"Critical literacy is a response to injustice and the production of illiteracy in which students and teachers work together to learn and create an environment of mutual respect. Within that environment the students and teachers learn about each other and can take that knowledge to really learn about the world."
Throughout the blogs this summer, I have been able to understand that we can't take kids at face value. We need to delve into their lives (without being stalkers!) and really get to know our students. When we take the time to get to know our students amazing things can happen. Students want to learn and want to share experiences when they know that they are cared about and that they are safe.
As teachers we need to take the lead like Lynn Gatto and really search in our curriculum for ways to submerge the kids into areas that are important. By combining as many content areas as possible and giving the students the choice to do what they learn best by. It takes planning and it takes the teachers/educators time to plan and the resources to do so, but it is worth it in the end! As Lynn Gatto states, "every week my mailbox is stuffed with sales catalogs for foolproof literacy materials and programs" (p. 73). We have to understand how to take those programs and add our twists to them. To take those "amazing" programs and know that there are some that are like the old age "snake oil that could heal everything,"We have to be able to look at our own ideas and to be able to realize that we have the resources in our selves to make lifelong lessons come alive in our students.
Gatto gave me the faith to know that it is possible not to lose creativity and to be able to add it in where we can. Though, we also have to have enough faith in our self to stand up to the critics who will try to make us go to the "dark side" and join in with everyone else. Maybe if enough of us join together with the better ways to teach these lessons/units, then maybe they will have to merge with our philosophy and do what really is better for the students.
I don't know how to change people's thought processes, but I know that I can control what I think, what I feel and behave like, in doing so, then I can work to get to know others feelings and thoughts and maybe, just maybe get them to change their behaviors. (If you get a chance to read about NLP, you would understand that statement. It stands for Neurolinguistic programming.)
I found that Moses article on Algebra and Civil Rights? to be another well made point about the ways in which we need to change our thought process to change the students' thought processes. If we combine algebra into lessons the way that Gatto combined all content areas into her Butterfly unit, then we could really make some headway into stressing how important and how all subjects link together. After all, Moses stated, "and in culture itself-our culture-illiteracy in math is acceptable the way illiteracy in reading and writing is unacceptable" (p.9). Why does this have to be true? What can't we help change that thought process. Once we change that thought process about math, then we can change how people behave about math. Once we change how they think and use math, then we are finally changing how students are prepared for the future.
According to Friere, "in the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing" (p. 53). Who is to say we can't change this philosophy too? Why can't we combine what we know with what the students know and then make a better lesson? Why can't we make a combined deposit into the students knowledge? Why can't we make deposits into this and then some withdrawals and then have the kids make some deposits and withdrawals into the banking concept? If we both are involved with this knowledge banking system then we both have a stake in it. When we both have a stake in it, then we both care about what happens. When we get to that point, there is nothing stopping being literate in everything that we do.
We need to embrace our diversity instead of fight against it. When I first decided to take this course, I thought that literacy only pertained to English-with a concentration in Reading and Writing. I have learned over this course that it is so much more than that. We have to be able to take what kids live with and know and how they best learn, in order to make education make sense to them. If we can't do that, then we are going to be illiterate in so many areas. I just hope that we aren't too late. I hope that we can take what we have learned in this course and "spread the word" into our classroom, and to our school, and school district. I just hope that the neoliberalists don't break this up and continue with their path of destruction in the educational system. I just hope that we are strong enough to one day say, our kids know more than a test will ever show. Testing isn't the answer, knowledge is.
No comments:
Post a Comment