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

I find that it is such a special time when you hear a child say, “Do you want to hear a story that I wrote?” When my students say that to me while we are reading my heart flutters with excitement. I love hearing that because that shows me that they are becoming a more literate person. My students were able to use their imagination while they were reading and sometimes when they were writing.

I find that is the same thing was true in chapter 3 in our reading. The girls all took the stories that they read and imagined themselves in the story. I can remember growing up and getting so immersed in a story that I would not want to put it down. I would imagine myself being one of the characters, or being on that island and it was wonderful. I loved how Hicks puts it, talking about Hooks, on pg 41 she says “As she read, she searched for ways to connect her emerging life experiences with books”. That is my goal for my students every year. We are constantly talking about how we can make “text to self” connections. I want to them to say, “Miss. Enns, this makes me think about….” Then I know that they really understand what they are reading. I love it when I see my students so immersed in a story that they don’t want to put it down. I find that those students that spend more time reading have more of an imagination. They are able to use what they have read and they can create some amazing stories! I try to get my students to write them down, but if they are unable to do that at least I have them tell me them. I find that at the young age their stories sometimes are very similar to the stories that we have read in school or stories that they have read.

In chapter 4 when I read about Laurie my heart broke. All that Laurie wanted was a dad someone she could call “prince charming”. It seemed to me what when she did have a dad she did so well in school, it seemed like she knew how to do it all along and when she had a dad she was happy so she showed it in her work. Laurie had a hard time reading and writing. I am thinking there could be an autistic side to Laurie but I am not sure. She seemed to always be lost in her own world and her writing seemed to be very imaginative. I believe that she wrote that way because it gave her a chance to escape her reality and go to a “happy place”.

I think that literacy is used very much as an escape. People use it to escape their sufferings and hardships. All of the girls in our writing did just that. When they wrote, they wrote about things that made them happy and when they read, they got lost in what they read. That is what I wish my students would do every year!

Natalie Enns