Commentary # 4

Our book study focused on the text Critical Literacy in the Early Childhood Classroom Unpacking Histories, Unlearning Privilege by Candace R. Kuby. Throughout the book the author discusses the importance of understanding her “position and values as a White, middle-class woman” (p. 13) and how those positions and values affected her curriculum decisions. This message of understanding our privilege and how it affects others was repeated throughout the text. Kuby (2013) stated, “It is important as a person of relative privilege to try to understand my relation to people who are systematically marginalized in my community and the world. It was my hope that through the process of autoethnography, I would have an awareness and understanding that would influence how and what I did with young children while teaching” (p. 13). Statements like this throughout the book, caused myself and my group members to stop and think about our own privileges and begin to understand how that affects our teaching practices. This led us to the focus of our multimodal book review.

Over the past several weeks of discussing this book with my group members, I have gained many new perspectives about curriculum and critical literacy. I have also started to have a mind shift of my own on these topics, which is all possible due to our collaborating with one another through this project and our many discussions. If I had to read this book by myself and had not had the opportunity to discuss it with my colleagues, I wouldn’t have had these mind shifts. Will Rich talked about the connections we can make through the use of technology in his Transforming Education video. He said that if we have the tools and we know what to do with them, it could be powerful. Rich discussed how in the classroom, we are telling students they can only learn from the people in the classroom and with people they know. The collaboration we were able to do with this project shows just how important it is to allow students to make those connections via technology with others in order to do great things, just as our small group of teachers did through this multimodal book review.

When I first began this course and I completed my curriculum mind map, I focused on how curriculum needs to meet the needs of the students, how it is based on standards that we are required to teach, and how teachers collaborate together to create a curriculum for the students. I think this is the biggest mind shift that I have had. I now believe that the curriculum should be more student centered and should include input from the students. Candace Kuby mentions that she posed a critical literacy question to her students and then listened to their conversations and based her lessons on their questions…not what she thought was best for them. I understand now the importance of co-creating curriculum with students so they will be engaged in what they are learning and incorporating the other things we are required to teach students through those interests.

The other big mind shift I had from the beginning of this course until now is that critical literacy is not something you do, it is something that you live. We cannot simply read a text on a critical issue, have a little discussion, and call it good. We have to live critical literacy out in out daily lives. We need to act on some of those critical issues and we need to make a difference. We need explain these topics to our students, allowing them to form their own opinions and passions and we need to allow them the time to collaborate with others to make a difference too. Students that are given the opportunities to do this can engage it sustained work that will reinforce change and could have lasting effects on their communities (Vasquez, Tate, & Harste, 2013).

The opportunity to do this books study with such amazing colleagues has really helped me to open my eyes and understand some critical issues that I didn’t even know existed. It has helped me to be more reflective about my own privileges and how that might affect other people. Our conversations and work together on our multimodal book review has helped me to shift my mindset on some important topics concerning students and instruction and I can’t wait to make some changes in my instruction to incorporate these things.  

Kuby, C. R. (2013). Critical literacy in the early childhood classroom: Unpacking histories,

         unlearning privilege. New York: Teachers College Press.

Rich, W. (2013). Transforming education. Retrieved from: 

         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TZfWqao6uA 

Vasquez, V.M., Tate, S.L., & Harste, J. C. (2013). Negotiating critical literacies with 

         teachers: Theoretical foundations and pedagogical resources for pre-service and in-

         service contexts. New York: Routledge.

Negotiating Critical Literacies with Teachers Reflection

When I first began this masters program and was introduced to critical literacy, I truly believed that critical literacy meant reading books about important topics or issues with students and discussing that. I just had to find some issues that students could grapple with and come up with some great guiding questions to engage them in a conversation about the issue. We would just read and talk, read and talk.  We would read and talk about topics and issues that I felt were important for them to know about. Just doing that made my classroom critically literate. Easy, right?  Maybe not…

After having the opportunity to interact with the text Negotiating Critical Literacies with Teachers by Vivian Maria Vasquez, Stacie L. Tate, and Jerome C. Harste as well as discuss this topic with my colleagues, I now have a different, and hopefully more accurate perspective about critical literacy. Dr. Albers mentioned in our discussion with her that critical literacy is not something that you just do, but it is something that you live. Vasquez, Tate, & Harste (2013), state the following: “Negotiating critical literacies and living a critically literate life means delving into risky topics that surround children’s lives. It is not enough to treat critical literacy as a topic of conversation; we have to go out and do something as well. We have to embody critical literacies” (p. 20). By reading this text and having so many rich discussions with my colleagues, I now understand that critical literacy is about taking action. It is about learning more about important issues and collaborating with others to create sustained work that will hopefully contribute to change that could have everlasting effects for communities in which they live in as well as the other people that live in those communities (Vasquez, Tate, & Harste, 2013).

