Critical Literacy- blog 1

I had two "Aha!" moments in chapter 1.  The first came with the explanation of the term children's literature used in throughout the book.  Vivian discusses the "tensions it creates" because of the misleading ownership suggested by the term.  There is not question about who creates children's art.  But the same assumption rarely holds true with children's literature.  Clarifying that this refers to literature for children rather than by children has a lot of implications.  I believe that children (and everyone, really) learn best if they have a model.  If children only read work by adults, they never have a true model of their own.  I think back to when I first starting writing.  In kindergarten, my  6th grade buddy would come down and scribe stories I would illustrate and dictate to her.  She would support me to write a sentence or two.  I don't have any of these stories, but I remember that they were often about princesses and maybe unicorns too.  I remember this because I modeled my own writing after all my favorite Disney romances: Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty... all about  princesses getting rescued.  Even now, literature has been gendered.  Supposedly, girls want to read about princesses and playing dress-up and ponies (or unicorns!); boys read about sports and race cars and alligators (or maybe Even the types of animal books children read have been gendered,  falling into a passive/dominant dichotomy.  

My next "Aha!" moment came with the small section on rethinking balanced literacy (p. 16).  My school tends to take pride in utilizing the balanced literacy model as though it's the most progressive way to teach.  I have my own gripes with balanced literacy, but have never thought about the dangers of failing students with breadth and depth in their literacy instruction within this model.  Ultimately, this is what it comes down to.  I often feel like we don't do enough phonics with some students or comprehension work with others and find myself employing a differentiated approach to balanced literacy.  I don't characterize balanced literacy as doing "equal amounts of everything."  I see balanced literacy as giving students a variety of skills and strategies for accessing and interacting with texts.  But certainly, there lies a danger of only skimming the surface of everything and never digging deeper with anything.  It makes me think of the concept that a "jack-of-all-trades" is usually a master of none.

I have learned to teach in an expeditionary learn school.  So, even with the balanced literacy model, we definitely cover breadth and depth in our teaching.  Our approach to learning, in general, is multi-disciplinary.  We model making connections between subject areas and help them apply their learning to the real-world, rather than in an isolated and esoteric educational vacuum.  We believe in community action and using their learning to make a difference.  Service is a huge component of every expedition school-wide.  People at my school may never use the term critical literacy, but they do it everyday.  The main common thread between expeditionary learning and critical literacy is this notion of empowering students to become agents of their own learning.  We encourage students to investigate, interrogate, criticize, and cross-check what they read.  We also teach them to advocate for themselves and others and then take action to actually make a difference.

In the younger grades especially, students believe everything their teachers tell them.  You have to be so careful as a teacher because your students remember everything you say and hold it as the gospel truth.  But this happens with print too and continues through most people's adult life.  "Don't believe everything you read" has become cliche words of wisdom for a reason.