Writing+Promt+for+1-16-12

We were given a writing prompt at our last meeting: if literacy is a “way of thinking” can one be literate without the reading knowledge of the subjects one speaks about? Can a non-reader be literate? How?

Well I say yes. I believe people are literate when referring to simple communication, because we must have a way of conveying our point. There are so many ways of communicating that it is irresponsible to say that one is literate only in that they are good readers or writers. Special needs students learn in a variety of ways utilizing supported devices, and with the aid of professionals in making literacy available to students for learning. Students who are blind have the Braille system, a  system of  writing  or printing, devised by L. Braille for use  by  the blind, in which  combinations  of tangible dots or points  are   used   to   represent   letters,   characters,   etc.,   that   are  read by touch (Dictionary.com) While, students who are deaf utilize Sign,  Also  called **[|s]ign** any of  several  visual-gestural  systems  of  communication,   especially   employing   manual   gestures,  as used  among   deaf  people (Dictionary.com). I want to teach with the following in mind: that every student I encounter has the //potential// to communicate, articulately and purposefully. If I assume, that students are only proficient, if they can //read// and //write,// proficiency that is measured in such a manner that only allows for antiquated notions of literacy, then I am assuming what the potential progression of what the learning process is for each and every student and I cannot make this assumption about any individual learner. This stands especially in accordance with the individualness that Yagelski says American literature students retain as a part of their identity.

How can we, as a nation, celebrate this individualness, if we are already assuming what and how the potential of a student's literate threshold looks like by designing assessment that measures //for// what they have assumed about individual learning? If there is one point that I have retained so far in my readings, it's that each and every student is different. They learn, perform, and expand, academically in different ways. Thus, I believe that in order to better serve them, pedagogically, we must allot for these differences, specifically in //how we// measure students. It needs to be revamped to represent literacy as a progressive instrument that we've designed and utilized throughout history, sustaining us as a civilized world, but also keep in mind that in learning, //everything// remains fluid. If we can construct a tool within culture to Westernize for a higher purpose, like literacy, then maybe we can //re// construct ways in which we see literacy as as end product of this, and less as a status or individual skill that one must work to obtain. We have to remove power from the skills which make up the title, and allow the power to be in the student's hands. We are always, only guides, not all knowing measurers of some higher power exclusive to certain gifted individuals.

Yagelski talks about how many of the students he has encountered or studied about that are in denial when referring to their SES (43), and how this denial is a part of the assimilation inherent to the literate American identity in Knoblauch's “The Good Life” theory and I can see how this denial is a problematic part of proliferating literacy. However, are we not, simultaneously, a species that when excluded, are naturally curious to discover why, and furthermore, how? Is it not our natural reaction to work harder to assimilate? So, the more categories we remain comfortable with relegating students, the easier it is to come up with different ways teaching under that same guise: being literate means reading and writing really well. With this in mind, if we continue on the path that we have in the past with regard to defining literacy, or labeling it, aren't we doomed to failure? We cannot assume literacy to be only refining reading and writing, and then measuring accordingly. We //must// allow literacy to include all ways in which we communicate a cogent thought of our own, to one another. This allows instructors to have access to an array of methods that support instruction for communication literacy, and not just literacy as reading and writing. As literate subjects of this nation, we communicate with each other in so many ways, I think we tend to forget this. For instance, today, I spoke to my customers at work by using gestures, body language, and used a specialized terminology for serving them. I did not read to them, read them, or ask them to write me anything, and today's tips proved that we obviously communicated fairly well.