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

I am so glad that Deborah Hicks decided to do this research on working-class children. So much of what we’ve read about thus far has been about students of different cultures. I know we need to know all about different cultures in our classroom, but I’m glad Hicks included working-class children. I come from a school who is probably 90% white, working-class children. It is not unusual for me to have an all white class. I taught four years before I ever had a black or Hispanic child (which are the only three races I’ve ever taught).

Deborah Hicks talked a lot about discourse. We studied the theory of discourse quite a bit in our Politics of Literacy class taught by Dr. Moorman. I believe a discourse involves the various parts of your life. For example, if you go to church, you have a church discourse of how you are expected to act and respond during the church setting. At school, you have a school discourse of what “students” are expected to know and do. People also have a “home” discourse of how your family expects you to act. All of these different discourses must melt together to form the student. Students must learn how to incorporate all their various discourses into one way of being.

Hicks also talked about how much of student learning is socially constructed. Much of the way students act and receive information comes from watching others. Students learn from parents, friends, teachers, etc. Students cannot just automatically pick up on learning, they must observe, listen, and mimic what others around them are doing.

Students must also learn that what is socially accepted in one area, may not be accepted in another. Hicks gives an example of Jake (a child in her study) and his sister, Lee Ann. Jake and Lee Ann are playing with some boxes in the yard. Jake makes Lee Ann mad, and their mama tells Lee Ann to get revenge on Jake by holding him in the box and jumping on him. This form of punishment at home, would not work as punishment at school. Students have to understand the difference between what is acceptable and unacceptable in each of their discourses.

Hicks also talks briefly about gender roles. Working-class children are often taught that boys and girls must act a certain way. As mentioned before about Jake and Lee Ann, the mother and grandmother baby Lee Ann more because she is a girl. An older cousin is swinging Jake and Lee Ann around in a box, but takes more caution while swinging Lee Ann. I believe the way students see gender roles in also socially constructed. I had a student in my class this past year, whose dad was extremely prejudiced against people of different races and women. That child in my class developed the same mind set as his dad and would make comments in class about the races and gender roles. Once he got hurt on the playground and I said, “Are you okay?” He said, “Yeah, I’m fine. There ain’t no time to cry. Boys don’t cry, only girls can do that.” While other boys in my class did “find time to cry,” this student had socially constructed meaning of what was right and wrong for boys to do.

I am very interested to continue reading Deborah Hicks’ book, and find out how her research with Laurie and Jake pan out. Hopefully, I will find some insight on how to teach and connect with the working-class children in my classroom.
~Jamie Brackett

After thinking back over the readings and what I have learned thus far from our assignments I really thought about all the different areas that one must understand in order to fully participate in life. Thinking of just myself, I have so many different discourses in my life that I truly didn’t think about until I was reading the chapters during a workshop. I began making a list of all the areas of my life I have to be literate in, in order to participate. To begin with I have a family discourse. I grew up with both parents who did not go to college, so I was raised to value school. I participated in sports and clubs during the years, so I had to mold myself into a student, daughter, player, captain, leader, etc. With each discourse my daily routine changed. As I grew I began working at 16 and had to again change myself to fit the mold of a professional. I then graduated and went off to college where I participated in class, intramural sports, teaching organizations, and was a part of the Delta Zeta sorority. With each area my attitude, appearance, and communication between others changed depending on where I was. After college I began teaching and with teaching I began grad school, working 2 part time jobs, conversing with parents, colleagues, and still with my social group. All of which I behaved differently when interacting with each group. I know there are many more discourses in my life including my southern upbringing by northern parents, but so many that it would take forever to include.
The purpose of my scattered list of discourses is to express the idea that the lives of children are full of choices and chances. As with the children in the readings we have read, everyone, no matter their age, race or gender has many hats that they wear and as teachers we need to understand where each child in our classrooms are coming from and do whatever it takes to help those children. I have no idea how I have made it through life while wearing so many different hats. I know that the support of my parents and teachers have played a major role in my success. As teachers in 2010, we are faced with the responsibility of these children. In order for these children to be successful in life we have to remember that we are for some their only stable foundation. A lot of children don’t have a solid life and we as teachers can’t base our expectations on our upbringing and our challenges, but instead immerse ourselves in the lives of the children we are teaching. On our worst day we still have to be there for our students. At the age of 6 some children are experiencing things we never imagined we would have to deal with even in high school. The world is different today than yesterday and tomorrow it will be too. Hicks chose to write about working middle class families and their discourses and challenges. I like the fact that we were able to read a different approach to research than from differnt nationalities; ones that we could relate more to. After reading about the hardships and lives these other children lead, I know that I can at least make my children feel loved and have a love for school. I know I will be giving more choice and allowing my children to write what they feel, so that they will give to me their story, so maybe I can change their life one sentence at a time.

Meredith

I think a study being done on students of working class families is well justified since that is a large part of students many of us teach. Of course we need to know what’s going on with various cultures and sub-cultures within our schools and communities, but I think there is a lot going on with the societal group being studied by Hicks that is well worth our time and energy to explore.

I have for many years been aware of adapting oneself to different environments; I have just never known there was a term (discourse) for each of these different environments. I think the word discourse is a much more appropriate term in that it is inclusive of the expectations and assumptions of your surroundings, not simply your surroundings, as the word ‘environment’ implies.

Of course we all have to find a way to merge with each discourse in our lives. The example Dr. Jackson gave in her pod-cast about college vs. home was something probably all of us can relate to. My husband was raised in a very strict, conservative, southern home. During his freshman year of college he came home one weekend and his college discourse behavior slightly invaded his home discourse by the use of the word “dang”. His mother quickly picked up on it and replied, “Well I guess you’ve just gone off to college and let your mouth go to pot!” And she was serious!! I think this story has stuck with me all these years because it was such a good example of how the two worlds he was living in at the time (just like the two worlds our students experience between school and home) had to somehow mesh, and he had to remember where it was appropriate to say "dang"!

I think about this occasionally with my own first-graders. It amazes me when I see some of my students, who are typically very well behaved at school, interacting with their parents and acting like out of control holy terrors! Some behave like two completely different children at home and at school because of the different expectations of each. It sheds light on the occasional whine or temper tantrum at the beginning of each year when things don't go their way. They have to learn to adapt to a new discourse, finding who they are within it.

I also find the gender roles mentioned by Hicks to be very interesting. Coming from a long line of very independent, strong-willed females, this has always been an area of awareness for me. I am very careful in class not to propel any stereotypes that portray girls as being weaker or less capable in any way. I am Hicks brought tup this issue in her observations and research. I think this is something we all need to be more aware of.

Marcia Smith

Now that I have been reading a lot of qualitative research, I am seeing the value of it. I had always looked at quantitative research to be more informational. But, now that I think about it scores can be skewed to look better or worse than what they are. Hicks had stated that society is driven by numbers. In the U.S. , we want things now and we want it quick. So, like she said long projects tend to get replaced by short ones that will have quick results. This is not a good thing. Just like we learn from experiences in our lives, we as teachers can learn from reading qualitative research without having to have gone through that experience. Hicks spent three years on her research and she was able to dig deep. Yes, I may not have the exact situation in my classroom that Hicks has researched, but I can take the parts that would benefit my students.

Hicks used her history to help her understand Laurie and Jake. I can identify with Hicks and what her childhood was like. My parents had “middle-class aspirations and pushed education.” My mom did not graduate from high school and my dad started his own business being a building contractor. My dad put in a lot of long hours and did the physical labor. He continues to put in a lot of hours, but it’s getting harder because of his age. My question is what is the difference between working and middle class? I looked up the definitions from two different websites for each. Here are the working class definitions: Wikipedia-Working-Class answers.com-Working-Class. Here are the middle class definitions: Wikipedia- Middle-Class answers.com-Middle-Class. I look at my parents now and see them as middle class because they have worked hard. But, I still see a lot of working class values. My parents work constantly and do not take breaks. Depending if you are in the education or political arena, the definition of the two may vary. It also appears the definition is changing do to the fact that there are not as many manual jobs. So, my point to all this is, if I have a child who appears to be middle- class in my classroom, they may be dealing with working class values. Knowing this discourse may help me to see how, I can help them read and write.

Last year, I would say half of my class was working -class and the other half was middle-class. But there was also a segment of students who were teetering between the two classes. One thing Hicks pointed out was that Laurie and Jack wanted to fit in and find the “we of me”. I had a student last year who seemed to focus on what other students were doing and it made him appear to always be a step behind when he had to follow directions in class. It could appear that he is ADD, but Hicks read writings of philosopher Martha Naussbaum, and she realized feeling can guide a teacher. Other teachers would ask me, do you think he is ADD when I would ask for advice. But, my gut would tell me no. From reading Hicks so far, I think Laurie or Jake’s story may help me, if I see students with some of the same discourses.

One thing I found interesting was that Hicks had stated she refused “to embrace a particular methodology as solution” for Laurie and Jake. As teachers, our counties are telling us the best new way to teach. A lot of times, teachers think we have to stop everything we are currently doing and embrace the new way in its entirety. We end up feeling just beat down. I think we should look at these new methods or old methods just reinvented, and take only the parts that will help our students. This is what it seems Hicks is trying to say. I also think just because one method seems to work for one students from a similar discourse, it doesn’t me it will work for all. Each person has many discourses, so to say that even within the working- class all the children are very similar is erroneous. People are complicated. One size does not fit all.

Trish Edwards

I look forward to reading more of Deborah Hicks' book, but have to admit that I had difficulty understanding these first two chapters. I admire the fact that as a researcher she took three years to follow Laurie and Jake in hopes of gleaning information about how working-class children become literate. It sounds like it was a true work of heart and that she got very involved with the children. I think reading her findings about them will be quite interesting.

As I was reading through these first chapters I started thinking about the Ruby Payne training I received at school a few years ago. Although Ruby Payne's research involves children living in poverty I did see some connections. I think that the way that we, as teachers, interact with our students does help to shape who they become and how they relate to school. We have to be cognizant of the backgrounds that our children bring to the table in our classrooms.

If I am understanding what I read in Hicks' book she discusses how research has said that children automatically grow in steps and stages when learning is involved; that each child goes through the same stages in the same order in the same way. She thinks that although some of this may be true, that children learn based on how they are interacted with and based on the environments that they are in as they grow. For example, the story about Jake and Lee Ann shows that through interactions with family members that Lee Ann is being shown not to "take" abusive behavior from her brother, but to stand up for herself. I think that I relate this to my children at school who get into trouble for fighting, and when I ask them why they hit a child, they tell me it is because their parents have told them to hit back if someone hits them (usually boys). Or on the other hand, when someone is taking advantage of a child and they let them (usually girls), it is often because of the way they have been raised. This is, of course, not always the case, but I do see it and I think it relates to how the child has been raised to act and the gender role models they have seen in their lives.

-Elizabeth Norwood

According to Dr. Hicks literacy is not just reading and writing. It is so much more than cognitive processes according to Dr. Hicks. I haven’t thought about this that much before now. Where are children live, who they live with, and what they are exposed to all can affect their reading. Literacies are cultural and material practices that are affected by where you come from. A child’s family and lifestyle does affect their reading. “Culturally and critically focused research has, however, challenged the notion that even something as “simple” as naming could exist outside of social, material, and affective relations with others.” So even this can affect what children know and learn about reading. I had never thought of that before. Naming affects children as readers. Also literacy is not just written and can be via storytelling. That is something a lot of people forget about. Discourse language practices ways of values and beliefs that become visible in language. These effects really cause literacy to be something molded by more than just books and being read to. I had not really thought about this until reading Reading Lives and hearing the podcast. It really all makes perfect sense to me though. If I weren’t in a classroom I may not have noticed any of this and may not have even believed it. I do have children that their literacies are affected by their social class, home life, etc. These cases are the ones I have the hardest time relating my lessons to and really getting them to understand what I am teaching to them. There is usually not much support at home for these children. Also literacy is not valued by their family, thus they are not exposed to it as much. These parents may even be the parents of students in my classroom that don’t work. They don’t even value working. They simply stay at home and do not much of anything, not even volunteer in the classroom. These parents thus do not value any type of work whether it is work at a job or work at home. Thus they do not help their children with homework. They just don’t value this. They don’t care about reading to learn or learning to read. Therefore a problem is posed. We have children that their culture affects how they react to reading. I hate this for them and wonder what I can do to reach out to these children. How can I get them to believe in what I say about working and not what their parents say about it? I don’t like to stir up the water, but I hate to see children who have been taught to not value education. It really shouldn’t matter what their socioeconomic status is though. Look at the Lost Boys of the Sudan, they were not wealthy and still valued education. With no support from parents they still pushed their way through school.

