Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (Summer 2011)

After reading the Noll article, I can’t help but feel a little disappointment in the role of the teachers of Daniel and Zonnie. Though the article refers that the teachers, in their own perspectives and opinions, provided opportunities for all of their students to express their own identity through the various assigned readings (especially in regards to Daniel’s civics teacher who allowed students to choose articles that involved current events), I can’t help but feel that they must not have provided enough for their students. By this, maybe the teachers weren’t as inviting to the different cultures within their classrooms – something that the Delpit and Dowdy articles noted was crucial when building literacy in students of different races and cultures. The fact that many of the student artifacts gave insight into Daniel and Zonnie’s feelings, experiences, and perspectives suggests that their teachers were totally oblivious to all of their literacy capabilities. What was even more astonishing was how Zonnie’s language arts teacher felt she was just there even though she felt quite the opposite and mentioned that this teacher was perhaps one of her favorites because he understood and listened to her.

This article only affirms that as a teacher, my goal in trying to best meet the needs of my students is to get to know them – their interests, backgrounds, families, cultures, etc. By being aware of their cultural interests and traditions, I would be taking the first step to creating a multi-cultural classroom where all students are accepted and respected by me and their peers. It is no wonder that the educational apathy felt by Daniel and Zonnie was a direct result that most of the discrimination and rejections they experienced actually occurred at school by their peers.

Also, the article demonstrates how powerful literacy is to each individual. Daniel and Zonnie used it as a way of helping them to define their identity and think through the challenges they faced. In my opinion, I see that the music, art, writing, and dance was a coping mechanism to make sense of the prejudices so they could discover where they fit within their predominantly white community. Even though all adolescents find it difficult in establishing their own identity, it is more internally complex for the Native American adolescents mentioned in the article because they have to learn how to operate in a world that rejects or downgrades their native cultures. However, at home, these participants were experiencing the extreme opposite where parents placed emphasis on the history and traditions of their Native American cultures, focusing that this is who they are and it need not be forgotten. Therefore, these students, along with many others, are left wondering, “Who am I, really, and how am I important?”

Relating this to my classroom, it’s important to realize that no matter what culture, race, or gender, literacy is a method of forming a student’s identity and this literacy is achieved in several methods. Therefore, it’s crucial to know my students, welcome who they are, be sensitive to their needs, and help them find ways to develop within the confines of school. This means that classroom writing may not just be letters, narratives, and reports typically addressed in the curriculum but poems, songs, forms of art and dance, and personal stories that allow students to express themselves. My writing (literacy) program need to transform to the interests and needs of the students so that a complacency regarding school won’t be expressed, and I need to let students know that I will accept them the way they are developing. My expectations for my students’ behaviors need to be set so that all classroom members will regard each other with respect, regardless of physical differences. Though this is something that I strive to achieve each day, I need to make myself more sensitive and aware that just because a student won’t express himself or herself in the way I would doesn’t make his or her way wrong and mine right. I need to make sure I am giving students an ample opportunity to select what is important to them (topics, method of expression, etc.) and make sure that they are aware that their choices will be respected no matter what, which goes beyond what the teachers in the articles did.

Melissa Riley