining presentation. During our meetings it was extremely important for us, due to the minimal amount of time we had together, to stay on task and listen to one another’s ideas. We respected what one another had to say and offered suggestions and additions to ideas. There are times when I personally do not enjoy working with groups because one person may end up doing more work than another, but in this case, we divided work equally and fairly and I believe everyone enjoyed the time we shared together.

Just Girls truly enabled me to move past the words that these girls were reading and writing on notes and magazine and to look more critically at the world that was surrounding them. To their teachers, their social lives were seemingly much more important to them than their academic well-being, but to the critical eye these social queens have the educational capacity to do great things because after all, they are just girls, just normal girls. (Yes and all girls can do great things! I agree that Finders really made the reader aware of the implications the underground literate practices have on students development that I would have never naturally thought of!)

Just a few of my Favorite Books

Before going to bed at night and in between all of my various readings for school, I always make time to read books that are pleasurable to me. Below is a list of my recent reads that have become favorites as well as a list of my favorite classics.

Recent Reads:

A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

Eay, Pray, Love by lizabeth Gilbert

The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

Judge & Jury by James Patterson

Classics:

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl

Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia Maclachlan

Tuck Everlasting Nancy Babbitt

"I Am" Poem

I am from a place where everyone knows my name.

I am from a table surrounded by my classmates.

I am from a dad who loves the phrase "work hard, play hard" and a mom who is always there for me.

I am from a sister who is my best friend and brother who always makes me laugh.
I am from a group of friends that support and respect one another.

I am from the beach.

I am from a city that never sleeps.
I am from a place of happiness that is molded by love.

Reading the Word- My earliest Memories

My earliest memory of learning to read took place at a very young age. My teacher must have told my parents that a great way for us to learn to read the most common words would be to write them in big letters on note cards and then run through the stack every day after school. I remember hating this activity more than anything, but my mom always bribed me into sitting down for 10 minutes and going through the cards with a snack like a cookie. The one word that still sticks out to me today that I could somehow NEVER remember being able to read was ironically the word "T-H-E!" When I look back on this today, it makes me laugh at how frustrated I remember getting. At that time, the spelling just did not make any sense to me! I suppose I have come a long way since my flash card days and perhaps have developed my sweet tooth because of them!

Denny Taylor: Family literacy: Young children learning to read and write

I found that the group presentation on Denny Taylor's book Family literacy: Young children learning to read and write to be very informative. They discussed some great tips for supporting literacy at home which comes at a perfect time now with the summer months just beginning and the school year ending. Here are some of the tips that I found to be most helpful for families to promote literacy development:

1- Read stories daily

2- Point out words in books

3- Read the newspaper daily

4- Write notes or communicate to eachother when information can not be delivered directly

5- Watch Sesame Street

6- Look up television shows in a TV guide with the child

7- Modeling reading (showing how to turn pages)

8- Write grocery lists together

9- Subscribe to a children's magazine

10- Allow younger children to listen to stories that are being told to the older children

Useful Books and articles for professional growth

Throughout the semester, I have begun to accumulate some articles and texts from my classes that have been useful for understanding literacy as it relates to culture. The list will continue to grow as I grow and learn, but here is a start…

10 quick ways to analyze children’s books for racism and sexism (1974). New York: Council on Interracial Books for Children.

1. Check the Illustrations
2. Check the Story Line
3. Look at the Lifestyles
4. Weigh the Relationships Between People
5. Note the Heroes
6. Consider the Effect on a Child's Self-Image
7. Consider the Author's or Illustrator's Background
8. Check Out the Author's Perspective
9. Watch for Loaded Words
10. Look at the Copyright Date


Both sides of the story?: Searching for multiple voices in children’s literature. Journal for a Just and Caring Education, 2(4), 440-448.

The recent publishing trend in children’s literature is an increasing number of stories that focus on the experiences of different cultures. This article discusses why this is important.


Lewison, M. Leland, C., Flint, A.S., & Moller, K.J. (2002). Dangerous discourses: Using controversial books to support engagement, diversity, and democracy. The New Advocate, 15 (3), 215-226.

Discusses why teachers should use “dangerous discourse” books when there are so many safe books for teachers to choose from.

Fox, D.L., & Short, K.G. (2003). Stories matter: The complexity of cultural authenticity in children’s literature. Urbana, IL: National Council for Teachers of English.

This collection highlights important historical events, current debates, and new questions and critiques in the controversial issue of cultural authenticity in children’s literature.

Ballenger, C. (1999). Teaching other people’s children. New York: Teachers College Press.