Upon completion of reading this text, I am left wondering how exactly can I create a critically literate classroom with my students? I work with younger students and sometimes feel they lack the background knowledge of many of the topics, issues, or injustices that are happening in their communities or around the world. Knowing that it is important to allow students to choose topics and issues that they are passionate about, is it okay to introduce topics that I feel as a teacher they will be able to handle and engage with? What about some of the more complex and tough topics? Do we try to stray away from those because we are unsure of where the discussion may lead us? How do I incorporate the standards or curriculum I am required to teach while still including critical issues? How can I weave the two together so they become one seamless effort?

While I am left with many questions, I do feel that it is my obligation to help our students become critically literate. They need to learn about and form their own opinions about challenging topics and then figure out how they can collaborate to contribute to these issues for the greater good. As teachers, we need to help our students become justice-oriented citizens, students that disrupt the commonplace way of thinking about various issues, students that will question multiple perspectives, and students that will take action and contribute to making our world a better place.

References:

Vasquez, V., Tate, S., & Harste, J. (2013). Negotiating critical literacies with teachers.

            New York, NY: Routledge.

What's Hot in Literacy?  

 

The what’s hot survey is used to show what the hot topics are in the areas of reading and writing as well as to shift conversations in education to what is most important at that time (International Literacy Association, 2018). The ILA (2018) states the following as their goal, “…to continue to expand the reach of the survey for 2018 while maintaining an intimate conversation that allows literacy professionals to share their own views in an unprompted fashion”(p. 4). 

I thought it would be interesting to compare the topics from this list to a topic that I, as a literacy educator, feel is important in the realm of literacy education. For a recent assignment for my Issues and Trends in Curriculum course, I was asked to choose an issue in education that I felt passionately about and to become an activist for that particular issue. I was also asked to create an original hash tag that represented the issue - #putthetimerawayandjustread. The issue I chose deals with students not having the time to read for meaning and enjoyment, instead we are constantly asking them to read faster in order to pass a test that was merely intended to be a screener in order to help teachers determine which students may have difficulties in various areas of reading. Instead, this test, has become more of a summative assessment that so many schools are putting an immense amount of pressure on. In turn, this puts pressure on our students and they are no longer reading for enjoyment, meaning, or even accuracy. They simply want to read for speed, often asking how many words they got in one minute when they read aloud to teachers. The whole point in reading truly is to get meaning from the text, but instead we have forced students to worry about how many words they can read in a minute with the timer in our hands.  

When I look at the list of what’s hot in current issues of literacy education, I do see many important topics. Each of these topics is important for various reasons. While I feel that it is important to take away the pressure to read for speed and I know many other educators feel the same way, this topic did not make the list. I know that in Iowa, the FAST test has been made into a “big deal” and maybe this is not the case in other states or areas of the world and that could be indicative of why it didn’t make the list. However, if this pressure is being put on our teachers and students around the world, it should be on this list as one of the most important issues. A professor from the United States shared the following, “I think it’s interesting how literacy trends come and go, but there are some basics, some essentials, that we can’t leave behind. Kids need basic skills, and they need to learn to love reading. All the rest follows from that. If we develop wide readers, they have the tools they need to learn what they want” (International Literacy Association, 2018). I think what this professor shared is so important. If we want to develop life-long readers that read for many different purposes and intentions, we need to give them the skills they need and help them develop a love for reading in order for that to fall into place. If we continue to expect students to word call as fast as they can, their love for reading will be squashed, which is currently happening. As our students grow older and become independent adults, they will not read to learn new things, improve themselves or their practices, and they will also not read for enjoyment. If you think about it, where do we get most of our information? We read about it! If our kids don’t have the basics for reading or a love for reading, this important habit will not continue throughout their lives and could leave them stagnant and not striving to improve. 

If this is an issue in other areas of the world, I would urge educators to take a look at their practices concerning fluency instruction and assessments. Dig a little deeper into those practices and have important conversations on how to change the focus from reading for speed to reading for meaning. After all, if students aren’t getting any meaning from what they read, what was the point in reading it? Let’s help our students becoming life-long readers/learners who take the meaning from what they read and do something with it!

