Re-defining Literacy...some final thoughts

My definition of literacy hasn’t really changed all that much; however, my awareness of how it is expressed, how it is practiced, and how I'm “teaching” it has definitely changed, perhaps even heightened.  I’m finding that in my interactions with children I see literacy “in-the-making” beyond the fact that they are using crayons, pens, and paint on paper.  I now see that it’s in the play, interactions, and conversations they have with each other and with me.  This has definitely changed the way I approach literacy with the children.  However, I still think about the conventional practices in the schools and what happens after they’ve been with me.  I think about how much I’ve actually prepared them for that experience, if I have altogether.  I also think about whether I have done enough writing or reading with them or have exposed them enough to these literacy practices to prepare them for what is going happen in the classrooms, what will be expected from them.  Is the emergent way I’m looking at literacy enough to prepare them for that?  Even as I try to separate myself from that conventional way of thinking and practicing I just can’t help but think how backwards literacy practices are in the school system, how limited literacy practices are encouraged for children, and how profoundly influenced I still am of its very practices.

Children as Writers

I don’t have a very clear memory of when and how I began making scribbling marks or writing as a whole.  What I do know quite clearly is my affinity for the varying techniques used to write (i.e. calligraphy, learning and practicing about other fonts/styles, etc.).  I believe that for me growing up, writing wasn’t about expressing or communicating thoughts and feelings but it was aesthetically motivated – if I had to write, it had to look ‘pretty’, neat, and very legible.  I wasn’t focus too much on the content.  I believe this is influenced by interactions with my family.  My grandfather, who was an art teacher, had a 4-5 foot green chalk board in our dining room and every morning he would write out the date and the number of orders (they sold blocks of ice) they had for that day.  I loved his penmanship and there were times where I would closely observe him write with careful precision on the chalk board.  It was the same experience with my mom and how, when she wrote out letters or note cards, she would spend the time to make sure each letter was done right.  In my elementary school years, I think I flew below the radar when it came to assessing my writing and reading skills because my writing was legible enough.  I think that because of this, the content, spelling and grammar wasn’t overly focused on.  I remember getting a report card saying that I needed to work on my storytelling and a few grammar skills but my spelling and the legibility of my actual writing style was enough to grant me ‘satisfactory’ in my overall language arts skills.  From this I think about other possible experiences of the legibility or illegibility of one’s writing as influencing how that child is thought of as a whole.

I can recall a ‘forced’ reading/writing or literacy situation experienced by my childhood friend.  During “language arts” period we were often given notebooks in which half of each page had a space to draw images/pictures and the other half was lined to write out the story behind these drawings.  He always drew but the written part was always minimal and ‘messy’ (a term my grade 3 teacher actually used to describe my friend’s writing).  As a result, he would always be set aside by the teacher, and in turn, always asked him to “elaborate” the written part of his story and also work on improving his writing so that it could be easily read.  Not only did he feel embarrassed for being set aside, but he was also being forced to do something that he did not connect to.  Was he not a good storyteller because he couldn’t articulate with words written on a page?  Did the teacher see him as lacking (intellectually) because his writing was ‘messy’?  When we played outside of the school walls he had elaborate ideas and stories to attach to games which ranged from playing with toys and other materials or “driving” to varying places in his dad’s old truck.  Looking back on it now, he was more of a visual, verbal, physical learner and reading or writing just wasn’t his forte.

In reflecting on my experience and my observations of my friend’s experience, I relate this quite well with Barrat-Pugh’s (2007) assertion that “literacy practices are differently valued in different contexts…in educational contexts, certain forms of literacy become privileged” (p. 137).  In my situation and clearly in what I’ve seen in my friend’s situation, reading and writing was significantly valued more than other literacy practices.  Therefore, other practices were not as honoured and in turn held children back and limited their ability to express, explore and understand themselves in their world.

Logue, Robie, Brown, and Waite (2009) suggests that “[i]f all children are to become successful readers and writers, teachers must approach the teaching of literacy skills by using the skills and dispositions that children bring to the learning experiences” (p. 221).  Perhaps, my friend would have enjoyed writing better if our teacher closely observed what his literacy strengths were and incorporated that with the process of learning to write with “elaborated content” and legibility.  Barrat-Pugh (2007) states that “learning and teaching writing is complex and multifaceted” but more often than not, especially when reading and writing is the dominant discourse of literacy practices, educators and even parents approach literacy learning as though it were “a linear process in which children progress through a series of stages” which can be implemented and therefore mastered with drilled repetition and memorization or letters/symbols and words/phrases.  It can and does work, as articulated by Wong (2008) in her study with preschool children learning how to read and write in Hong Kong.  However, I can’t stop thinking about the children who have significant difficulties with mastering reading or writing or those who require more time (beyond the prescribed school year).  Will they be left behind if their stories aren’t interesting or creative enough or because their spelling or writing styles aren’t just up to par?