Maria Blevins

I really liked the way Hicks used the words Discourse and literacy in these two chapters. I first heard the word discourse in a graduate class entitled: The Politics of Literacy. My first assignment in the class was to define literacy and explain two different discourses that I am a member of and what role literacy plays in those discourses. I decided to discuss the discourses of my church and work. This task took a lot of thought and self examination. Through this paper I was able to come to a better understanding of what literacy is and how it plays a major role in all discourses. I am including the last section of my paper because it describes my own personal definition of literacy and its relation to discourse. After taking an in-depth look at two discourses that I am an active member in, I believe that the definition of literacy can be defined in many different ways. However, I strongly believe that a person’s discourses play a large role in how they define literacy. James Paul Gee said that a person’s discourse is like their “identity kit” (Gee, 1989). Therefore, based on the two discourses I have described, I believe that literacy is not only a person’s ability to read and write, but how a person applies their ability to read and write to function in their different discourses. Literacy can be seen when a person uses their knowledge, status, behavior, skills, education, and experiences in life to help them relate and be a part of a variety of discourses.

As I was reading other peoples posts I kept thinking about how schools tend to measure students’ literacy skills based off of objective tests (e.g. K-2 Assessments, Aims Web, EOG’s, A.R. Tests, Dibels, etc..) However; I believe that Hicks is trying to help us see that literacy is such a subjective topic and we should not judge our students literacy knowledge solely off of objective tests. Tests can only tell us so much, what we really need to do is gain knowledge of how literacy is affected by the different discourses our students are a part of. Hicks gave a great example of this on page 28 when she was describing a section in the book The mastery of Reason. Preschool students insisted that the Mommy Bear was the biggest Bear even though they saw pictures of the Daddy Bear being much larger. Why ws this the case? Well maybe in these children’s homes home the mom did more things with them, maybe dad was not in the picture, or maybe dad had to work a lot. The point is that students come to school with a variety of literacy backgrounds. We know students do not learn the same way so why do we push them so hard to answer test questions the same way. Don’t get me wrong, I understand we have to have tests to measure our students, but I think education needs to take a close look and see if we are truly getting a clear picture/results of what our students know.

I think it is amazing at how well my little first graders can “code switch.” They can turn off and on all their codes much like you can a light switch. They understand and know how to act and what to say at home, school, on the bus, with friends, at church etc… All these places require them to use different interactions and language. Our students are very moldable and learn quickly. However, I also believe that some students have a harder time switching roles. Many times roles get crossed over. I think this is why teachers need to get to know their students outside of school too. I know this is hard because we already have so much on our plate. But, I think if we make house visits or attend an event outside of school we will get a more realistic view of who are students are and how to help them be more successful in school. Our different discourses shape who we are and what we do. It is vital that we have a good understanding of what discourses make up our classroom.

Emily Rhoney

It Is What It Is

It is amazing to me how things that stare you straight in the face every day can go totally unnoticed .While reading these chapters one of my own students repeatedly came to mind. This student comes to me in the resource room for help in written expression and struggles so with getting his thoughts on paper or even coming up with thoughts in the first place on some assignments.
At the end of this year I had my students write a story about what their perfect summer would be like. Most had no problem coming up with very creative , elaborate ideas of places they would go or things they would do ranging from taking a rocket to the moon to coming up with an invention to help cure a disease. I encouraged them to be creative and just have fun with it. These students were in the 3rd grade so had several years of public school writing experiences under their belt. My one particular student could just absolutely not get started—again. He is very intelligent but writing about anything is such a challenge. This student ended up writing about a typical day in his life, nothing new or different than any other summer day.
As other kids began to read their stories aloud, this student make constant comments about how whatever they were writing about couldn’t happen or wasn’t real. When I read about Roadville and Trackton, it hit me. This child is from Roadside! He came from a strict Bible believing, church going, high moralistic upbringing. He can’t tell a lie even in a fictional writing story. Doing so makes no sense to him. It’s just plain not acceptable. A lie, is a lie, is a lie! I get it!
This child can write nonfiction stories with little difficulty but fairy tales, fantasies, Santa Claus are not part of where he comes from. No wonder we have been struggling so.
I had never thought about how much a child’s environment and upbringing affects their literacy learning except for whether they were read to or not. What matters most IS where they come from. Some kids transition easily from one discourse to another. I did and do so myself without much thought, while others can’t seem to do so without much conflict. This study has opened my eyes. Now, what I have to do is figure out how to create the freedom to express or “ look beyond” just talking, acting or feeling in certain ways. That has to be so freeing. As Heath stated, “ Conflict occurs, however, when the ways with words of communities and classrooms differ to the point that school language practices are unfamiliar, foreign to children at the margin of middle class institutional structures.” I have so much to learn!

Linda Bohland

Just My Thoughts
Thank you, Dr. Jackson, for explaining the more difficult concepts in the podcast. Even after listening to your excerpt and taking notes, I still had a difficult time reading and comprehending all I read in chapter 2. I do think I understand what a discourse is now. I, like you, like you am the only one in my family to go to college. When I visit my grandparents especially, even though we live just 15 minutes apart, I have to become a hybrid. They watch lots of television, go out only when necessary, and their pride is their dog. They do not like to travel and never go to art museums or plays. They believe that such items are frivolous and wasteful. I am totally opposite. We travel any chance we get. I can lose myself in an art museum for an entire day and my family plans things around local community theaters. When we visit them we never speak of the things that matter to us, only what is in the world of my grandparents.

I think that children when I went to school definitely switched discourses between home and school. Now, however, I feel that some students have one discourse that they believe is appropriate for either place. Some mornings I will come in and find students with their feet up on their desks. When I ask if they put their feet on their kitchen table, the answer is yes- why? They now question anything that the teacher says to them or make smart comments when replying to a teacher, as they would a parent. I have heard these same students talk to their parents and demand that they bring them sneakers for p.e. instead of asking, or tell them things that make my mouth drop. I think that there should be some sort of discourse between home and school.

I am not sure if other students feel this way, but I have noticed in the articles that we have read that family is the main unit for most things. I like to think that is true of my family, but I see that it is not the way which I would like it to be. My husband is often gone with the military and I try to keep my son occupied while he is gone. I do understand that the things we are doing, art museums, zoos, cultural centers, sports, libraries, and such all add to his literacy but often I feel like my family gets the short end of the stick when it comes to active attention. Most nights I would give anything to spend laying out under the stars and telling stories, but often there are too many other things going on, like ball games or swim practice. I fell that America as a whole is in the same situation. I think that we need to step away from this and take lessons from other cultures that still place family first. I find it refreshing to read the articles that talk about the importance of family in their lives, especially the two American Indians children and the Sudanese Lost Boys. Just my thoughts.
Amy Reep

Growing up in a small rural farm town in northern Indiana I was not exposed to any form of diversity. Everyone in the town was white, working class, church going families. You would have though cookie cutters were invented in my town, because everyone and everything was the same. My first interaction with an African American was when I was 18. He was my college roommate. I was thrilled I was finally in an environment that allowed me to experience something else. I thrived on it. At home I knew there was more out there than what I saw each day. I knew it had to be true and not just something I saw in the movies. Having given my background on craving diversity, the more I read the more I realize how I push my middle class white values in my room.
Educators know that students experience a wide variety of life once they leave our classrooms. We try and take that into account when they don’t have their homework complete, notes signed or are hungry or sleepy. However, the language patterns they are exposed to doesn’t enter into that picture. Well, at least for me. I knew the speech patterns they used at home were less formal and more about survival and simple commands. But, once they were in my room, I assumed just by them being immersed in an academic environment they would switch language registers and naturally adjust their language learning. How presumptuous of me! The chapters opened my eyes to the idea of critical literacy. The idea of a child’s social interactions outside of school helping to form them into a being and knowing literate person.
The phrase “culturally hybrid” to describe classrooms, is perfect. Classroom diversity is acknowledged in classrooms today. I feel, that is just on the surface level. A level of acceptance is what has happened; we know our rooms our diverse. However, it needs to be taken to the next level. A culturally hybrid classroom would move beyond realizing into taking the outside experiences of our students and combine that with the educational process. Culturally hybrid acknowledges their life outside school is important and we want to mix that with the academic world to create a more efficient person.
I appreciate how the author describes the two communities where the subjects live. Seeing how each child adapts themselves to their surroundings has a dramatic impact on their school life. In Roadville the author points out that storytelling was facts, the fiction (lies) were viewed as inappropriate. At school though, when retelling story we ask students to do that regularly. We often ask, “What do you think would happen next?” “Why do you think the character did that?” By asking such questions we are asking the students to stretch the story which is conflicting to the community norms they have grown up with. I see now why some of my students have had difficulties in the “transfer” step of learning. They don’t know how to apply what I have taught them because they are having an internal battle of school rules verses home rules.
“Changes in pedagogical practices and the subjects they produce require first, unpacking the fictions that shape children (and teachers) within normative lenses.” This quote sticks out to me. As twenty-first century educators we need to create learning environments that allow the truths to be exposed. Through this we can challenge ourselves to provide lessons that are ever evolving and allow all our students to use their lives outside the classroom as the tool to connect with learning.

Michael Lemke

As I was reading one thing I needed to clarify for myself was the difference between working class and middle class because I wasn’t really sure. Based on the definitions, I think my classroom is about half middle class students and about half working class children. Middle class students come from educated homes where the parents are professionals. In my classroom these students seem to have a better attitude and work ethic towards their education. Working class students come from homes where the parents are skilled laborers and the education level is minimal in most cases. In my classroom some of these students only come to school because the law requires them to. Thankfully, there are plenty of working class children whose parents do value an education and are doing everything possible to encourage their child to do well in school. Keep in mind that I teach 8th grade and I have students in my room every year that tell me they can’t wait until they turn 16 and can drop out of school to get a job.

I think reading the study regarding the students of working class families is a valuable experience since many of our classrooms are comprised of students like Laurie and Jake. It is vital, as teachers, to understand what’s going on with the various groups of students within our school walls. This type of study can help us become more aware of what our students endure and how they adapt in the various discourses in their lives. This reading has opened my eyes to the idea of how home life effects cultural literacy and how the many discourses in their lives impacts them.

Students are not the only ones with discourse in their lives. Teachers, too, have to learn to deal with the many different discourses in life. I wear many hats: daughter, wife, mother, teacher, and coach. While in three out of five roles, I remain in teacher mode most of the time, there are differences depending on the venue. At school I have different discourses; I coach cheerleading from May until February and softball from February until May. When I am “Coach Chester,” I have certain expectations and even those differ between the two sports I coach. In the classroom, I am “Mrs. Chester,” and I maintain a friendly and welcoming, learning environment for my students. The students that have me as a coach and teacher understand the different discourses and respond appropriately. My students do a pretty good job of switching back and forth depending on the discourse.

What I find most interesting is the interaction some kids in my classroom have with their parents when we request a student, parent, team conference. I have seen students change dramatically for the better when the parents enter the equation, and I have seen students remain stubbon and defiant with teachers when their parents are present. I now realize that this is a result of the discourse that the students have at home. So often we can’t explain why our students act the way they do and as teachers we must do whatever it takes to help them, no matter what situation they are coming from.

I found myself intrigued by the gender roles mentioned by Hicks in chapter 2 when discussing Roadville and Trackton. Having been raised by a single mother, I was very strong-willed and independent as a young woman. As a result, I do make sure my female students understand that they are equally qualified for any position or career they choose to persue. It astounds me that they must choose a career pathway for high school towards the end of their 8th grade year.
Karen Chester

When Hicks says “Histories of particular localities and families, and of students’ individual histories within them, can be readily lost in efforts to create a generalized language of inquiry and practice.” I could not help but think of the new language arts system our school just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on. One that of course will fix every reader’s problems, raise our scores exponentially, and save our district from decline! It comes complete with bassil readers and pixie dust! It is interesting to hear Hicks assert that one size fits all programs of language learning will not be effective because they fail to take into account the social aspect of literacy. It seems we have had so many programs and curricula come through our system (each with their own eight hour training session). Programs which got results in places like Texas and California are abandoned a few years after being adopted when they don’t produce the same results here.

