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.