This literature generally took the attitude that children will learn unless impeded from learning. It contained at its core an earlier phrasing of the question that motivates many of the most powerful pieces of teacher research today: Why aren’t all children learning?

Janks, H. (2000). Domination, access, diversity and design: A synthesis for critical literacy education. Educational Review, 52(2), 175-186.

Discusses how we as a society need to critically access readings and our surroundings by putting our own personal discourses aside.

Critically analyzing gawker.com with the help of Hilary Janks...

If one were to walk around an office in New York City during a lunchtime hour, what would he or she be most likely to see on employee computer screens—excel sheets, word documents, power points, or guilty pleasure websites? The answer to this question may be shocking to some, but a reality for millions of other people. These entertaining, and mindless websites run rampant in today’s New York City workplaces and there is one in particular that can be found on a lot of New Yorker’s usual repertoires of must-reads—gawker.com.

Gawker is a Manhattan based news media-gossip website with content consisting of celebrity and media industry gossip, critiques of mainstream news outlets and New York-centric stories. On an hourly basis, the site is updated with new stories that keep readers, primarily young New York City professionals of all races, genders, and sexualities, continuing to come back for more. Most posts are fabricated in order to entertain the reader and poke fun at certain happenings or people so the reader must assess each post’s factual reliability.

As a former employee of a desk job, I found myself constantly intrigued by the creative, bold headlines that dominate the easy-to-navigate webpage. For example, a few recent headlines include “Gossip Writer Haunted by Satanic Curse,” “Teenage Punks Must Apologize on You Tube for Being Dumb,” and “First Person Report from Belmont Stakes.” I am drawn to read each blog posting simply due to the fact that the headlines are comical. In addition to the headlines, each posting also includes one picture next to the post, the number of views it has received, and reader comments to go along with the story. By quickly glancing at these four things, I was able to easily decide if the posting was worth reading or not.

Gawker.com was founded in 2002 and is run by Gawker Media. Gawker usually publishes more than fifty posts daily during the week, sometimes reaching seventy posts a day. The stories generally come from anonymous tips from media employees, found mistakes and faux pas in news stories caught by readers and other blogs, and original reporting.

When viewing Gawker critically, I do notice that most of the postings are told only from the perspective of the bloggers and are primarily opinion based. Gawker lacks the element of truth. Only one side of each story and experience is written about which leads to the fact that many stories and people discussed in the blog are misrepresented. This element of using only one perspective is for entertainment and shock value. For example, in order to play into certain gender or sexual stereotypes, bloggers will often post a story that is extremely fabricated in order to evoke emotion from readers. These stories often get the most reader comments and are thus seen as a successful story for the website.

Readers of this website are not here to read serious stories or to obtain factual information about current events. With that being said, if bloggers were to write about an event from all perspectives or with no certain personal position on the issue, Gawker may lose its appeal. It is simply a place to go to take one’s mind off of the daily grind and perhaps have a laugh or two with colleagues and friends. Readers must understand that there are always two sides to a story, but here on Gawker only one side will be told.

The question that is raised from critically analyzing this article is would this website be off-limits to my students because we should not analyze what makes us laugh? I refer to the Hilary Janks article, Domination, access, diversity, and design: A synthesis for Critical Literacy education, for an answer. Janks discusses that having a keen awareness to different discourses will allow readers to ask critical questions such as, “why did the writer or speaker make these choices? Whose interests do they serve? Who is empowered or disempowered by the language used” (2000). In order for my students to become critical readers, they will need to begin to analyze the things around them in an open-minded way. Realizing that gawker.com is mainly written from one perspective will help students to look at the big picture and know that there is another side to every story.

Check out what I am talking about at www.gawker.com or Hilary Janks article:

Janks, H. (2000). Domination, access, diversity and design: A synthesis for critical literacy education. Educational Review, 5(2), 175-186.

Reading the World, from the 2 Train...

In Reading the Word and the World by Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo, the importance of being able to read the world is stressed. As a teacher, it is an absolute necessity to really see where your students are coming from—we must begin to look beyond our own personal boundaries by opening our eyes to the events happening around us. I remember reading this chapter on the subway on my way up to school a few weeks ago. The subway is normally a place for me to catch up on readings or current events by reading the newspaper. I rarely, if ever, pick my head up to see what’s going on around me. However, as soon as I read “Reading the world always precedes reading the word, and reading the word implies continually reading the world,” (Freire & Macedo, 1987, pg. 35) I picked up my head and I began to see a whole underground literacy campaign taking place all around me.