I can see Hick’s point that we as educators view literacy as something to be mastered rather than lived. This view is probably perpetuated by pacing guides, spiral curriculum, and summative tests that require mastery before moving on to the next learning event. We rail that if only the kids would ‘get it,’ like learning is an isolated act of memory. My mother, also an educator, has repeatedly told me that “learning is not linear.” Meaning that learning, and I would say literacy as well, comes from many different avenues in a child’s life. The implications of Hick’s theory is that if we want to create lifelong learners, then we must re-culture our students to live lives that value and are rich in literacy.

In later paragraphs Hicks speaks of values that are contrary to those taught in school. This reflects one of my greatest frustrations in the classroom. I have had several students, in the last couple of years who felt that at long as their actions were justified they were not wrong. If they were hit by another child, they were not incorrect in responding in kind. No amount of reasoning or punishment seemed to have impacted this belief. I have even had parents, full informed of the consequences of such actions, tell me that they told their child they are allowed to hit back if someone touches them. All of these students come from the same ethnic and cultural background and I can only assume that this belief is a part of their value system. I express my values and the school’s stance when I tell my students they will be surrounded by people making bad choices all their lives, but that they are responsible for doing the right thing anyway. My fear for theses students is that if this belief in justifiable retribution persists the consequences could be great as they grow to be adults. Prisons are full of people who believe themselves to be innocent. I do not want my children to face those consequences, but am unsure how to help them see that society does not accept “he did it to me first “ as an excuse for behavior.

-Rebecca Ashby

I grew up in rural Caswell County here in North Carolina where it was said that the one stoplight in the entire county was turned on only at Christmas so people could watch the lights change colors. I am the son of working-class parents who spent their entire adult lives working in hosiery mills. Every summer, my family went to the beach for a weekend, leaving home on Friday and coming back on Sunday. My parents couldn’t miss more than a day of work at a time because doing so would affect their paychecks too much.

When I finished college (thanks to a full scholarship), I continued the family tradition of going to the beach for vacation. After several years, I got tired of doing that and I found a group that was going to Australia and New Zealand. I decided that I was going to join this group on this adventure and I can honestly say that that trip was the beginning of a change in my life in terms of seeing beyond my own little corner of the world.

When I returned home, I was excited to tell people about my trip. My friends here in Greensboro were excited to hear about my journey - what I did, what I ate, my fondest memory, etc. These were more middle-class individuals. When I went to visit my family and friends back in Caswell County (just a 45-minute drive from Greensboro), I didn’t get the same reaction. (These people were more of the working-class crowd.) They were happy I got to go, but they just couldn’t relate to my experiences since most of them had never traveled to such an extent and never had aspirations, or the means, to do so. I will never forget talking to my high school English teacher about my trip. He said, “I’m glad you got to go to those places, but you know what? When you die, they’re still gonna put you in a hole in the ground and throw dirt in your face, just like they will with me.” Needless to say, that statement shocked me! I didn’t know what to make of it, but he explained that no matter what I did in my life, whether it be traveling around the world, living in a one-room shack, cleaning toilets for a living, or becoming President, I was still going to end up dead and buried. While his statement may seem harsh, I realized there was truth in his words.

My reason for starting with that story was to illustrate the distinct cultural discourses we all have, to one extent or another. We have the ability to move between various cultural worlds. What I discuss with people in Caswell County is typically different from what I discuss with people in Greensboro. In a similar vein, things I discuss with my straight friends are not necessarily the same things I discuss with my gay friends. In many ways, this is like the “code-switching” mentioned in the Delpit and Dowdy articles. There are certain circumstances where language and practices are used differently based on the surrounding environment. I will say, however, that I find the “cultural hybrid” notion mentioned on page 25 of Reading Lives to be interesting, in that I can see where my discourse with those in Greensboro and those who are gay to be more of a blending (a “hybrid,” if you will) of my experiences from earlier in my life with those in my current life. When I go back to Caswell County or when I speak with those who are straight and don’t know I’m gay, I find myself to be much more self-limiting and self-censoring in what I say. I don’t allow the breadth of my experiences to become part of the discourse.

One part of the reading that I found particularly interesting was the section on page 29 which dealt with the preschool students arguing over the Legos. In the transcript of their argument, the two boys use some pretty harsh words to comment on their classmate (“cunt”) and their teacher (“Take all your clothes off, your bra off.”). Hicks states that the boys are trying to achieve a position of power by using this language. This got me to thinking about an incident a few years ago when one of my students told me on the playground that another student (a male) had called her a bad name. I asked her what he had said, but she wouldn’t say it. I then called the offending student over and asked him what he had said. He told me, “I called her the ‘B-word.” I wanted to see if he knew what he was talking about, so I asked, “What’s the ‘B-word’? Is it “boy,” “ball,” “banana,” . . .? He said, “I called her a bitch.” I thanked him for telling me the truth. I then told him that if he used that kind of language at home, that was between him and his parents, but here at school, that kind of language was unacceptable. (I was proud of him, however, for knowing that that word started with the letter “b” because he certainly couldn’t have told me that at the beginning of the school year! He had learned something!)

After reading this article and thinking of the incident described above, I tried to think of different words used as “put-downs” or used to put the ones speaking them in a position of authority. Other than the “B-word,” I also thought of the “N-word” and the “L-word.” There are also words like “dyke,” “kike,” “chink,” “cracker,” “gook,” etc. that are part of the cultural discourse of certain groups of people to elevate themselves above the others they are trying to put down. In many instances, I found the ones that I could think of were ones that were derogatory terms for other groups, not the “white male” group of which I am a part. I would be interested to know if that would be the same for people from other groups. Can they more easily think of “put-downs” of groups other than the ones of which they are a part? Or could the case be that since the “white male” has traditionally been seen as the authority figure, there are simply more derogatory words to describe groups that white males have seen as “beneath” them?

Another thing upon which I felt it was necessary to comment was the idea of the “gendered social worlds” of the Roadville children (p. 24). In this particular section, it was said that the objects that the kids play with are distinctly different. In my classroom of pre-kindergartners from mostly working-class families, I see this happening quite frequently. Every year, there will be a boy telling a girl, “You can’t play with the trucks because trucks are a boy toy.” There are also the girls who say, “Boys can’t like pink because pink is a girl color.” I can’t tell you how much that INFURIATES me! My typical response is something along the lines of “Who says so?” For my National Board recertification, one of the ways I listed that I had grown professionally was in my willingness to challenge threats to diversity. After hearing comments about boy things vs. girl things as described above and after a particular incident when a male student said a character in a book HAD to be a girl since the character was wearing pink, I decided to do an activity in which my students had to choose a shirt to wear out of a big bag. All the students had to describe if wearing the shirt changed them in any way – did it change their name, how smart they were, whether they were girls or boys, etc.? Thankfully, one of my boys chose a pink shirt and we had a good discussion about how his choice of pink meant nothing other than he liked pink and that it didn’t change anything about him at all. (Interestingly enough, in my research for that part of my National Board recertification, I found that pink used to be considered a “manly” color because it was seen as a variant of red, which was deemed to be a color of power. One reason this began to change, around the end of World War II, was that gays who were captured by the Nazis and put in concentration camps were forced to wear inverted pink triangles. Pink then began to be seen as a more “feminine” color.) I don’t know if my efforts made any change in the discourse regarding boys vs. girls that these students engaged in at home, but I know that it did make a difference at school.

Back to the story I started with . . . when I talk to my high school English teacher again and tell him of my lastest trip, I'm sure he'll say, "I'm glad you got to go, but when you die, they're still gonna put you in a hole in the ground and throw dirt in your face, just like they will with me." This time, however, I've thought of what I can say - "Afraid not, Mr. Slayton. I'm going to be cremated and have my ashes sprinkled over Sydney, Australia, at the Gay Pride Festival." That would certainly rub against the working-class values and practices of my hometown!

Clyde Rice

Dictionary.com defines discourse as communication of thought by words; talk; conversation. This is my first class in grad school that I have heard about the term discourse. It is very interesting to me that regardless of who you are everyone is a part of some sort of discourse or another. As Hicks said on page 21, "None of discourse of locations in associated power relations are fixed or unchanging; they are shifting relations between discourses; they complicated or retract the identities; children can gain or lose power in associated kinds of knowledge as social discourses as they take up social discourses; they can talk, act, and know in hybrid ways as well." As adults we are well aware of the fact that we have to "become hybrid" in order to properly function in our society. We understand what we have to do in order to change automatically depending where we are and who we are around. I remember when my sister went to college at Chapel Hill she would come home on the weekends and when we would be eating dinner or something she would correct our speech if we didn't say something correctly. As soon as Dr. Jackson gave the example of a southern girl going off to college and having to shift herself a little bit, I thought of my sister. The example that she gave really helped me to understand what this term means. I think that my sister was experiencing her difference of discourses from the one she was being introduced to (Chapel Hill) and the one she came from (Maiden). The older she got and the closer she was to graduating, I think she started to realize that she belonged to different discourses. Her social network at college was completely different than the discourse she belonged to as she grew up and still yet. She became comfortable with being able to correctly "code switch". I thought it was also interesting how Dr. Jackson described her southern discourse to her academic discourse as being incompatible. This is very true. I found this out for myself along with my sister when she went off to college. For example, the friends that I have who did not go off to college are still some of my best friends, but we have different things in common than the college friends I made when I went off to college.

While entering the education system, it is very obvious that education today is aimed at middle-class to higher middle-class children. It is almost a "one size fits all" type of thing (which I think someone created a post on this). But this bothers me because as teachers we are trained to accommodate to the needs of the diverse learners in our class and of course we do, but the state mandated tests at the end of the year just gives an example of the "one size fits all". Teachers go to workshop after workshop to learn how to "improve" our instruction, but maybe it is not the teachers. Maybe it is those stupid tests kids are forced to take at the end of the year. Should that really determine if a child is literate or not especially when literacy is not defined as just reading and writing?

This brings me to my next point. Since school is mostly for the average middle-class child where it was expected that their parents read to them before school started, then how does everyone else fit in to this discourse? I never thought about it until now, but children come to school in kindergarten being a part a specific discourse for around five years. That is a pretty long time for students to become accustomed to their way of life. However, perhaps this child from a lower class family comes into kindergarten and realizes that things are a little different. They are already trying to figure out how they fit into this discourse, but at the same time there is pressure on them to have to learn to "catch up" because they aren't as advanced as what is expected of them. Learning to read does not become priority to them and therefore from day one of kindergarten they hate school and consider themselves as "dumb" because that is how they are viewed. It is almost like these kids were never even given a chance just because of the socioeconomic status they came from. Okay, so what if a Hispanic student from a lower income family comes into kindergarten and just moved here from another state or country. First of all, they are trying to learn the discourse they are in, but at the same time they cannot speak English, so therefore they are already seen as non-readers. Anyways, my point is that I don't think as teachers we realize just how different children are. They come into kindergarten and their world completely changes. I would go back to my example that I used in a previous post where I talked about the 7th grader I had who could not read. I will no longer say he is illiterate because there is no way someone that smart with "street smarts" would be illiterate. He may not know how to read and write the words, but he can speak them and he can learn things. He was probably seen as a child with power at his house because he could do so many things because he was taught at a young age that these life skills such as fixing a car is more important than learning to read. However, when he came to kindergarten, it probably started from day one that he became uncomfortable with the discourse he was in because school is made for the middle class children and he did not fit into that nor did he know how to fit into that.

So I agree that teachers should understand their students and where they come from, but how about the government or whoever changes the tests they give these students at the end of the year according to the levels the students are on. If these students fail year after year on these state-mandated tests then how are they ever going to appreciate learning and more importantly reading? I agree with Hicks when she makes her argument about literacy is not just reading and writing. The question I leave you with is then if that is the case then is there really anyone out there who is illiterate?

