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

After reading both articles, I felt that Henry summed it up best by saying that when educators ignore the issues that are important to the lives of minority students, we are leaving them “voiceless,” meaning that they are unable to identify or relate to the material or school in order to help them create their own identities. Both research models display the importance for giving students the opportunity to write, read, listen, and speak authentic, meaningful texts. Though I know there was a little more leniency given to the setting of the Staples article where students participated in literacy groups during an afterschool group, the insight provided from these meetings display the need to allow students to choose topics, books, etc. that are important to them. By doing this, educators are bridging their backgrounds and interests, regardless of race, gender, class, and power, with the educational community. Even in Henry’s article, the curriculum of the workshop was designed as a student-focused curriculum, where Henry would integrate and add articles, etc. that appealed to the interests and situations of the girls within her small group. By allowing students choice or incorporating material that they can relate to reveals to them that they are valued and important, empowering them with academic confidence and success.

Both articles helped me to realize that literacy flourishes in a range of settings through a range of methods. These literacies occur both in and outside of the classroom, and they don’t just consist of reading and writing but verbal discussions, technological texts, media texts, etc. Though I knew literacy carried different forms, my eyes were opened as to how these different forms become useful and effective when reaching students based on race, gender, class, and power. Educational instruction too often uses the unidirectional model (Henry) where the teacher things, knows, talks, and decides within the classroom while the students sit, comply, and regurgitate what has been delivered to them by the instructor. When will this approach begin to change? If we know that critical thinking is an important skill for our students to acquire, then we need to do more than just model and actually allow students to apply it by stepping back and giving them some choice and free reign where they aren’t criticized for the way they deliver their literacy knowledge. It was evident in both articles that standard English wasn’t exactly the standard for the students in the studies, especially in Henry’s article where the participants were ESL/ELL students. However, when reading the Henry article, there was a comment made by one of the participants who received the donuts for her birthday where she corrected her home language with standard English and chagrin. This disclosed to me that the issue was not whether these students could use standard English correctly but our approaches in teaching them when and how to code-switch. The fact that this particular student expressed some embarrassment at the beginning of the study suggests that she had been reprimanded in the past for her home language usage within the classroom. I think that teachers need to be aware in how we teach students to speak and write correctly in the standard language. They need to see it done with such love, care, and respect so that they will trust the school community and so that the students aren’t failed by the schools (Staples). This care requires planning that uses multiple types of literacy that appeal to the interests and abilities of our students.

Melissa Riley