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

This article was very interesting to me because I never thought of telling stories as a way of achieving literacy. I chose the title because everyone has a story to tell and everyone has told a story at least once in their lifetime, regardless of your skin color, race, gender, age, socioeconomic status, etc. However, as Perry mentioned, "what people do with languages and literacies is patterned by social relationships as well as by cultural values, beliefs, attitudes, and identities. The best quote from her article was this one: "Human beings narrate to remember, instill cultural knowledge, grapple with a problem, rethink the status quo, soothe, empathize, inspire, speculate, justify a position, dispute, tattle, evaluate one's and other's identities, shame, tease, laud, entertain, among other ends." I like this quote because it proves that all people have a purpose for telling a story, whether good or bad. A story told by a person tells a lot about that person. Where they came from and what they believe. A story told by someone is closely linked to a community's beliefs, values, and attitudes.

I never really thought about how much stories impact the world around us by changing and influencing the way people feel and think. Telling stories is different for different people. For example, in the Sudan cultural communities stories are told orally. Print literacy is not involved. However, stories still serve the same purpose because there is a beginning and end and there is always a point to a story. In other cultures print literacy is encouraged. People write stories in the form of novels, memoirs, and other written forms. I think that both types of literacy are important - both print and nonprint. As teachers our jobs is to make sure that students are exposed to both types. Students obviously need print literacy to help them become good readers and to learn about the world around them by just having to depend on someone to tell you these things. If you cannot read then you are limited to what you can learn. If you can read then there is nothing stopping you from learning. You can learn about anything you want to. Nonprint literacy teaches students how to speak orally in front of people. You deal with people in everyday life and in order to be successful you must know how to talk to people.

I like to refer to nonprint literacy as "street smarts". In my seventh grade resource class this year I taught a student who could not read. He had been passed from grade to grade never learning to be literate. When he got to my class, I was bothered by this because I could not imagine what it would be like to grow up not being able to read. The crazy thing about this student was that he definitely had "street smarts". This kid was one of the smartest students I had ever taught because he knew a little bit about everything just by listening to people talk and tell stories. The student did not have good attendance at all and actually transfered out of my class before the end of the year. He moved to a different school district. But the point I am trying to make is that this student of mine would not be able to fill out a job application because he could not read, but the sad part is that he was so smart and knew a little bit about everything and all of that would be of no use if he could not ever read.

It is important to be literate with both print and nonprint materials. Everyone can tell stories and I think that as teachers it is our job to encourage to students to write those stories down on paper and to teach them how to read other people's stories. You can always tell when children have been read to or have heard stories because at a young age they will start telling stories or writing stories with a "remix" of stories they have heard. Most of them are very popular like Goldilocks and the Three Bears or the Three Little Pigs, etc.

When I first started reading this article by K. Perry I was worried that I was reading the wrong thing because the language was crazy and something I had never seen before. However, when I starting reading about the "Lost Boys" from Sudan I realized that storytelling is important in every culture. People relate to one another through storytelling. I think that is what we need to get at as teachers. The kids should be able to relate to what they are learning. I think that students would be more eager to learn to read and engage themselves in text if we provide them a variety of opportunities to do so!

Katy Dellinger