Katy Dellinger

I find the idea of including relations of feelings and values into our literacy practices. I definitely think when students find a connection to the reading and value the work they are doing, we are going to see our students become more motivated to do well. We need to find these ways to connect to our students whether it is through their race, class, gender, or ethnicity. We are already encouraged to differentiate for our students based on their academic ability we need to do the same based on the characteristics I just mentioned. I think this is especially important as we see our students lose interest in literacy. Not only could we bring these students back into the world of literacy, but it would also build a community of respect regarding the differences among each other. As we bring these students back to the world of literacy, we are also giving them a “we of me” classroom. Someplace where they feel connected and belong on a certain level.
I like the statement, “White poor and working-class children are viewed negatively but without cultural sensitivity.” This really opened my eyes to some students in my room. It is interesting how we know and try to understand the cultural dissonance other students have in middle-class classrooms, but we don’t recognize this same situation in white poor and working-class students. My school has been studying Ruby Payne and her work. She definitely opens your eyes up to understanding the poor and working-class lives of our students. Sometimes we don’t understand the choices made in these households, but as you read her material you definitely get a better understanding of where these kids are coming from and why they make the choices they do when they are in school.
I’m not quite sure how I feel about students being autonomous reasoners about literacy practices. I understand that students need to be guided and taught literacy practices. They will not gain knowledge about these practices on their own, but I also believe there are students out there that find these practices easier than others. They might not have known they were using the practices, but they are still using them as they read. I also think different students use these practices differently based on their gender, class, race, and ethnicity. I think that is one reason I am so against the EOGs. I am not against monitoring our student’s progress and ensuring our students end the year on grade level and with a year’s growth. I think this test tests more than just their reading comprehension. I think it assumes our students use all the literacy practices in the same manner and therefore will get the same thing out of the story. Because our students have all had different experiences because of class, race, gender, and ethnicity I don’t think a one day test can show how well they comprehend. I have an ELL student in my room who knows about every single holiday his culture celebrates. When we read literature about his culture he became involved and motivated to do well and to inform others about his culture. He approached the activity with different literacy practices than I had seen him use all year. I know we have taught him literacy practices throughout his schooling, but he doesn’t seem to know how (or want) to apply these skills to literature that he doesn’t find interesting and connected to, and as I watched him fill in his bubbles on the EOG in thirty minutes I can guarantee you he wasn’t finding a connection to these stories.

Angie Sigmon

As I read the first two chapters of our text my mind kept coming back to a boy I had in one of my classes this year. He was in In-School-Suspension the last half of the year more than he was in my class. He rarely showed any interest in school or wanting to learn. I, along with his other teachers, had many problems with his behavior all year long. Would he ever get it? Will he learn how to control himself, his mouth, and his actions?
Every morning when he would come into my room to ask for work we would have a little chat. I would ask him questions like: Why do you behave like this? Is this acceptable behavior at school? Do I talk like that to you? Is your behavior at school acceptable at home? He would just shrug his shoulders, look at the ground, and never answer my questions. I met his mother at the beginning of the year and learned his father was in prison. As the year went on I learned a lot more about his home life and began to understand why this boy behaved like he did. I understood why he never answered my questions.
I understand the circle. I understand if you grow up in a working class family then you will more than likely become a working class family. I used to be a social worker and have seen that circle too often. Its power is all-encompassing. I mean, if you don’t know that anything better exists, then why should you alter your path? I think this is where we as teachers can lightly step and influence. On the last day of school this boy that had caused so many problems all year asked me to sign his yearbook. He said, “Mrs. Wagoner please write something nice.” And to be honest, I had a hard time coming up with something nice. After I had signed his yearbook I asked him to sit with me for a minute. I told him he had the power to change his life path. He responded with, “It runs in the family.” I said no. I told him he could choose any path he wanted. I told him how smart he was, and by using his brain to make good choices in his journey, he could be more. As of right now, he is stuck in the circle. He, like so many other of my students, is living with the same family mentioned in the text – Jake and LeAnn. But he can be so much more.
My point is although we all have many discourses in life, we can choose which ones to accept and which ones to reject. And as teachers we can influence our students in numerous ways. They might not take our words to heart at the moment, but I’m sure each one of us can think back to a teacher we had that changed our discourse. Perhaps not at that moment in time, but it is a teacher, or person, we hold dear in our heart for helping us on our life journey.
Jennifer Wagoner

What in the World?

The question that comes up for me after our recent readings is how do we do all that we need to do for all of the children we teach? It seems like an overwhelming task faced with mounting hurdles. I’m not only talking about the differences that our children bring with them (culturally, racially, socio-economically), I’m also talking about doing what we know we need to for our children under mandated guidelines set up by our local, state, and federal policies. Our hands are often tied by how our schools are run. How do we combine cultural discourse with classroom practices and governing policies? Our jobs as educators is to teach our children how to read and write, do math, learn social studies and science, explore the arts, think critically, work cooperatively, and the list goes on. To do this effectively, recognizing and valuing the differences among our students is vital. The research we have read definitely supports this idea.
At one of the schools where I work, we have a number of Hmong students. The school provides ELL services for them and has also welcomed their culture. The children have performed their traditional Hmong dances wearing beautiful traditional dress. They also have provided food from their native country. Even though this helps the students to share the Hmong culture with their peers, this does not help with their challenges of literacy. Most of our Hmong students are not reading “on grade level.” They struggle with most aspects of literacy: basic reading skills, vocabulary and comprehension of material, written expression and grammar.
What I want to share with our ELL teacher is the practice of reading, writing, and speaking together that Annette Henry describes in “Speaking Up and Speaking Out.” Have students respond to literature by writing in dialog journals and participating in discussion groups to talk about what they have read. It is important for them to speak in their native language as well as English. This serves two purposes. They can easily communicate their ideas in Hmong and also build vocabulary and understanding in English. For those students who struggle with writing, it is beneficial for students to dictate some of their journal entries to a teacher or in a recorder so that they can share some ideas without the difficulty of writing.
In school, daily, I see the shifting of discourses in students. We have students who act a certain way at home and have a particular identity (male dominant, care-giver to younger siblings, oldest and leader). Then they come to school, and their identity shifts (struggling reader, poor speller…). They quickly learn that rolls change depending on your environment. Their identity changes and in response, they have to act a different way. If they don’t make the shift, they get to hear the sage words, “You might act like that at home, but you’re not going to act like that here at school.” At times, it seems we willingly accept and understand cultural diversities more than socio-economic differences. We don’t always recognize socio-economic levels as differences. We just expect these students to conform, behave and do the work. We need to recognize their difficult challenges as they navigate through different expectations, language, experiences and prejudices.
As teachers and schools are beginning to understand the unique challenges that students bring and are providing inclusive and nurturing classrooms, we are still faced with the restrictions placed on what we have to teach. Our curriculum and materials are mandated by our local and state governments. As we are trying to meet the needs of a diverse population, we are told that all children must be on the same academic levels at the same time (on the same day). Our book lists are approved by local agencies. We don’t always have the freedom to choose appropriate books for our class nor do we often have the resources. What in the world are we to do?
I do believe there is strength in numbers. As teachers, we need to join forces at the local and state level to communicate our concerns, our needs, and our knowledge about children (all children) and how they learn. We need to make our voices heard to effect the changes that are needed for our students.

Susan Hines

As I read the two chapters in Reading Lives I found myself surprised by what I was reading. I am not sure why, I have grew up in the same area that I now teach in and I have gone to school with working-class children and now teach working class children, but yet I never viewed their culture as having much more of an effect on them, than mine did. I think I’m embarrassed to say that when I think about different cultures and socio-economic classes, I think of race, religion, different cultures, rich and poor, for some reason working class has never come into mind as a culture or that they would relate to situations any differently than someone who was considered middle class. After reading the first two chapters I realize how wrong I was. Looking back at my students and how they have related to each other and Literacy is now beginning to make sense. I loved when Hicks said in Chapter One, page 7, “Like most working class students in the United States, Jake and Laurie attended a school that embraced traditional values and teaching practices. Even though their individual teachers looked beyond that system to alternative educational practices, their teaching was framed within the constraints of an institution and wider system.” I think that this statement is true for many of us, whether we are talking about working class children or any children. I think as teacher’s we want to do our best and make connections with the students on levels that they can relate to, but so often we are bound by what we are told to teach. Too often do we succumb to keeping up with the test and the standard course of study that we forget that for our students to truly learn they need to feel a personal connection.
I was also very surprised by the interaction of Jake and his sister and his Mom. As I said earlier I never thought of work class as being different from middle class and it wasn’t until I was shown an example that I begin to understand. Looking back on my childhood I could relate to the very situation that Jake was in. I had an older brother and I could see him doing something to me and my running to tell my mom and then calling him a name and him pushing me. The big difference is that in my family I would have gotten into even more trouble than I was already in had gone up and “gotten my revenge”. My mom would have punished both my brother for pushing me and I for calling him names. After reading the situation with Jake’s family I began to see a number of my students and also to understand why they sometimes act the way they do. The reaction of Jake’s family also made more sense to me after I read what Hicks said on page 20, she said, “It is not just children’s preschool engagements with written text per se that make such a difference once they enter school nor even their engagements with stories and other types of oral literacy’s. Rather, it is an entire cultural web-a cat’s cradle, if you will-of language practices and identities that so importantly has an impact on school learning, including literacy learning.” Jake and his family were not doing anything wrong in terms of their culture, they were teaching their children to be self sufficient and strong in a way that made sense for them and their lives. After reading this statement many of the relationships that my students have had with literacy began to make sense. I naively looked at where they went to preschool or how much formal schooling their parents had when looking at why my working class students might be struggling. I never looked at their culture or language practices to try to better understand where they were coming from. Had I done this I think my results would have been much more successful, because instead of trying to fix a problem that wasn’t a problem I could have worked with what they have learned and the way they view the world and built on that.
Katie Templeton

The overall theme I see throughout all of our readings thus far seems to be the idea that environment has a definate impact on learning. Where we come from, how we're raised, among other factors, not only shape who we are, but can effect how we learn positively or negatively.
Throughout chapter 2 in Reading Lives, Hicks gives evidence to support this idea. I think back to the example she gives us about Jake at home with his family. He gets into a small fight with his younger sister. The mom and grandma encourage Lee Ann to stick up for herself and fight back and actually show her how to do so instead of breaking up the fight! I found this odd at first, but Hicks later explains that the mom and grandma were "socializing" her into their discourse as a member of that family. My parents would have broken up the fight between my sister and I, as they did often times growing up and we would have been disciplined.
Hicks also gives an example of research done by Shirley Heath that looked at two very different working-class communities in the Piedmont area. She describes the learning experiences of children in Trackton vs. those living in Roadville. Heath notes a significant difference between the way the two communities tell stories. The children of Roadville tell stories that are true and are not allowed to tell untrue stories because they could be punished or charged with lying. She noted that their community had strong moral and religious values. Children in Trackton, usually boys, learn "perform" stories on front porches based on oral traditions. I say all of this to make the point that Heath observed two very different communities which had two very different cultural values and norms that were taught to children at very young ages. The parents and other community members instilled the values and beliefs of their discourse into the children. I found it interesting and sad that the children of Roadville had a difficult time coming up with imaginative stories when asked by their teachers because they were so "programmed" by their communities to only tell true stories. One final thought I have on this is that I had a difficult time deciding what I wanted to say for this post because it was so open. Even as students, in our discourse we are so used to being told exactly what to write or how to do something that when we're given a choice, we may struggle until we come up with a solution!

In the text I found some interesting quotes that stood out for me as I read. I found this quote to be especially interesting and profound, Hicks states, "It is the value and meaning of a touch, the look in one's eye, a shared moment of living in which an imaginative space is opened up for both teacher and student, or caretaker and child. These moments of living engender the memories, imaginings, and histories experienced with others who have meaning in our lives." It's very true that actions often speak louder than words and communicate much more than what we say with our mouths often times. One raised eyebrow at a student who makes eye contact with me when they're doing something they know they're not supposed, can make them stop. On the other hand, just a pat on the back or a high five can be really uplifting when we're feeling down. And sometimes those "teachable moments" where we go slightly off-topic, can turn into a really great lesson and make all the difference.

Lastly, something that really made me think was when Hicks stated, "In school children can gain or lose power and associated kinds of knowledge as they take up social discourses. They may act or talk in hybrid ways as well." This made me think about those kids who bully others. Children who may be the most popular in their neighborhoods or even talented on the field/court, may struggle in class and be labled as such, thus taking their "power" away from them in school. I feel this is the reason why some students act out and "pretend" that they don't care about grades, homework, or school in general. Many times these students may feel discouraged academically and think this is the only way to gain attention. This viewpoint may have even been mentioned in one of our readings but I feel that if we can understand and get to know our students and their discourses that we can begin to change these negative attitudes and impact lives!