The subway car was filled with different forms of literacy going on all around me. From the ads plastered all over the walls, the graffiti-ridden seats, and the people smashed in against me, I was in a world that I seemingly have never taken the time to truly investigate. My first observation was that everyone was doing something, even if it meant just reading those ads. There were, however, three people that stuck out to me: a young child with his mother, a high-school student just leaving school, and pregnant woman.

When the young child began to fuss, the mother began telling him a highly animated oral story about a boy who cried all day long on the subway and after all his tears filled the subway car, he floated away. The boy was listening intently and throughout the entire story and after, he remained silent, gazing at his mother. The high-school male ran onto the car with an ipod in his ears and a gadget in his hands. After some investigating, I noticed that the gadget was really a cell phone and he sat, eyes fixated, texting the whole ride, never once lifting his head or taking his fingers off the phone. The pregnant woman sat with a pregnancy magazine, gently flipping through the pages and folding down some that must have been important to her.

By opening my eyes to the world around me, I noticed that literacy is all around me, even on the subway ride up to Columbia. In one form or another, each of the people were engaged in some activity requiring the passage of words. I was intrigued by what I saw and have since allocated 50% of my subway ride to observing other people’s literacy’s, while the other 50% remains on focusing on my own reading of the word!

Sharing Stories, Cultural Treasures

For our class exercise on sharing stories and cultural treasures, I showed a pamphlet from New York Road Runners. This pamphlet was more of representation of the part that running plays in my life. From a very young age I have always used running or other sports as my life “equalizer.” After a long, stressful day of work, a personal problem, or just to enjoy the weather, I have always been able to come back from a workout with a clearer mind. I find that I can face problems or situations with a more rational outlook and that a problem that might have seemed like the worst thing in the world, after a run, really is not.

In looking at my family and the role that they have played in fostering this aspect of my life, I noticed that the majority of my family all enjoy athletic activities. Growing up, quality time with my parents was spent outdoors, on sports fields, and hitting the pavement. It was our way of bonding and to this day, still is. These are activities that I will carry on to my children and so on and the enjoyment and relief that I get out of these activities will hopefully be as beneficial for them as it was for me.

Reflection on Pam Green's- Critical Literacy Revisited

I was very drawn to Pam Green’s Critical Literacy Revisited article because I felt that her stance in regards to literacy and my own connected. One piece in particular that jumped out at me was that presenting students a “juxtaposition of texts will arguably enable students to perceive a range of viewpoints and to consider each in a critical way.” I have discussed this in other classes as well and there has been an overwhelming response by most of my peers that this is a great method to get students to make links between what is new and familiar, thus allowing learning to become more meaningful.

A great way to really instill this into a classroom is to choose a book that has been written in several different viewpoints or versions. The teacher can either read the books aloud to the students or the students can read the versions themselves quietly. After completing the readings, the class can discuss the similarities and differences between the books by either creating a Venn Diagram or any other graph or chart deemed appropriate. Students will find that there are many different versions and perspectives of one story. Some great books to do this activity with are fairy tales and stories of Christopher Columbus.

After completing the readings and discussions, another great way to get students to think critically is to have them write his or her own version of the story. They can then present this version to their classmates and once again they will see that the story can be told from many different perspectives.

Active Listening Activity

I would like to comment on one of our recent small group activity entitled “Active Listening Exercise” and how I can use this in my own classroom as well as why I think it is important.

Ways to use this in my own future classroom:

1- This is a wonderful tool for students to learn about different perspectives. By having them each discuss the same point written on the page, they will be able to see how their opinion or view on the topic at hand may be the same or different than their partner’s perspective.

2- It is a great activity to hone in on listening skills! For example, there are many times during a class period when a student will raise his or her hand and repeat exactly what another student has just said simply because he or she was not listening. This exercise will focus on truly listening to what someone has to say since they have to repeat it back.


3- This activity can help those students that are not comfortable speaking to large crowds practice their speaking skills in a non-threatening way. Since they will only be discussing their opinions to one person, many students will feel more comfortable speaking whereas they would most likely not participate if this were a large classroom discussion.

I think this skill of being an active listener is an extremely important part of becoming a well-rounded student. Many students find it hard to focus on what their peers are saying or feel that it is not important to listen, but this activity shows that listening is important, crucial and necessary in order to obtain information.

My Response to a Reading from Cynthia Ballenger's Work

Through my course readings, I have begun to reflect on my own teaching practices from the past as well as look towards the future. One reading that particularly interested me was from Cynthia Ballenger's Teaching Other People's Children. Below is my reflection...

