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.
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