References:

International Literacy Association. (2018). What’s Hot in Literacy. Retrieved from:

            https://www.literacyworldwide.org/get-resources/whats-hot-report

#Activism

Introduction 

As I have been reading Critical Literacy in the Early Childhood Classroom by Candace R. Kuby, the term “othering” came up in the text. Kuby (2012), described this term with the following explanation, “I positioned myself as better than Others: my experiences, my language, my dress, my beliefs on parenting, my behaviors, and my teaching styles were better at some level” (p. 31). As I reflected on this statement, I thought about times that I might have “othered” people that were different than me. I have always thought of myself as kind and accepting but when I really dug deep into my experiences with various people, I could unfortunately think of times that I had “othered.” While this is never intentional or done in a mean-spirited way, I think most people have done this at some point in their lives.

When I really sat down to think about my experiences of “othering,” I thought about parents, students, colleagues, classmates, people of different races/ethnicities and sometimes even family members or friends. I reflected on experiences with these individuals and why I may have “othered” them, even if it was unintentionally. I wanted to explore this issue a little more to see what others have to say about it and maybe gain some insight to my own thoughts and feelings. I also want to understand “othering” better so it can help me improve my relationships with my students, parents, and colleagues. I think it is important for our society to reflect on this and to be aware of when it is happening by them or even to them. If people understand the term “othering,” why it happens, and their feelings behind it, maybe they will be more conscious of it and instead of looking down on certain people, they will look at them as an equal.

I chose to explore #OpposeOthering. Oppose Othering is made up of young filmmakers from Germany as well as Central and Eastern Europe. These filmmakers teamed up in groups of two and set out on a journey through their countries. Their main goals included using the filmmaking to investigate misanthropic attitudes toward people of different social, religious, cultural, ethnic, and sexual orientation/gender backgrounds or identities and also using portraits of individuals and projects that work to promote solidarity, civil courage, and resistance to discrimination (Oppose Othering, 2016).

Perspectives

Perspective 1: Classroom Teacher

As a classroom teacher, I have sadly participated in “othering” and I am sure I am not alone on this. Teachers need to be aware of this because even though we are the teacher we are not  superior to anyone else – not our students, parents, or our colleagues. I don’t feel I have ever directly treated anyone this way, but I know I have thought it at least a few times. What about the parent who never signs anything for their child, doesn’t do homework with their child or read to him/her? What about the teacher down the hall whose students seem to be slightly more rambunctious than you would allow in your own classroom? I am just guessing that most classroom teachers have thought about those parents or teachers and thought to themselves how they were better than that parent or teacher because they would make sure everything school related was taken care of or that they would never let their students behave that way. Classroom teachers need to be aware of this because in order to build positive and productive relationships with parents, students, and colleagues, teachers need to treat them with acceptance and respect. Whether a parent, student, colleague, or really anyone you interact with, people can pick up on the fact that we are judging them in some way or don’t accept them for who they are. This will not build the relationships that teachers need to have with the various important people they work with.

Perspective 2: Parents

I believe parents also need to consider the term “othering.” I think it is important for parents to understand how they themselves might unintentionally participate in “othering” as well as how their children might be doing this as well. I believe most parents want to their children to be kind and accepting to others and I think if parents have a good understanding of when/if they do this as well as when/if their children do this, it can open up meaningful conversations about how this type of behavior can hurt others or even themselves. Opposing Othering really does begin at home with parents taking the time to have these important conversations with their children in order to make the world a more accepting and embracing place.

Perspective 3: Students

Finally, students need to understand the term “othering” and work together to do something about it. With positive influences such as their parents and teachers helping them understand this behavior, why and when it happens, how it can make others feel, and how it can negatively affect our society, students will be better armed with quality knowledge on how to act on this problem. They not only can try to stop this behavior within themselves, but they can stand up to others that make particular people feel less than or at a lower status for whatever reason. If students work together, with the guidance of teachers and parents, they can become more accepting themselves and help others along the way.