I end this entry by highlighting another suggestion of how we can possibly engage in a balanced approach to teaching children literacy skills.  Wong (2008) suggests to “create learning environments that are realistic and relevant to learners, and support learning through multiple roles” (p. 116) and multiple modalities.  In my workplace and in my community in general, I see children coming from varying cultural and social backgrounds and I believe that Wong’s (2008) - and even Logue et al., (2009) – suggestion[s] is/[are] very crucial to consider and allows our practice to be more ethical as a result.

References:

Barrat-Pugh, C.  (2007).  Multiple ways of making meaning: children as writers.  In L. Makin, C. Jones Diaz, & C. McLachlan (Eds.), Literacies in childhood: Changing views, challenging practice (2^nd ed. pp. 133-152).  Marrickville, NSW: Maclennan & Petty – Elsevier. 

Logue, M., Robie, M., Brown, M., & Waite, K.  (2009).  Read my dance: promoting early writing through dance.  Childhood Education, 216-222.

Wong, M.  (2008).  How preschool children learn in Hong Kong and Canada: a cross-cultural study.  Early Years, 28(2), 115-133).

Multiliteracies

When I think about multiliteracies as referring to the “multimodal ways of communicating through linguistic visual, auditory, gestural, and spatial forms” (Hill, 2007, p. 56) I think about how this can accommodate the different ways that children engage and express themselves and the meanings that they make about the world around them.  To understand literacy as something that is beyond the practice and skill of reading and writing is significant because children do have literacy practices that are not limited to these two traditional skills. “Children in early childhood have always used construction, drawing or illustrations, movement and sound to represent meaning.  The newer multimodal technologies add to children’s choice of medium to represent ideas and to comprehend the meanings in a range of texts” (p. 60).  In my work with younger children who are pre-readers and pre-writers, I have seen them express themselves within such an array of actions (dancing, gestures, oral storytelling, etc.) and creations (arts and scribbles, constructions, etc.) and to have to limit them to express themselves or make meaning of their surroundings with a small set or specific set of methods seems unethical and harmful for the possibilities of their potentialities.  Also, children are increasingly being exposed to digital literacies at home or even in the communities (in libraries, stores, even in centres and schools) that the literacy practices that they are learning from the exposure and engagement with varying digitized mediums cannot be ignored.

Reflecting on the modality of movement, I think about the children whom I’ve worked with who are more comfortable expressing themselves and exploring their space (and the people and things within it) in a more physical sense.  These children “use their bodies to make meanings that are sometimes difficult to represent accurately in written form” (Makin & Whiteman, 2007, p. 171) and even in verbal form and to restrict them to express themselves in these ways often becomes problematic for them.  In many situations, when these children are limited (or ‘encouraged’) to simply say what they are feeling or thinking but they don’t know how to verbally articulate it, they get confused and frustrated and as a result, ‘act out’.  Makin and Whiteman (2007) articulates that,

Throughout movement, it is possible to explore feelings, expression relationships and configurations that occur in everyday life in quite different ways than in using written words

…

[movement] extends the resources at their disposal to use oral and written language and to develop multimodal ways of communicating (p. 172).

They provide a possible way of seeing movement as a means for children to “communicate” and educators, adults altogether need to recognize the merits of physical actions in revealing what children are trying to express or how they are understanding themselves and their environment.  Young (n.d.) emphasizes this further and states that with movement such as dance, it is “to enter another world of language and literacy” (p. 15); a “non-language way of making meaning” (p. 5), all of which acknowledging movements as important modes of expression and exploration and fostering learning and enhancing literacy skills as a whole.

Overall, Hill (2007) also encourages us to take a balanced approach when we are teaching children literacy skills but also emphasizes the importance of learning and understanding the literacy strengths that each child has so that s/he is not left feeling frustrated because they cannot express her-/himself.