Reshawna Greene

Hicks points out from the beginning of these two chapters that a student’s engagement with reading, writing, and oral language is linked to their own history and formed by those that they love and respect. It is a person’s first and usually most comfortable discourse but as a student moves from one situation to another there is a shift. In Hicks view it is important for teachers to work with students so that texts are approachable to the students. This notion struck me as a profound statement about teaching to the masses. I taught fifth grade for several years and every year at EOG time we would panic because there were always a couple of passages that a large portion of our students did poorly on. They simply could not relate to the story because it was so far removed from what their reality was. I feel that this is a real injustice to the students and it sets them up to feel as though their culture is less valued than their classmates. The test assumes that all students have vacationed with their family at the beach or gone to a summer camp where they make leather crafts. One student in particular was reading a piece of poetry about the seashore. It included the sights, smells, and sounds that you might find there. After the test the student came to me very upset because she had never experienced such a place.

Hicks also brings out the differences in the way working class and middle class students address the classroom. They bring their own values and beliefs. Each group comes to the classroom with different expectations for education and how they will use the knowledge they gain. These students also enter our classrooms with preconceived ideas about themselves as readers. She Hicks points out that most teachers come from a middle class background and may not completely relate to their students and their values. As teachers I believe we must work to ensure that all students are successful in the classroom that we can make help to make the “shifts” in their discourse in a way that is comfortable.

Candy Mooney

While I have always thought I had a fairly good understanding of children, the further we progress into this course the more I see how predictable and expected my behaviors in the classroom are. I feel ashamed that I have fallen prey into all of these judgements and biases that we have been reading about. Once again I had no idea how I was building up more barriers for my students to overcome in their literacy learning. To devalue their home discourse and try to make their school discourse superior is an injustice. So not only are our students having to code-switch their languages if they are bi-lingual, but discourse switch as well. And we as educators wonder why so many of our students seem to be falling through the cracks…we’re not allowing our students to let their true identity come out and let them focus on their learning but on navigating their way through a sea of subjectivity.

I can think of many occasions where my children have interjected into a lesson with a personal account. I would interrupt them and stop them from getting the classroom off track. After this reading, I realized how I was shutting out the child’s home discourse and preventing them from using it at school. While I didn’t desire this behavior I should have been more tolerant of their desire to share their life experiences.

At my school sometimes I am considered to be the “heavy” as far as discipline is concerned. I have the same rules and discipline/behavior plan in my classroom as the entire school but I am firm and have a respect for my students. I am extremely focused to time on task and having my students get the job done. There is an understanding that “you need to do what I want you when I want you to do it, because if no then you will have to do it when you won’t want to do it. But this reading has shown me that the discourse my students demonstrate is set based upon my high expectations. My desire for my students to be successful has initiated an additional discourse of rules, language, mannerisms, and values that they partake in every day in my classroom.

I am also reminded of how I have parents come to me concerned about their child’s progress or behavior. I had a particular boy a few years ago who started Kindergarten with me. At the first conference for his screening, I noticed how the child was very timid, quiet and shy. Once he began school in August this same behavior returned when he was in the classroom. However, when the boy was with his parents he was loud, unruly, and up moving constantly. It was exactly like he was flipping a switch between the 2 discourses. Was he what they are defining as to be a hybrid? His parents did not seem to understand that because they had never established rules or expectations for his behavior at home he would act differently than he did when at school. Hick’s argument about how literacy is shaped through cultural and social practices and encounters as well as in an educational setting has been apparent in my own classroom. During visits, conferences or phone calls to parents I have seen how some cultures, for example that of my Hispanic students, have a strong hold on a child’s education. These parents are strong supporters of what is going on in the classroom and want to be involved in their child’s education as much as possible. The value of education is highly regarded in their culture based on the apparent attitudes of the students and their parents. I am also able to relate to what came of Walterdine’s research in how children’s gender roles are formed within their discourse as well. I can think of a particular Hispanic girl who has already slid into her culture’s expected role for her. I have been blessed to teach this child for 2 years now, and recognized that at five years old that her desire in life is to be a mother. She is eager to help, take care of others, and refers to her younger siblings as her “babies” as she has seen her mother and aunts do within the home. It also makes me wonder if the home discourse of the girls will limit the outcomes of their future or if they will be or desire to be more than what is expected of them to be wives and mothers.

I am really looking forward to moving deeper within Hick’s research. Already it has been an eye-opening experience for me and we’ve only begun working through the material. And the discussions and explanations from other students and Dr. Jackson within our community of learners has really helped me to bring away more of an awareness and I’m hoping a better understanding of the material.

Nikki Leggins

It’s a Sunday afternoon at my Grandparents’ house. We sit on the front porch, sip on lemonade or sweet tea and chat about the latest small town gossip. My aunt, a woman who has obtained her Ph. D in Molecular Biology, my grandpa, who repairs car bodies for a living and who never finished the 8th grade, my grandmother, who worked odd jobs her entire life and is now the owner of a greenhouse, and me, a 1st year graduate student and 2nd year elementary school teacher all have one thing in common: our roots. I find it tough sometimes to sit down with that side of the family and have a “full on” conversation. I reflect back on the idea of “discourse” and how everyone who is literate, in Hicks’ eyes, has been shaped this way culturally and socially not necessarily academically.

Going back to our Sunday afternoon conversation, of all of the topics that my family and I can discuss, it seems that gossip and small talk, if you will, are two topics that are applicable to all of us. Although we have all grown up and lived in the small town atmosphere, we have all had different life experiences that have shaped us in some way or some how. My grandpa can tell you anything you’d ever want to know about repairing a car’s body. He can describe each and every detail and process that it takes to carefully prepare a car for priming, sanding and painting. On the other hand, my grandmother could make anything in your garden grow. She is a “green thumb” with her head constantly in a gardening magazine, or sharing stories with other gardening enthusiasts at local markets or greenhouses. She shares the best advice for how to rescue every plant imaginable. As for my aunt, she can discuss how to regenerate the tissue of a kidney or other organs in the human abdomen. She’ll share her thoughts on the ethical procedures of why businesses complete these tasks and will have a very valid argument for her discussion. And I can bring my knowledge of teaching to the table. I could share some of the topics that we’ve discussed from this class. In a nutshell, we all have important things to say, and it might not always make sense to everyone else in the conversation, but our culture, backgrounds and the “shifting location or identity” that was described on page 21 plays such a huge role in the way that we share our experiences.

To apply this to a classroom setting, I would like to share a story from my 2nd year of teaching. I had a student this year that had a PEP (Personal Education Plan) written for her by a teacher in 08/09. As I reviewed her PEP, I noticed it was written because she did not use proper grammar when she spoke. I remembered this in the back of my mind as I began to observe her in the classroom, and realized that in my opinion, her PEP was written for a cultural difference, not necessarily an academic quality. Her patterns of speech were reflective of Ebonics. Now that I have read through other articles such as the “Ovah Dyah” I can really think about and relate how I need to embrace these differences in speech patterns, not necessarily correct them. I feel like this instance falls under the idea of her speech being “labeled” and not appreciated. If I applied Hicks’ ideas to this situation, I feel that the justification of this students’ pattern of speech reflects her culture, her upbringing and her background. This pattern of speech also crosses over into her writing. I saw this emerge primarily in free journaling time, and never tried to correct her grammar. I suppose that I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to study about research and reasons why a student can bring so much cultural based ideas to the table.

Renee Hennings June 21, 2010

Living Between Two Worlds

As I read these chapters I could see so many of my students and their particular behaviors in school that helped me made more sense of what I read. The fact that the ways in which our students are raised and the different things each are exposed to,(different roles of males and females, appropriate language, etc.) can create a huge difference between them as individuals. This can create a difficult road for one teacher to steer them through a set curriculum when each have different lives and experiences from which they draw on to understand all they are hearing, and trying to learn.
I believe that one of the greatest battles educators face today is trying to educate students one way, when the students have never been exposed to the ways in which they are expected to act in social settings outside of their homes. How can we expect them to know, when at home it seems they have free rein to do as they please? It has been my experience in the past three years of teaching that children today seem to demand their parents do what they want, they do not ask things of them, they demand them. I have three children and they are older (21, 18, 14) and they do not tell me what I am going to do, they were taught that. I believe this is a breakdown in our society that will have repercussions far beyond what we can imagine.
What I am trying to say is that so many students today are raised without having ever been exposed to books, museums, zoos, quality time with parents, strong family ties, etc., and that their discourse for viewing the world is so far from the discourse of the school setting, and this causes a break in the bridge from school to home. Their thought process for knowing what is appropriate or what the social norm is can be far from what is taught in school. Whether it is about race, class, gender, or sexuality all this is relative to how they have been taught prior to beginning school. Trying to go between the two worlds is hard but I believe by the time they are in grades 3 or 4, students are able to be hybrid and can actively participate in both worlds and are then trying to make their own sense (naming) of the two, in terms they can better understand and assign meaning to for themselves based on things they have acquired from both worlds (home and school).
Tracy Icenhour

I was excited to read our topic this week was working class children. After reading chapters 1 and 2 and listening to the pod cast I didn’t know where to begin. I would like to take a few moments to focus on my own childhood. I grew up in a working class family. Both of my parents worked full time jobs and neither of my parents graduated from college. I had two brothers and I was the middle child. In order to survive I was taught to take up for myself. My brothers were mean, so I had to be meaner. When beginning school however my social skills landed me in trouble quite often. Just like Jake and Lee Ann’s incident with the box would not have been allowed at school, many of my carefree and high spirited ways were not viewed as appropriate for school. I grew up in a rural area of North Carolina. The elementary school I attended usually had only two classes per grade level. Our teachers were strict and didn’t mind using corporal punishment. I am thankful my daughter is growing up in a different school environment. My goal as a teacher is to be the opposite of the types of teachers I had in elementary school. I don’t remember ever having a positive teacher, the type of teacher that truly cared about all of her students. I believe my teachers looked down on some of their students due to their class standing. I agree that children come to school knowing who they are as literacy learners, and that children quickly learn the labels they are given at school.
When listening to your pod cast, I felt as though you were talking directly to me. The term discourse definitely applies to my life. Discourse involves the various parts of my life. As an adult I still continue to act and behave in certain ways depending on my setting. At school I am a teacher. I act as a professional. At home I am a mom and wife, who is concerned with the wellbeing of my family. When taking my graduate classes I am a student. When returning to Wilkesboro I am a sister and a daughter. What I have discovered is many of these areas cannot interact. When talking to my mom or dad, I have to be careful not to complain about my graduate classes. My parents on numerous occasions have said, “Why don’t you quit?” They can’t understand how important my graduate classes are to my future. Gender is still a concern of my moms. She believes that above all I am a wife and mother and that I should focus more on my family; however, she would never discourage my brothers from trying to better themselves.
I would like to think that children of working class families are perceived differently in today’s world. However I know their class position still influences their literacy learning. As a teacher I can do as much as possible to help my students at school but they may still be at a disadvantage if they can’t get help at home. Teachers need to find a common ground for all students. As Barbara Comber writes, the literacy classroom can be a nexus for social critique and action. We need to plan lessons that involve all of our students. A very special professor of mine in undergraduate school said, “Remember every child that enters your class is carrying his/her own little bag.” She meant that each child is special in his/her own way. As teachers we have the opportunity to embrace those differences. I look forward to reading more of Deborah Hick’s book. Pam Aubuchon

I was sitting at my daughter’s band concert last month and happened to overhear a conversation between two women I was acquainted with. They were discussing their daughters, both of whom graduated in 2009, and what their plans were for the next school year. The one woman announced that her daughter was leaving UNCG and returning home to attend community college. She stated to the other mother that, “she hates it and wants to come home”. The mother of this young lady was in no way upset with her daughter’s decision and seemed quite pleased to have her back home. Both of these women were from working class families. Both were from the area and had extended family living close by. As I listened to the conversation I couldn’t help but think what a mistake this girl was making. I was also floored that the mother would allow it after she had worked so hard to get into a four year college. This story kept surfacing in my mind as I read the two chapters by Deborah Hicks. It made me start to realize just how significant what our students’ discourses really are in relation to their educational experience. Just as my upbringing and value system repelled the idea of leaving college, these families embraced the idea. I also have to assume that the young lady was unable to assimilate to college life; presumably because the discourses of university life were much too foreign to what she knew and felt comfortable with.
I see the same situations occur in my school. I have known for some time that many of my students and their families view school much differently than I do. After reading the two chapters from Reading Lives, I now have some understanding as to why. The social discourses that they bring with them tend to see education as a “necessary evil”. Something to be endured until you can get out a get a job. Many of my students do not see the correlation between school and earning potential. Their understanding of a higher education is something foreign and not-at-all connected to their reality. Many of my students have aspirations of taking over family auto shops or hair salons. They look forward to working the family farm or joining the construction business with their brothers. They do not have dreams of college or white collar careers; nor should they have to. I think the educational system has to begin to value the idea that these trades are important and relevant, and that mastery of standardized tests does not equal equal intelligence. Our county has done away with the vocational track in our high school. Now, all of the students are tracked to college, no matter what their career goals. This is ridiculous and I think greatly contributes to the drop out rate. Why should a student be forced to write a 10 page research paper on the symbolism of Look Homeward Angel if he plans to take over the family farm when he graduates? if we don't value what's important to them then, of course, they are going to view school as a foreign environment that they have no place in.
I also see the conflict between discourses when it comes to behaviors. I was reminded of this when I read the account of Jake and his little sister. I have had many students and parents tell me that if their child is bullied or hit, they have the right to hit back. The behavior is often promoted by the family. The child, in some cases, is even reprimanded for not fighting back. This seems completely unacceptable to many educators because of our understanding of how to handle conflict and violence, but to my working class families, this is just how things are done. This is how you “man up” and take care of yourself.
I do have to admit that I am still a bit confused by the “critical literacy” section in Chap. 2. I understand that it is about teaching kids to recognize and re-shape identities that are presented to them in texts; I just would have no idea how to go about that. I also look forward to more concrete examples in the upcoming chapters as that always helps to clarify new ideas for me.

