RES 5535: Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (summer 2010)

Literacy, whose fault is it anyways? By William Byland, Chp 1-2

“Students engagements with school and institutional literacy’s are caught up with their searches for love and social belonging” (2). This is completely true in most cases and yet we ignore it. Too often, we try to separate the child aka hormonal, heart throbbing, teenagers, from the way we view their literacy’s. For example, I have a student, Davonta, who is in love with one of my Hispanic students (he hasn’t told her yet…) I got a laugh out of that conversation as he is obviously unable to cope in this desolate life without the glory of “a rose by any other color.” But back to my point, Davonta is in love, and has since started reading everything about Hispanic culture that he can get his hands on to, as he put it, get to know the beast within. His outward strokes of love and attempts at social belonging, while amusing from my vantage point, watching a huge black man, attempt to subtly make him a part of the Hispanic groupings, are representative of the fact that his literacy’s have changed due to his personal feelings. His love is Spanish so he then reads Spanish.

This is also apparent when we take the time to look at the overwhelming success of YAL (Young Adult Literature). These novels, while great in every way, prey on the fact that teens need to understand the emotions that their bodies and groins are going through; yet, we do not allow them into the classroom because of the groin parts. This then shows our in ability to let literacy be a part of the student’s choiced development, springing not from our lesson plans or textbooks, but from the authentic place of a true desire to read and even write from the perspective of “searches for love and social belonging.”

Frankie’s search for “we” and also the realization of the broken we from the marriage of her brother to his fiancé, makes me think of how complex social development is as children break the holds of childhood into prepubescent. This is not something that I often see as a high school teacher, yet it provided me an excellent explanation into why, when my wife and I got married a few years back, her then young sister through the flowers that were meant to serenade us as we walked away together as a married couple for the first time, into my man parts, which was in no small way, painful. It also begs new questions in my mind as I consider the impacts of events that take place when children are young and begin developing their we’s, which I later see as teenage depression and even outward rage at all adults.

I also began thinking about the way schools are structured to provide success for the few and alienate the majority when reading this tid bit, “…School setting that was sometimes distancing and sometimes embracing” (3). My principal and I work very hard to provide a niche for all kids through my poetry club, my writing groups, my social based classes, my film studies class, and his thousand little get togethers with students from all groups to engage all types of children.

I also like the author’s realism approach to dealing with and teaching the poor working class children. It is easy to say that we can take what works great for the rich kids and completely ignore the fact that a lesson that works for someone whose parents have the time to read to them, will then work for a child whose parent works all the time and barely has time to acknowledge their existence, let alone read to them.

I also found, after reading through it twice, that I like the terminology for an autonomous reasoners where kids basically teach themselves literacy through exposure by a teacher or the outside world because I think that a lot of teachers genuinely believe that that is how it works, which of course is crap. Put Frankenstein in front of a thirteen year old, as my teacher did to me, and see what happens. I had no idea what was going on and I think one can argue I probably had a great handle on reading as I became an English teacher later in life.
I also liked the concept that “Feeling and valuing can all too easily become divorced from knowing...” (15) within a teachers mind. I know a teacher, a good teacher, who refuses to allow any influence on his teaching from the student’s perspectives and lives because he feels that children should be taught as life will treat them, as if no one cares about their lives no matter how hard those lives may have been. This is the craziest thing I have ever heard and yet five other teachers around him follow the same principal. It is also interesting to note that he fails an average of 15 more students a year than I do and he teaches honors and inclusion. That right there is your proof of this research. I liked how the remainder of the readings fought a defended this concept of teaching the students whilst also understanding their background because if we don’t understand them, then we are doomed to fail them. If we can’t provide them with success, I can assure anyone that they will not often find it for themselves. We have to look beyond the boundaries of how we were taught as autonomous reasoners and into the fact that that did not work for many that we went to school with. I hear too often the chants of “integrity” within the classroom, but we are responsible for our kids passing, not just them and their parents. We tend to blame them for our inadequacies. Given, there are some students who just won’t do anything and there is nothing we can do for them, but we can try our hardest from the start to the finish, understanding their backgrounds and involving every facet of help and support that we can, and then we can blame whomever we want. However, I think you should check out this clip before you decide to jump on that bandwagon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lByDfPOG0LA because as the author says “my teacher says it’s my parents fought/ and my parents say it’s the board of education’s fought…but I still can’t read."

William Byland