References:

Hill, S.  (2007).  Multiliteracies: towards the future.  –

Makin L. & Whiteman, P. (2007).  Multiliteracies and the arts.  In L. Makin, C. Jones Diaz, & C. McLachlan (Eds.), Literacies in childhood: Changing views, challenging practice (2^nd ed.).  Marrickville, NSW: Maclennan & Petty – Elsevier. 

Young, P.  (n.d.).  Dancing from the inside out: lessons in the body as text.

Critical Literacy

The new technologies that seem to symbolize and support globalization processes, give a previously unavailable power to individuals with access to them.  Through technologies such as the Internet, individuals (including children) can mediate or transform their own understandings without the support of traditional mediators like teachers, parents, or governments (Kennedy, 2006, p. 298). 

I chose to start with this statement for the fact that more and more children are able to easily access the “technologies” that Kennedy (2006) speaks of in this statement.  If it’s not the computer or the internet, it’s the television, radio, or simply in the very literature that is available to children.  What provoked me further is within the line, “individuals (including children) can mediate or transform their own understandings without the support of…teachers, parents, or governments”.  Initially, I questioned why would it be so bad to think in these terms?  Aren’t we supposed to see children as autonomous beings, capable of thinking, acting, and deciding for themselves without any influence from the adults who most often control and dictate how children should live in general?  However, I began thinking about the materials that are out there and how, in many cases, racist, sexist, elitist (to name a few) ideologies are implicitly and explicitly promoted in the digital materials available to children.  It speaks to the idea of just showing one dimension, one story usually that of a dominant group (Westernized, white, English speaking, middle class…?)  Do children have the ability to be critical about what they are seeing or hearing if they are always exposed to such one-sided “popular media” (Jones Diaz, Beecher & Arthur, 2007)?  If we respond with a ‘no’ to this question does it then justify the roles of the adults to come and help children learn how to be critical?

For the purpose of this discussion, let’s say that children do need guidance in critical literacy practice.  I know how problematic taking this stance is altogether, but let’s focus on the fact that the practice of critical literacy is necessary for the very reason that a lot of the materials that are out there targeting children’s impressionable minds are propagating inequities, stereotypes, and discrimination of individuals or groups.  Jones Diaz, Beecher, and Arthur (2007) seems to provide an enhanced (perhaps, a counter-) argument from the statement I started with, which also justifies the necessity of children learning why and how to critically analyse what they are seeing, hearing, reading and so on.  They state,

[r]ather than leaving children and young people to mediate their own understandings of gender, ‘race’, ethnicity and social power through interactions with texts of popular culture, educator involvement can enable ideological and consumer issues associated with popular culture to be problematized.  Educators can support children to critically examine the ways that dominant discourses are perpetuated in texts of popular culture.  They can assist children to engage in resistant readings and to produce alternative texts (Jones Diaz, et al., 2007).

I believe that there is little control or authority placed on the teacher over children, rather, children are empowered to see the otherness or what’s possibly missing within the materials they are exposed to in the “popular media”.

It is important to note, which Jones Diaz et al. (2007) also emphasize, that we need to acknowledge why children are drawn to the materials they are exposed to and how they are interpreting it altogether. I think that with this practice, it highlights the importance of engaging in an ongoing conversation between children, teachers, parents, and other community members. It is also important to engage in such conversations with children regarding the need to be critical because of what they themselves can proliferate in their actions.

References:

Jones Diaz, C., Beecher, B. & Arthur, L.  (2007).  Children’s worlds: globalization and critical literacy.  In L. Makin, C. Jones Diaz, & C. McLachlan (Eds.), Literacies in childhood: Changing views, challenging practice (2^nd ed. pp. 71-86).  Marrickville, NSW: Maclennan & Petty – Elsevier. 

Kennedy, A.  (2006).  Globalisation, global English: ‘futures trading’ in early childhood education.  Early Years, 26(3), 295-306.  doi: 10.1080/09575140600898472

First Nations Literacy Practice: Oral Storytelling Tradition

Responding to this week’s readings gives me the same feelings of uncertainty and lack of confidence in my thoughts which I had with the discussion around cultural authenticity.  I feel this way because I haven’t read too much First Nations’ literature and while I have taken courses in First Nations/Aboriginal studies in the past, I feel anxious about discussing the process and subject matters related to First Nation’s stories. Why could this be?  Is it due to the fact that I’ve had limited exposure to it or because First Nation literacy practices and literature is not fully introduced and discussed in the curriculum of all of my educational experiences? 