Sally Elliott

When I began this program, I kept hearing instructors refer to social status when discussing reading levels. At first, I was offended. I came from a higher middle class home, where my mother was a nurse and my father was a paramedic. They also owned a photography business on the side. We were not "well to do", but we never went with out and us kids were quite spoiled. As far as academic performance, I was always an average reader in elementary school, but by middle grades had risen to the top of my class. By my eighth grade year, I was reading on what my teachers called a "third year college" level. My brothers were right the opposite. The oldest hated school. He had a lot of difficulty in reading and reading comprehension. He strugled throughout school and was tested for learning disabilities by the time he reached middle grades. No disabilities were found. My younger brother had it even worse. His grades in reading, reading comprehension, and math were all bad. He struggled throughout school as well, and was retained twice before he finally finished with his diploma. He was also tested in the sixth grade and was found to be dyslexic. He probably would not have graduated high school, except for the services he received through special help. Knowing that we all came from the same background and had such different school experiences made me think that social class had nothing to do with it.
As I have been exposed to more and more research, I can now see that social class does play a key role in a child's reading abilities. The higher the social class, the more exposure to prior experiences and books and literature in general a child has. Children from lower social classes travel less, may not have as many books at home, due to the parents inability to provide such luxuries. Bills must be paid and longer hours are worked. Not as much time is spent reading to or listening to the children read.
I hope as I continue to expand my views and learn more about this topic as I continue my master's studies.

Sarah Hutson

I teach at a school that has a high population of working class families. I do not consider many of the families to be middle class; in fact the middle class would be the minority at my school. The students at our school do not seem to struggle to relate to each other and develop a “we”. When they branch out into the community, then I think that they struggle socially with belonging to a group. I think that some students struggle with finding their place in certain groups more than others. For those students who do struggle it is important for them to find the relationships that they need. I think that poor working class children are often culturally disconnected from middle class values. They seem out of place because they have often not had the experiences that middle class children have had. We learned in one of our classes that poor working class children are read to less at home when they are young and this robs them of the book language that they need when they enter school. They are at a disadvantage from the beginning of their school career. So I think that poor working class children are definitely overlooked because they are not a so called minority. Laurie and Jake struggled in kindergarten and beyond. The book stated these students attend schools that are very traditional and pushed for grade level expectations in reading and math. This push is driven by state and local agencies that mandate the certain student levels. I think that because of this the so called “fun” has been taken out of the classroom. Teachers are forced to almost teach the test so that their students can succeed. It should be about teaching a student at their level regardless of what it is. If a student is not reading on grade level then having them read on the grade level they are in will not improve their reading. They have to read at their instructional level in order to make any growth. But end of grade tests are written on grade level so students who are not reading on grade level are set up to fail from the beginning. Students should be measured on their growth not on whether they make a three or four on their end of grade test.
Students come to school driven by the social and cultural practices that they grew up in. That is their world and the only world that they know. It is their voice. Poor working class students do not know any different until they encounter it at school. They do not realize that they may have been deprived of something because their way is the only way that they know. I agree with the quote from the book on page 19 and 20 that states that lived moments have a lot to do with how students engage with school literacies. Our way with words in our families and our cultures is evident when a child goes to school and reads and writes. Those ways with words come out in their communication orally and written. Problems do arise when their ways are not the ways of the school and how the school communicates with the students. In the roadville elementary school example those children’s stories that they told spontaneously held no value with the teacher. She was looking for elaborate stories on the material they had read. The students probably could not make connections with the literature so they could not relate. The stories that they wanted to tell the teacher were relevant to them and they made far better stories than the ones they had to tell that did not hold meaning to the students. I find this true in my classroom. When my students come to school with stories I try to listen because they do have a difficult talking and writing about things that they have not experienced. At writing time I remind them to write about the stories that they tell me during the day, and if they do write about those things then their stories are usually better than the ones I might have them write or talk about.
Students do come to school with certain values and words that are learned from the home. For instance Lee Ann and Jake definitely held their mom and family’s stereotypes. The way the problem was solved was evident of how the mom and grandma and other family members handled situations. It was a learned behavior. The problem arises when the kids go to school and they try to handle things the way they were taught to handle them and it is not the way the school or teacher finds acceptable. The child is then punished for something he did not know any better not to do.

Michelle Moffitt

Reading Lives (Chapters 1 & 2)

My name is Angela Steele. Angela means the “Angelic one” – I’m not sure that I live up to the high expectations of the name given to me by my parents. Naming a simple principle; however, when you take it out of context, does it mean the same thing? Often not. I really liked the comparison to the three bears and the mathematical word of describing something as “bigger”. The meaning of this simple word is different depending on the context.

This does not just work in the concept of naming. Students are going to take different meanings from different stories based on their cultural upbringing. If a child has been taught that the male person is always dominant, then students will carry this into the classroom, i.e. the Sean and Terry excerpt. Having a preschool-aged student address another student as a “cunt” would have totally caught me off guard. This is obviously something that has been seen as acceptable in the home; just as the Jake and Lee Ann account.

I work in a school where the majority of children are from the white lower socioeconomic environment(99% free and reduced lunch). I have encountered in my own classroom accounts where parents have told their child, “If someone hits you, you hit them back and let the principal answer to ME!” This is one of those act now, and ask questions later frames of mind. For the lower socioeconomic status, it is often taught from the get go that everything will be a struggle, and don’t let anybody tell you what to do, you know what’s best. As we all know, it is difficult in the “real adult” world, but students have to learn on their own how to create this “hybrid” lifestyle.

Well, how does this all work into teaching a child about literacy? A child with the male figurehead point of view will see characters differently from one that has been raised to acknowledge everyone is on a “level playing field”. How a student shares in class will influence their writings. We have to remember (as I realized from the last article) that even those little stories that seem to be off task, can be a child seeking to make connections to what they are reading.

I can see where the Qualitative Research strategy is going to be a very effective process portrayed in this book so far. We, as readers, are getting the opportunity to see these “affects, cultural, racial, and economic circumstances” that are creating the readers that we have in our classrooms today!

Angela Steele

TAKE-ONE: Happy Gilmore! In this movie a hockey player must play golf to save the family home. Adam Sandler’s character is faced with many problems as he tries to balance the etiquette of golf with the aggressive behaviors of a history of hockey training. With-in two hours his problems are solved and he even gets the girl!
TAKE-TWO: Elizabeth Achor! In this real life drama a poor girl must find a way to be understood as she navigates the unclear waters of education! The show begins with a young girl entering first grade with a background much different from the teacher and the other students. Discourse! Discontent! Disconnect! Disappointment! It has been playing now for 45 years and there are many episodes to go! Thank goodness that I have survived to find a loving husband, a fulfilling career and a voice for change!
How many times have you heard a teacher say “those students just need to act right?” What they really mean is that “those” students need to act like me! Our students may come from many socio-economic backgrounds that we are not familiar with and it is up to each of us to find a way to engage, connect and understand in order to build a better tomorrow for all! I have always loved learning! It has been difficult at times because I was viewed as “the poor white girl” and that somehow made me less intelligent. One of the limiting factors to low socio-economic students is experience. Many times they do not travel, eat out or go to zoos and museums. This is the case of Elizabeth Achor. School was an amazing place that sometimes showed me things that I had never seen before. My first public library experience and my first time “eating out” happened on a field trip! School was also a place where they call a bucket a pail and you were stupid because you didn’t know the difference! My life has been a series of challenges and I have finally come to the understanding that I do have a choice in how I view the world! What I have to say and what I believe are important to what I teach and how I bond with my students. I teach in a low socio-economic area and part of what I teach is choice. Students are given a choice of reading texts and a variety of ways to express themselves. Can I do a better job? YES! Education is the key. By reading case studies and taking graduate level courses and by working through my fear of writing I am learning to empower my students. Don’t just tell your students to “act right”, explain or TEACH them how to act right!
The common thread of the readings so far has been GOLDEN! Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Do you want to feel unwanted and stupid? Do you want to feel special and empowered? What we, as teachers, do and say each day can make a child feel GOLDEN! When we make the right choice we give our students a voice that can change their world!
Elizabeth Achor

This was a very hard read for me. I had a very hard time understanding what discourse went and how it was applied to literacy. After listening to Dr. Jackson’s podcast I did have an easier time understanding, but I hope that as I continue to read it will become clearer.

I teach at a working class school. A lot of my students have at least 1 parent that works and 1 that does not work (due to language, or ability to get a job). My students have to change discourses between home and school. For some of my students when they are at home they are the ones in charge. Yes I do teach first grade, but some of my students have younger brothers and sisters they are responsible for. My students tell me how they have to make their own dinner because mom and dad work (or are sleeping because they have to work at night). When they come to school they have a hard time switching. They feel like they still have to be the one in charge and I find those students telling others what to do and how they should do it. I have to constantly remind my students to make sure they go outside and play and be a child. Reading the story about Jake and Lee Ann reminded me so much of my students. Like Lee Ann my students are taught to hit back. So when 2 students come to me and say, “he hit me, well, he hit me first”. I have to remind that them you don’t hit back. That is what my students are taught to do at home and they have a hard time switching from what they know to do at home to what is right to do in school.

I think that being from a working class background also affects your background knowledge. Students come to school sometimes knowing a lot about what we are reading and learning, and sometimes do not know a lot. When they have parents that work all the time they may not have the ability to do a lot of extra things so they may have never been to a museum, or when we read and learn about different animals a lot of them have never seen those types of animals. I try to get my parents to take my students to the store, and read to them, but I know that after they work all day (or night) all they want to do is sleep.

I am interested to see how this book will continue and what I will continue to learn about discourse and how it continues to effect literacy and learning.