During my four years of undergraduate student-teaching, I was placed in three different types of schools—private and wealthy, public and wealthy, and public and economically poor. My first two schools were comprised of students and environments that were culturally similar to what I am accustomed to—white and middle-class. In these settings, I felt completely comfortable, respected, organized, and was able to successfully administer the practices that I was learning in my own classes with my students. I understood where the students were coming from and what their family/home life was like. Since these were my first experiences as a teacher in a classroom, I had assumed that all classrooms must be like this. However, reality quickly set in when I began my full-time student teaching at an inner-city Boston public school where my cultural background greatly differed from that of many of my students’.

In Teaching Other People’s Children, Cynthia Ballenger states “I had been trained to handle behavior in certain ways, but this training was based on deep cultural assumptions” (Ballenger, 1999, pg. 40). This quotation was in reference to her experience as an American woman teaching in a predominantly Haitian classroom. Teaching practices that she was taught and settings that were once familiar to her became subjects of question when her students were not responding as she thought they would. Ballenger’s determination to question her own cultural background in order to get through to her students is the same feeling that I had in my fifth-grade classroom that was mostly comprised of African American and Hispanic fifth-grade students in Boston. It was a disparaging feeling that I have since carried with me and continually try to learn from and investigate.

I vividly remember walking into this classroom for the first time and immediately feeling the cultural differences between myself and my students. Why were these students dressed in baggy clothing with un-tucked shirts, not speaking in full-sentences, using slang when writing papers, singing to rap music the hallways with friends, and why didn’t they listen to me when I asked them to stop doing something or to pay attention? I was attempting to use all of my standard practices to no avail and realized that like Ballenger’s experience, I had a huge problem on my hands and was constantly questioning the best way to deal with managing cultural differences to improve myself.

I found Ballenger’s different approaches to closing this cultural gap to be successful, inspiring, and beneficial. Through taking the time to speak with the Haitian teachers and parents in her school, observing their interactions with the students, and self-reflecting on her own teaching style she managed to examine and alter her cultural assumptions. Looking back on my experience in the Boston Public School, I can see how applying these methods would have benefited me and my class. Going forward, I realize that customs that I am familiar with can be changed depending on different situations. Most importantly, it is my job to learn as much as possible about where my students come from and not assume anything.


There was, however, one concern that jumped out at me with Ballenger’s approach. There are many different cultures, especially in New York City, which students may come from—Hispanic, African American, Asian, Haitian, etc. With so many differing backgrounds, how is it possible as a teacher to gain an overarching knowledge of all of them in order to establish a successful teaching environment? Since Ballenger’s students were primarily Haitian, she was able to concentrate on just that one culture and seemingly over a long period of time, she began to see positive results with the way her students began to respond to her. It is hard for me to conceptualize being able to put my own cultural assumptions aside and learn about and observe so many others in a period of time that would take many years and much practice as it did for Ballenger.

Ballenger’s account of her cultural experience with Haitian students is one that I can relate to, learn from, and grow upon. I realize that many teachers must go through this process of putting his or her own cultural assumptions aside for a moment and attempt to learn why students from a different background may act the way they do. Self-investigation is a key to successful teaching and although I do question the best way to examine many different cultures at once, I do believe that I must begin to look at my own values and practices as Ballenger did.

My First Experiences with Reading the World

Growing up on Long Island, my most vivid memories are those that took place at the beach. Every summer, my family and I would go to Atlantic Beach Club where many of our family friends also went. I remember getting out of our station wagon, checking in, running to our cabana, dropping my beach bag, grabbing my friends and then skipping off for the day, never looking back.

One activity that I now look back upon frequently with my friend Amanda was our “singing duo.” The two of us would stand near the parking lot with brushes turned upside down in our hands and sing every Mariah Carey and Debbie Gibson song that we knew the words to in front of all the guests driving into the beach club. We came up with a myriad of choreographed dances and truly belted these songs out for anyone who would watch and listen. Reflecting upon this activity always brings up the feelings of embarrassment and awe. How can we have done that in front of all those people considering we had the worst voices ever? Conversely, I am in awe at the fact that I did once have the courage to do that without even second guessing it!

Other activities that I remember include using soap and water to make quicksand on the beach, manhunt at night, swimming in the ocean with my dad, eating toasted Ellio’s with my sister on beach chairs, watching my little brother run around in just diapers with popsicle all over his face, and never wanting to leave. This time of my life was heavily documented through pictures, video tapes, and discussions with my family and lifelong friends that I made at the beach.

And so it begins...

I was excited that creating a blog was one of the choices for the reading portfolio. Not being an avid blogger (or ever really blogging for that matter!) this would be a sort of double-edge challenge to create a distinguised reading portfolio and to do it online. Included in this blog will be different postings on Reading the World, Reading the Word, and Implications for Teaching that I will be reflecting upon throughout the semester. So here we go...