With First Nations stories, I feel that it is meant to be listened to and not be analysed or critiqued.  I say this not with the idea that critical analysis should not be done at all on the stories told.  However, given that First Nations people have long been silenced and continue to struggle to have their voices and stories heard and told, simply analyzing their varied and complex stories is propagating colonizing tactics of control and suppression.  Thompson (2007) highlights the value of “open dialogue” and quotes an elder who emphasize the “value of listening” and the “trust” that is needed “to listen well” (Yellow Hawk, as cited in Thompson, 2007).  From this I see the process of an ongoing conversation between the storyteller and her/his audience and the importance of listening (from all angles) as a significant piece in the process of storytelling as a whole.  First Nations people value the knowledge that elders profess in their stories and also what “younger people, even children” (Thompson, 2007) have to offer in the stories they listen to.  Oral storytelling traditions bear significant knowledge, “a distinctive intellectual tradition” (Moayeri & Smith, 2010, p. 414), that challenges beliefs of the inaccuracies and illegitimacies within oral stories, “oral histories” (Thompson, 2007).  “Scientific Knowledge” is but a single story and just as we’ve been encouraged to see that there are multiple stories it is important to acknowledge that “traditional knowledge” will have its merits (Moayeri & Smith, 2010, p. 415).

In reflecting on First Nations’ oral storytelling traditions, I am reminded by my own experience with oral storytelling and the value that I have for it.  I think about other cultures that strongly value this literacy practice in varying and complex ways and relate it to Thompson’s (2007) words:

The oral tradition represents ‘the other side of the miracle of language’…’the telling of stories, the recitation of epic poems, the singing of songs, the making of prayers, the chanting of magic and mystery, the exertion of human voice upon the unknown – in short, the spoken word’…[the oral tradition is] a literature ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people’ (Thompson, 2007).

I am particularly drawn to the idea that oral storytelling traditions express stories and “literature [that are] ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people’”.  I believe that it is very fitting to the nature of its practice.

Conversely, I also think about how this very practice is not always honoured and therefore, practiced to its full capacity in our Westernized education system,

different literacies are privileged in different institutions, which are controlled by a dominant power in each institution….literacy is most often taught in schools as decontextualized, technical skills…this disconnect between school literacy and home/community literacies is holding back literacy development for children, particularly those whose home literacies are undervalued and ignored by the schools (Moayeri & Smith, 2010, p. 409).

Literacy is still very heavily defined and practiced by the process of reading and writing and this significantly challenges, perhaps to the extreme of eradication of First Nations’ literacy practices of oral storytelling.  What can become of these people and other people who value this way of telling stories or passing on their traditions, beliefs, and so on?  We’ve seen children struggle or be left on the margins feeling confused or defeated when their learning styles and literacy practices are ignored.  How can we be ethical and honour their literacy particularities so that they are thriving instead of failing? 

Thompson invites us to think about how “the oral tradition could be fundamentally superior to written literature or that texts that privilege the Indigenous voice might speak more powerfully to Native students than literary masterpieces” (Thompson, 2007).  Moayeri and Smith (2006) encourages us to “familiariz[e] ourselves and valu[e] the diverse and multiple literacies that students of different cultures bring with them [which] enhances the learning potential of those students and that of the entire class” (p. 415).  They further provoke us to act on “diffusing the dominant power by creating opportunities for learning about multiple cultures by deconstructing existing [Westernized, white, middle-to-upper class, predominantly male perspectives] text, using materials, or by viewing curriculum through a broader lens” (p. 415).  These are just some possible yet very important suggestions to consider.

I end this entry by repeating the questions raised by an anonymous contributor in A broken flute (Seale & Slapin, 2006) because it speaks to the ethical practice which is necessary to consider especially when working with children:

Will you help my child learn to read, or will you teach him that he has a reading problem?  Will you help him develop problem-solving skills or will you teach him that school is where you try to guess what answer the teacher wants?  Will he learn that his sense of his own value and dignity is valid, or will he learn that he must forever be apologetic and try harder because he isn’t white?  Can you help him acquire the intellectual skills he needs without at the same time imposing your values on top of those he already has? (Seale & Slapin, 2006, p. 9)

References:

Moayeri, M. & Smith, J.  (2010).  The unfinished stories of two First Nations mothers.  Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 53(5), 408-417.  doi:10.1598/JAAL.53.5.6

Seale, D. & Slapin, B. (Eds.).  (2006).  A broken flute.  Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press & Oyate.

Thomson, M.  (2007).  Honouring the word.  Tribal College Journal, 19(2).