Natalie Enns

“There is not a letter “I” in the word team”

“You do not spell the word team with the letter “I”, is a famous quote seen on sports t-shirts to teach children the value of working together to win an athletic event. I think the quote can also be integrated in the classroom setting. In Hicks’ reading, a writing that I highlighted several times and was inspired by was Barbara Comber, “When teachers and students are engaged in critical literacy they will be asking complicated questions about language and power, about people and lifestyle, about morality and ethics, about who is advantaged by the ways things are and who is disadvantaged”. I circled the word “and” between “teachers and students are engaged”; we have to work as a team. WOW! In previous readings, we have read of the importance of allowing students to have a voice in the classroom. In Comber’s writing she reiterates the importance of voice from students, but also working with teachers. I find it fascinating that she speaks of complicated questions, which I assume are not multiple choice questions that we use on tests (EOG’s), instead higher order thinking questions. In a perfect world, I can envision my students and myself, sitting around discussing a work of literature, in which they are engaged and their dialogue is reflected upon their identities, possibly even their own discourses. I believe that it would take time and work to reach the point in which students are truly engaged in critical literacy due to obstacles. Students have different discourses that make them the person that they are. Their discourse may hinder them from participating in literacy discussions (afraid, shy, or timid), or it may not affect their participation but cause trouble within the discussion due to the different discourses (views, power struggles, etc.). As I envision this perfect engagement of critical literacy in my classroom, I can name at least one student in my classroom that would struggle with this activity due to her discourse as a student, impacted by her home. It is apparent that her discourse at home, being a working-class family, is one in which education is highly valued, and it is stressed that there is only one right answer, and you better get it right, or you will be punished. The same child was punished at home if she did not make a 100 on her Spelling Tests. The child would come to school terrified to be called upon from fear of calling the wrong answer. Her discourse at home greatly affected her as a student at school. We must reach out to our students and work together, stressing that we are all unique individuals that come from different discourses. I love to read how Babara Comber concludes her writing, “To work towards a socially critical literacy is not unproblematic. It requires that we look at the ways we read the world; it requires examining what we take for granted, what texts tell us about the way things are and why they are the way they are.” I appreciate Hick’s ideas of critical literacy, discovering that literacy is more than reading and writing; it’s also who they are (discourse).
When reading chapters one and two, I couldn’t help but reflect upon a common theme that keeps popping up as I read each assignment and posts, taking time to truly know your students, discovering their culture, and allowing them to have a voice in the classroom through reading, writing, and sharing their stories. After reading Hick’s work, I believe it is also important to add the understanding that students have different discourses helps to truly know your students. Concluding the two chapters, and the readings completed in the course, I am both eager and curious to learn how do we as teachers teach our students the significance of teamwork, and break down perceived barriers among children’s gender, race, and class? Furthermore, I am interested in finding out if there are lessons, or works of literature which will help teach students the importance of working together as a team and respecting one another’s discourse?

Katie Johnson

After reading Chapter 1 and trying to mutter through I was very confused and felt disconnected to the reading. After listening to Dr. Jackson’s podcast I knew that the reading related to me, I am from a working class family. Both of my parents work in the school system as a secretary and a teacher’s aid. I knew growing up as I entered high school that I as a student did not fit the social class of my high school. I was not the upper middle class that drove a brand new car to school or got all the latest fashions. As a student I did not have the discourse between the school and home. My parents had grounded me and modeled appropriate literacy both print and oral for me all my life. My family around me valued education and the community around me did as well. I grew up in a neighborhood of children that all fit like me. In elementary school the differences were not noticeable with social class we were all the same. As we grew older and entered high school students came from surrounding areas of different class, no longer just working class.
As I related Deborah Hicks text and research to my own teaching and classroom, a student that I had this past year came to mind. I work in an upper middle class school setting. My students come to me with literacy experience and enriched family experiences. This past year I had a boy from a working class family enroll in my class. I had other students from working class families but this student was a special case. At open house I could see that the family dynamics were different with this family. I soon found out from conferencing with his father at the beginning of the year that this young boy was already “named” the first thing that his father told me is “O” (as to not tell you his real name) is difficult to handle and I just don’t know what to do with him. This child at the age of five had already been labeled or named as the “bad kid”. As the school year went on you could see that is student lived in the discourse of two worlds. The other students in the class named him as well, “He can’t read that he does not know how” He often made comments that reflected his dad’s comments and his behavior was that of an animal. I know that his behavior and literacy knowledge or lack of, reflected his home, cultural and social background. As the year continued I worked with “O” everyday to develop literacy and to bridge the gap between his social world and that of the school. At the end of the school year “O” received and award for perfect attendance! It is amazing the one student as a teacher that you could use at least one days’ vacation from, was at school everyday! One of my other students looked at me and said “that’s not fair he gets and award he is not even nice!” Of course I gave the nice teacher response and said we should be proud because he worked very hard, which is very true. I will say that by the end of the school year progress was made from a school literacy perspective and at home with dad gaining some knowledge of what he needed to do to help his child have success in school.
Angie Somers

Like some of the others, I struggled to get through these chapters. I felt like I got lost in all the technical terms and classifications and had to go back many times and re-read something so that I felt like I was understanding.

Hicks is looking at how literacy is influenced by aspects such as race, class, and gender. Most of the reading we have had to this point have related to these areas. When Hicks speaks of the different discourses that make up a person, I kept thinking about the article we read about the lost boys. The working class discourses are very common (church discourse, school discourse, home discourse, etc) but the lost boys were shaped by very different discourses. If you think about their journey, they had a discourse from their home life before they lost everything (one that involved storytelling). When they traveled to the refugee camp, they learned another discourse about survival. Their family discourse might have even changed in order for these children to create new family ties.

I have taught in two very different school settings. In one school, the children mostly came from low income homes. The other school has children from upper middle class homes. Although the children came from very different life situations, many of them shared a great deal of the same discourses (home, church, school, sports).

Hicks also talked about how we learn and how gender roles can influence our learning. I agree that our learning is influenced by the people around us. I think this can very easily be seen in the amount of education a child wants to acheive. Many children that come from working class homes talk about finding a job when they finish high school instead of talking about attending college. Many children coming from homes where parents went to college will also attempt college at some level. Although I know this is not always the case, I think in many instances many children still follow this path.

I believe that gender roles are ever present in todays world regardless of what race or class children are from. Although many jobs that used to have gender roles (such as nursing and teaching) are finding more of the other gender in those positions, we as a culture still consider certain jobs as a "she" job or a "he" job. I think that gender roles in the classroom are not as big a problem as they used to be. I think the one age where gender roles can still be found in the class, is kindergarten. I believe this is true because children are still learning about the different roles played by men and women in the home and society. I am very interested in reading more about what Hicks says in her book!

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

While working on my 20 day research study, there were times when I thought I was going to end up in a nervous hospital. Bless the woman's heart who spends 3 years on a study! I am very interested in learning from Hicks and her research. Her work with literacy offers many new ideas and theories. I find myself anxious to learn from her hard work. I can tell that we will not agree on every aspect of literacy but I have an open mind and a desire to learn.

I agree with Hicks that school runs hot and cold, meaning that it is highly complex. Therefore, the research involving education is equally complex. There are so many methods in data collection. I honestly feel that 2 researchers could have the same data and come to different conclusions with that data. Is the purpose of educational research reform or liberation? Do researchers want to bring about change or enlightenment?

As I was reading chapter 1, I began making parellels between myself and Hicks. We both grew up in rural areas and loved storybooks as children. I am anxious to continue my reading to see if we have many more connections. We also agree that the actions of teachers need to teach children how to listen, watch, feel and understand. There are more aspecs to literacy than reading and writing. One thing I don't share with Hicks is her love for making reading difficult. It id my goal when I write that everyone who reads it understands.

Dr. Jackson, a million thank yous for your podcast. Listening to you prior to reading chapter 2 kept me from having to read it 10 times. What I know for a fact is that literacy is complex. Children are complex. Teaching children literacy is hyper-complex. My goal as a teacher is to understand that every moment with a child has the potential to be a teachable situation. Race and gender does not matter. I am very anxious to learn how working-class families and middle-class families compare when looking at their values, beliefs and ways of acting. The shiftin that Hicks describes also interests me. I have noticed shifts in my own beliefs as a learner. I just didn't know to call it discourse. What I have learned so far from Hicks is that I have so very much more to learn.
Carol Sherrill

While working on my 20 day research study, there were times when I thought I was going to end up in a nervous hospital. Bless the woman's heart who spends 3 years on a study! I am very interested in learning from Hicks and her research. Her work with literacy offers many new ideas and theories. I find myself anxious to learn from her hard work. I can tell that we will not agree on every aspect of literacy but I have an open mind and a desire to learn.

I agree with Hicks that school runs hot and cold, meaning that it is highly complex. Therefore, the research involving education is equally complex. There are so many methods in data collection. I honestly feel that 2 researchers could have the same data and come to different conclusions with that data. Is the purpose of educational research reform or liberation? Do researchers want to bring about change or enlightenment?

As I was reading chapter 1, I began making parellels between myself and Hicks. We both grew up in rural areas and loved storybooks as children. I am anxious to continue my reading to see if we have many more connections. We also agree that the actions of teachers need to teach children how to listen, watch, feel and understand. There are more aspecs to literacy than reading and writing. One thing I don't share with Hicks is her love for making reading difficult. It id my goal when I write that everyone who reads it understands.

Dr. Jackson, a million thank yous for your podcast. Listening to you prior to reading chapter 2 kept me from having to read it 10 times. What I know for a fact is that literacy is complex. Children are complex. Teaching children literacy is hyper-complex. My goal as a teacher is to understand that every moment with a child has the potential to be a teachable situation. Race and gender does not matter. I am very anxious to learn how working-class families and middle-class families compare when looking at their values, beliefs and ways of acting. The shiftin that Hicks describes also interests me. I have noticed shifts in my own beliefs as a learner. I just didn't know to call it discourse. What I have learned so far from Hicks is that I have so very much more to learn.
Carol Sherrill

After reading chapters 1 and 2 of the text I have concluded that while I am in agreement with the author on a variety of topics, I question some of her statements and assumptions.

In the first chapter, the author states, “I don’t think modern communities, rural or urban, are fixed in terms of class identities.” It is true that those raised in a particular class are not banned from or held from attaining status in another class. I think people move from one class to another primarily based on education, mindset, and values. For example, my friend’s husband grew up in a poor, working class family. The community in which he was raised did not much value education, however, he worked hard and made good grades. In school, he learned what was valued in middle and upper class settings and strived to attain those skills. As a result, he went to college on scholarships, graduated with a degree in biology, earned a master’s degree in an advanced sciences and is now working at a lab that researches medicines to improve the lives of those afflicted with diseases. He was identified as low class and attained middle/upper class status through education, mindset, and values.

I also agree with the author’s statements that claim that “literacies are cultural and material practices shaped by histories, localities, and the persons within them that give form and meaning to children’s lives” and that children are not “autonomous reasoners who…individually construct knowledge about literacy practices.” Children approach literacies based on their prior knowledge and experiences and mesh what they are taught with what they know. They are not blank slates unaffected by their environment.

The author writes the text saying she accepts and uses a hybrid of cultural and critical research. Her stance falls in the middle of these views. Cultural research seems to offer the best lens through which to look at literacy. Cultural research on literacy explains that ‘histories and social ecologies’ affect children’s’ approaches to literacies. It explains why children interact with literacies as they do so that teachers can better connect with and meet their needs. It is applicable to the classroom; the teacher will know where they are academically based on what they know. Although the author likes critical literacy research , it seems to be lacking in explanation and practicality. It doesn’t seem to explain why children approach and interact with literacies as they do; it merely suggests that there are injustices and inequalities in relation to literacies. It is very scientific and doesn’t offer suggestions as to what teachers can actually use and implement in the classroom.

Finally, I have some questions regarding the author’s statements about class. What are middle class discourses? Who or what defines them? What research supports the author’s claim that schools have middle class basis?

Laura Corbello

After reading the other articles on race, gender, and class, I was very excited to start Deborah Hicks' book, Reading Lives. I have found the other articles extremely interesting and I have enjoyed thinking about how each of these topics have related to literacy research. This changed while I was reading Chapter 1 of Hicks' book, but my excitement returned after listening to Dr. Jackson's podcast.
I found Chapter 1 to be very difficult to follow and comprehend. Besides understanding the fact that Hicks was going to conduct her research on poor and working-class White families, I didn't comprehend much from this chapter. I even re-read this chapter several times, but again, didn't acquire much information.
After reading this chapter, I listened to Dr. Jackson's podcast (THANK YOU!) and finally started putting the pieces together. Completely understanding Hicks' definition of the word "discourse" helped tremendously. I also really liked the way "cultural literacy" was explained. I have never thought of literacy being learned culturally. Hearing this makes me understand why storytelling was so important to the Sudanese "Lost Boys." This was where there literacy learning first took place- in a cultural setting, not in a school setting.
I also liked the explanation of "hybrid discourses." I feel this could describe all of us at one time or another- even our students when they come to school. It also made me think of Delpit's article, "No Kinda Sense." In this article, she talks about how she has to change when she's aroiund her friends- from Standard English to African American English.
I'm excited about reading the rest of Hicks' research about Jake and Laurie. Because of where I grew up and where I live now, I feel that this research will remind me of studens I went to school with, as well as students I teach today. Marsha Warren

After reading and pondering over the material, I kept going back to the whole idea of class and the relationship it has literacy. As an adult, I have gone through this idea of shifting discourses. I am not teaching anymore since it's summer, and so I'm in "summer mode." This is a whole different discourse than "school mode." I really think I have a "home mode" or discourse, along with a "social mode" or discourse. It's an ever shifting environment, and as an adult, I know where and when each discourse is appropriate.