Conclusion

In conclusion, adults need to be aware of “othering” and how they may unfortunately be participating in this negative behavior so they can in turn, help guide our students to be more accepting and appreciative of peoples’ differences. This will make for more peaceful and safe classrooms where students can respectively disagree on topics that are important to them, but not judge each other on the color of their skin or the clothes they wear. If we guide our students/children to accept others’ differences as a positive thing, our society will be a more comfortable and peaceful place as well. #OpposeOthering

References:

Kuby, C. R. (2012). Critical literacy in the early childhood classroom: Unpacking

            histories, unlearning privilege. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Oppose Othering. (2016). Retrieved from http://oppose-othering.de/

Week 1 Reflection

Before reading these various texts, I had a very narrow view of what critical literacy was and how to incorporate that into my daily instruction. I believed that critical literacy was mostly incorporating texts that included different cultures or providing students with texts that focused on tough issues such as homelessness or bullying. I am happy to say that I now have a broader sense of critical literacy and how it can become a way of doing things in our classrooms. There were many interesting and thought provoking ideas and themes across the different resources that were provided this week. Some specific points that stood out to me include allowing students to have more say in what is learned, the importance of multiple ways of knowing, and creating justice-oriented citizens.

I love the idea of building curriculum around student questions, interests, and passions (Vasquez, Tate, & Harste, 2013). I think students would be so much more engaged in their learning if the curriculum was focused around their inquiries and based off of questions that they would like to explore as opposed to the curriculum being centered around preselected information for each subject area (Leland & Harste, 1994). In a resolution on teacher expertise and the common core standards, the NCTE (2012) encouraged policymakers, school leaders, and legislators to respect the teachers’ expertise as they provide students with choices that will cultivate motivation and engagement and choose materials centered around students’ interests in order to provide a deeper understanding of various critical issues.

 While I love this idea and truly believe it would keep students more engaged, I do have a difficult time wrapping my head around how to make this type of meaningful learning happen. There is so much expected of educators today and so many skills they are expected to teach their students to the extent of mastery. With all of these expectations, teachers feel pressured to stick to the curriculum, therefore not giving much time to areas of interest because those areas of interest are not what the government deemed important. I am not sure how classroom teachers can find the balance of following what is expected of them while still doing what is best for students and giving them time to explore topics that are of interest to them. I do not have the answers to finding this balance, but it is definitely something worth looking into.

A second idea that stood out to me throughout the readings was that of multiple ways of knowing. I have always told my students that as long as they can show me or prove to me in some way that they know something, I will accept other ways of knowing other than whatever way we may have focused on in class. After reading this week through, I found myself reflecting on the times I told student that and wondering if I truly allowed them to show me multiple ways of knowing. When I think about how I have taught literacy, it has always focused around reading and writing. After reading, I have realized that reading, writing, and language are not the only ways to show that a student knows something. I have always thought that I have given my students equal access to his/her education, but now that I reflect, I am not sure if that is entirely true. What about the students that struggle with language, ELL students, or students that cannot communicate through language at all?  Did I provide them opportunity to use the other ways of knowing?

The sign systems of art, music, mathematics, drama, and language were created to express meaning. When educators only allow students to express their understanding through language, many different perspectives and understandings will be left out. Allowing students to show what they know through these different signs provides them with the opportunity to share new perspectives that can now be understood and valued. Utilizing the different signs allows all students’ educations to be broadened.  (Leland & Harste, 1994).

Finally, through the readings this week, I feel that I gained a much better understanding of critical literacy and that it means much more than reading texts that deal with critical issues. I understand now the importance of teachers creating justice-oriented students. These types of students engage in efforts that could change and benefit their communities and the lives of the people that live there. These types of students challenge common ways of thinking and things that have been accepted the way they are for many years. Incorporating critical literacy into the classroom means looking more closely at an important problem or issue and making others aware of it. It means taking that issue and acting on it to make a positive change (Vasquez, Tate, & Harste, 2012). Teachers might read several texts that focus on an important issue and the students may do research of their own, but the work doesn’t stop there. The students collaborate together to actively improve the problem or issue.

Allowing students more choice to improve engagement, multiple ways of knowing, and creating justice-oriented students were three important takeaways I had from this week’s readings. These readings have allowed me to do some deeper reflecting on my previous teaching practices as well as given me new perspectives and understandings on how to incorporate critical literacy into a curriculum that is engaging and meaningful to students. 

Resources

Leland, C. & Harste, J. (1994). Multiple ways of knowing: Curriculum in a new key. Language Arts 

71(5), 337-345.

NCTE (2012). Resolution on teacher expertise and the common core state standards. http://www2.ncte.org/resources/position-statements/all/#Curriculum/185

Vasquez, V., Tate, S., & Harste, J. (2013). Negotiating critical literacies with teachers. New York, NY: Routledge.