I often fly because I am originally from WI, and my family is all over the world. I always think about the discourse that I see and hear when I'm in the airport. You automatically know who's "first class." It's amazing to listen to their language. I can't say that I see a wide mixture of race in first class area on a plane, but I do know that there is a specific discourse going on. Then there is the rest of us, who all share a common bond, coach seating. Most people are on cell phones talking with family, not business, listening to IPods, reading magazines, or taking care of their kids. The distinct discourse is much more apparent after reading this.

Thinking of my students and really understanding where they come from sure helps understand their progression in their literacy. I see students that have learned their home and school discourse, then I see many who are not made to learn the school discourse. There is a wide mixture of families of all race and class that do not teach their kids the correct discourse for home or school. I know we as educators need to stress to our students a grammatically correct, respectful, and loving discourse. It's always a struggle because there are so many families that see their way of parenting the correct way. Uneducated parents who don't work are the hardest parents to reach. These students come to school knowing they are poor, knowing they are not smart (even though some are), and understand that school is work, although they might not want to.

I really liked the part about critical literacy. I really think using all the different texts out there really get students to think about the text and develop language that is missing in their discourse. Teachers are there to help the students analyze the text, and I agree. I need to allow my students to interpret and learn more by me helping, not dictating.

Abby Boughton

I'm going to be honest, this book is hard to read. I am struggling to follow. I really don't like how chapters 1 and 2 go from researcher to researcher! I am having to write them down just to keep them straight along with what they do. I am glad that Hicks has researched the children of the working class families. "The voices of people around me, the soothing rhythms of rural small-town speech, also became part of girlhood identity and imagination..." I think to be a great researcher you have to reflect on your own life! Hick's does just that where as many others lack such reflection.

Nearly every child that I teach comes from families just as these! I myself was one of them. Although it took my dad years of hard work and starting his own business he has helped family to go far. So far he has sent both my mom and I to college and currently has one enrolled. But, considering I live in a rural area (really small town) this was not uncommon. Therefore, teachers knew how to cater to their "students" needs. More than likely those teachers had come from the same family. Because of this I feel that I can be a better teacher to my students.

Before reading Deborah Hick's book I had never heard of the word "discourse." Thanks to Dr. Jackson's podcast the meaning of this word was clarified. But it is so true how we transition from discourse to discourse. I never really thought of having a discourse for church, school, work, family, community, and military. The military life really stuck out in my head when thinking of discourse. Being an Marine Officers wife makes a woman do a lot of "role-playing." I am not saying that I change who I am, but I definitely have to act a certain way. Also, I have a certain way I must speak to others and or can't speak with at all. Personally, I don't like the rules that can come with that because I don't view anyone as better or lesser than another. But, as Dr. Jackson had said in the podcast, "powers shift between each place." For children, our students, it is crucial that we incorporate every being of their culture into their not only their literacy, but their entire education.

While reading of Hick's observations among different children I was blown away! I could not believe how some of the children were allowed to act. The children I am talking about are Lee Ann and Jake and Sean and Terry. As gender does play a huge role in how people act, you can definitely see that the adults played the key role in how these children were to act. I can't believe Lee Ann was encouraged to go "jump" on Jake while in the box. I believe in children taking up for themselves but I feel there are more appropriate ways of doing so. But what really took me by surprise was the story of the boys in preschool, Terry and Sean. It is quiet obvious that those two have seen and heard their fathers acting this way towards women. I myself have seen this first hand among some of my students. But, I just really can't say I would have handled that situation as that teacher did. It was fine how she tried to blow it off at first as if they were only joking, but the comments just got worse. In this situation the teacher could have been the difference in the those young boys lives and showed them that because of your gender, boy or girl, does not make you better. More importantly, the children should not speak like that to adults, yet alone know to say those things! I guess the two discourse with home and school where combined seeing as if it didn't really matter what they said. I bet at home they can say things like that without getting in trouble.

Sometimes I am shocked by how obvious something can be when I have never really thought about it. We all know that children learn language from home. BUT I have never stopped to think of how that really impacts their literacy learning in school. I know in my classroom the children spell fire, far because that is how they say it. We discuss the differences and go on because 90% of my students are lower income white families. They all speak that way. Probably less than 10% of my children have parents who have had any education past high school and a sizeable percentage didn’t finish high school. I’m not sure that my students feel some of the issues from the book, but I can completely understand how they would have some issues if they began to attend a school in a different neighborhood or community where the average income is higher.
When I was 10 going into fifth grade, my family moved to a more affluent school and community than I had grown up in previously. It had a profound effect on me. I felt totally out of place for many reasons and it changed who I was. I dressed the wrong way. I talked the wrong way (country). I had to learn to fit in. I am not saying it wasn’t for the best, but it was a very hard transition.
I agree with Hicks when she says that working class children are viewed negatively without cultural sensitivity. How often are they the butt of jokes? “Whenever someone from NC is on TV, they are always missing teeth and talk very country.” How many times have you heard that? I also agreed with her when she gave the example of Jake being trained. The incident with his little sister would create in him cultural ideas about women (teachers) and handling conflicts that could effect his learning.
Wow! Was my thought when I read the sections about autonomous reasoning and how literacy learning is really social learning. (I paraphrased but it is how I understood it.) We learn not only how to behave from each other, but also how to speak, write, read from each other in various situations and for various reasons. This was an AHA moment! So obvious and yet not. I am looking forward to chapter 3.
Christy Findley

Throughout the reading of these two chapters I found myself thinking back to "my raising" and the way that I grew up. It's funny. I knew that a child's background influenced the child in the classroom, but I am don't think that I had ever thought of it in this regard. The fact that the literacy of a child could be so heavily affected by how a child is raised and where he or she lives was a bit outside of my consideration. However, the more I read; the more it made sense.

One of the most interesting parts of the chapter was reading the part about Lee Ann and Jake. I knew that there were differences what children were taught in regard to how to handle situations, but I didn't think abot the fact that this would be based on working-class vs. middle-class. I found myself "ahhhh-haaa -ing" when I read it. This relates directly to how my husband and I have taught our own daughters to interact with conflict at school. My 10-yr-old was being bullied to some degree by another child at school this year. My raising (in a lower working-class family) was that you knocked somebody's head off if they hit you. My current situation was more along the Biblical lines of "turn the other cheek". So what do you do as a mother? I didn't want my child hurt (especially by this particular child). At the same time the middle-class way of handling things was not helping. My discources couldn't reconcile. In the end, we told our daughter there were a couple of ways she could handle it and different consequences for each. She had to decide which she wanted to do (this was definitely not how my parents would have handled it).

Looking at this situation and some others that came to mind as I read, I began to see how my students are affected by aspects of their lives that took place even before they began reading and writing. Situations like the Roadville children who would be criticized for "made-up" storytelling made me realize that not every child CAN behave the same way in the classroom. It's not that they are just different in who they are. They are different in how they have been made.....the core of who they were raised to be.

For me now, the question is how does this influence what I do in a middle school classroom. Not only have these children come from different situations, they have had 11 yrs. or so to perfect these differences in their upbringing. I want to work with the discources of each student and capitalize on what each one brings to the classroom.

Christy Laws

These chapters were interesting and I think I am going to enjoy this book. Literacy is more than reading and writing. Literacy also involves belonging socially and culturally. Literacy encompasses who you are as a person and how you fit into a social structure. Everyone wants to fit into a “we.” I was excited to see some research on class and gender instead of just race.

The category of working class children makes up about half of my students in my classroom. The children come to school with literacy that they get from home. The most important literacy that the children learn first is their name. This is something that is special and unique to the student. They come to school knowing if they are good at sports or bad at reading. This is a part of their identity. Reading these chapters I thought of a little boy this year who was ”bad.” He thought of himself as a trouble maker and he wanted to live up to this reputation. This was the name that had been given to him and he had decided was part of who he was as a person and student. It was very very hard for me to make him see himself as a “good” student. He felt that he had to behave in certain ways to get a certain reaction from the people he was around. I worry about when he gets older what he will do to live up to this label that has been put upon him. It was also hard for me to get him to do well on reading and writing. He wanted to act like he could not do it. It was a constant struggle to get him to work up to his potential. He comes from a working class family and he had a harder time being a hybrid than some of the other students in my class. How can we move children past these names or labels they have???

I know that I shift between different worlds. I have the world of being a teacher, student and part of my family. In all of these worlds I behave differently and certain behaviors are expected of me. Just like me, children have a different discourse for school and home. Teachers need to recognize this and keep it in mind when teaching children from a working class family. Also, teachers should not have preconceived notions that children from a Socioeconomic status are not as capable as the other students.

These chapters were interesting and I think I am going to enjoy this book. Literacy is more than reading and writing. Literacy also involves belonging socially and culturally. Literacy encompasses who you are as a person and how you fit into a social structure. Everyone wants to fit into a “we.” I was excited to see some research on class and gender instead of just race.

The category of working class children makes up about half of my students in my classroom. The children come to school with literacy that they get from home. The most important literacy that the children learn first is their name. This is something that is special and unique to the student. They come to school knowing if they are good at sports or bad at reading. This is a part of their identity. Reading these chapters I thought of a little boy this year who was ”bad.” He thought of himself as a trouble maker and he wanted to live up to this reputation. This was the name that had been given to him and he had decided was part of who he was as a person and student. It was very very hard for me to make him see himself as a “good” student. He felt that he had to behave in certain ways to get a certain reaction from the people he was around. I worry about when he gets older what he will do to live up to this label that has been put upon him. It was also hard for me to get him to do well on reading and writing. He wanted to act like he could not do it. It was a constant struggle to get him to work up to his potential. He comes from a working class family and he had a harder time being a hybrid than some of the other students in my class. How can we move children past these names or labels they have???

I know that I shift between different worlds. I have the world of being a teacher, student and part of my family. In all of these worlds I behave differently and certain behaviors are expected of me. Just like me, children have a different discourse for school and home. Teachers need to recognize this and keep it in mind when teaching children from a working class family. Also, teachers should not have preconceived notions that children from a Socioeconomic status are not as capable as the other students.

Ashley Caldwell

As I began the reading I had never thought about how working-class children use literacy. After I continued reading I realized I was one of those children. My dad was a tobacco farmer and worked at Roadway second shift, while my mom was a preschool teacher for many years. We never had all the top of the line items, but we never went without either. The example with Jake and his little sister reminded me of how I used to play with my cousins. However, my mother probably would have told me to get in the house and stop all that noise, which set up the way I learned how to act with my own son in the same type of situation.

I fully agree with the thought on p. 16 that some have rejected, that “literacies are cultural and material practices shaped by histories, localities, and persons within them that give form and meaning to children’s lives.” The way I grew up has influenced the books I read and the way I write. I tend to choose books that are similar to the cultural experiences that I know. If I can’t relate to it I don’t want to read it. I feel it is the same for my students. Yes, they would love to have a book that will help them escape every once in a while. However, they want to relate to the types of situations that are in the books. My students are growing up just as I did, since I teach at the elementary school I attended. They are all from working-class families. So, they are learning those same community stories from their parents and teachers that I have learned as well.

Odessa Scales

Children do not come to school blank slates. They bring fives years of home training with them. They bring values important to their family. They have been named. They know their identity and the parents know their identity. If you teach K-2, you have parents calling and visiting before school begins to tell you how their child feels or relates to others. The parents give clues or complete scenarios of their child’s behaviors. The problem usually lies within the teachers. We have to learn to accept every child for who they are and put aside our bias views. As my first principal use say, “They are sending us the best they have. They are not hiding the best kids at home.”

I worked in a low socioeconomic school for seven years. We used Ruby Payne’s Framework for Understanding Poverty for a professional development series. Like Health, Payne described the importance for low socioeconomic students to shift between both worlds. Payne believed it was the role of the teacher to help instruct the student to learn when to shift between both worlds. Student need to be taught what is acceptable at home may not be acceptable at school. Yet, it has to been done in a manner that will not make the child feel inadequate. Working-class children have amazing survival skills. I would feel more comfortable leaving my former students home alone to take care of them selves before I left my son home alone.

Personally, I believe all of us are code shifters. We shift between formal language used at work and informal language used out to dinner with friends. Shifting between formal and informal language, behaviors or cultural expectations has been the common thread of all the articles we have read. The question becomes: how do we use this knowledge to better educate our students and make them successful within the classroom based in middle-class values and expectations?

Zandra Hunt