Critical Literacy

Embodiment of resistance against the conventional while finding your own footing.

[checkabox-blog]

"Embodiment of resistance against the conventional while finding your own footing."

-Ashley Bieze

[checkabox-blog]

Peer Tutoring and Critical Literacy

My cousin is a senior at Columbia College. He also works in their writing center as a peer tutor. Recently he went on a rant about 'dumb people'. He was talking about how those who are not 'smart' are holding society back, slowing 'us' down. 

He is a smart kid. He asked for a dictionary for Christmas when he was 12. He would read a page every night. His vocabulary became quiet expansive. He took AP courses and my mom and I regularly helped him with his homework. His mom barely finished high school and never went to college. In recent years I have noticed how he talks to her. I used to just think that he was an angst filled teen, but now I am realizing that he thinks he is better than her. He thinks she is dumb and more or less acts like that makes her worth less than those in his classes. I cannot remember exactly what he said during this rant but my mom finally cut him off. She told him that just because he has good grades or because he knows a lot of words or because he is graduating soon, it does not make him better than ANYONE else. 

It could not help but think about how the students he peer tutored were impacted over the past year by these beliefs. The English teacher in charge of the writing center specifically asked my cousin to apply to be a tutor. They must like him and he has been doing it for a couple years so he must be doing a good job. I still wonder if some of his beliefs bleed through to his interactions. 

I started thinking about my experience in the writing center at RU. The most frustrating times for me were not times when I thought the writer was lacking intellect. The most frustrating times were when the writer did not want to try. The hardest times were when I was met with resistance every time I tried to begin a dialogue. Everyone has knowledge. Everyone has value to bring to the table. Those students who seemingly did not want to try have been conditioned to believe that other people hold the answers, conditioned to listen and regurgitate. 

During my time in the writing center I found myself teaching and demonstrating critical literacy. I found myself asking students questions that would push them to challenge the thoughts of those they were quoting, pushing them to challenge the thoughts that they wrote down in their papers. 

A peer tutor or any educator cannot be helpful in allowing students or writers to discover their full potential if that tutor or educator does not see themselves as a peer. 

[checkabox-blog]

A multicultural resistance invented on the borders of identities

Gloria Anzaldua

(via checkabox)

So often we are asked to Check a box. To pick one or the other. Black or White. Mother or Daughter. Consumer or Employee. Teacher or Student. These identities are not clearly separate. They over lap. They intersect. Where these identities meet and blend is where powerful things happen. At the border of teacher and student a lot can be learned. When each group resists being put into a box the opportunity for growth expands. There is a fluid, more naturalistic movement back and forth between teacher and student that more closely mirrors collaboration in the real world. This also emphasizes to the student that they have value, they have knowledge, and that the teacher still has things to learn. 

[humansofnewyork]

"I constantly worry if I’m doing OK with my boys. I spent the entire weekend with headphones on, working on a paper for graduate school, instead of spending time with them. I’m doing all this so that one day I’ll earn enough to send them to college. But at the same time, they need help with their reading now."

[checkabox-blog]

Ubiquitous Assimilation. Doublethink. Critical Literacy. 

Our society is in desperate need of critically literate students pushing back agains the ubiquitous assimilation that the media and those in power push upon us. Unfortunately schools do not teach enough of this and if it is taught it cannot be effectively tested so educators do not emphasize the importance of being critically literate. 

[checkabox-blog]

This is another blog post that talks about the issues with mandating all educators have an ACT score of 22 or higher. I know plenty of people who have gotten high ACT scores but who have no place in the classroom. I know plenty of students who have the intense drive and passion to become teachers but who fall short of the 22 requirement. I know amazing teachers that have made an impact on my life who may not have had the coveted 22. 

If you can see it, you can be it.

If children do not seem people who look like them in front of the class room they will think they cannot be there. Children learn best from those who are like them in some way- people who they can relate to. 

The extremely difficult part is that these students, who want to be teachers but fall short of the 22 ACT, were failed by our current school system. These students are victims for a failed education. These students are the products of a system that is broke. Yet still these students want to give back to that system. They want to improve that system. They want to make sure that future generations have a better education than they had. 

Ultimately the ISBE decision to implement an ACT requirement of 22 is another form of systemic and institutional racism.

[checkabox-blog]

"Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding."

I never realized how one sided my education was until I began talking with other people about their education. It was not until I started traveling and exploring the internet that I realized how one sided my views of different cultures were. I began seeking out information on my own. I began challenging the racist 'facts' that others told me. I can't help but think that the system failed me. In reality I am privileged. I could have continued my life without knowing about the diversity and cultures in the world around me. I could have continued and been successful without realizing and challenging the stereotypes and one dimensional beliefs that have been drilled into my head. The people who this one story way of education really fails are those without power. Those without the power to control the messages being reinforced about them. Students like Chimamanda Adichie. 

[checkabox-blog]

Community Forum - Golden Apple Foundation

Golden Apple Foundation helps motivate, prepare and reward future educators to keep students excelling in school because they believe that a critical contributor to student achievement is the quality of the teacher in the classroom. 

Golden Apple provides intensive training to their scholars. The scholars continuously say their favorite sessions at the summer institutes are the the ones that discuss diversity. The scholars routinely point out they are missing this in their traditional college education. Their universities do not emphasize diversity as a main component of being a excellent educator. 

[sagansense]

The wonderful Mari-Liis aka sci-universe created this for me regarding something I said in a post about science, life and passion. Thank you again for this dear. Continue doing stellar things over there :)

[Best gif/art (2013); sagansense]

[gjmueller-deactivated20181226]

Teaching Adolescents How to Evaluate the Quality of Online Information

An essential part of online research is the ability to critically evaluate information. This includes the ability to read and evaluate its level of accuracy, reliability and bias. When we recently assessed 770 seventh graders in two states to study these areas, the results definitely got our attention.

So, what can you do to more explicitly teach adolescents how to evaluate the quality of online information?

[checkabox-blog]

Critical Literacy: Knowing how to question and challenge authority and the information you are told is undeniably true.  

[sincecombahee-deactivated201801]

[checkabox-blog]

sincecombahee:

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“Thousands of CPS students have opportunities limited by test scores, Cannon wrote, and those students may never get a chance to become teachers….Standardized test scores, Cannon argues, don’t measure more intangible qualities, which he defines in his speech as ‘passion,’ ‘dedication’ and ‘his ability to connect with students.’”

//

The Illinois State Board of Education has raised the minimum ACT score requirement to a 22 in order to become a teacher in the state. Prior to this the organization I worked for welcomed diverse high school students interested in becoming a teacher regardless of their test scores. Our recruitment team continuously reminded bright, passionate, aspiring teacher that they are not their test scores. Now, in order to be a successful non-profit we are having to eat our words. You might not be your test score but your test score can keep you from reaching our dreams. 

[checkabox-blog]

How to make critical literacy happen in your classrooms:

-Ask a lot of questions

-Look at unconventional/non-traditional/new works

-Do not just accept the knowledge given to you

[checkabox-blog]

A multicultural resistance invented on the borders of identities

Gloria Anzaldua

[checkabox-blog]

An insurrection of subjugated knowledges

Michel Foucault

Rebelling against having traditional knowledge dominate your life.

  “This is all well and good but I have some knowledge and other people have some knowledge that should be valued.”

[checkabox-blog]

Language used against fitting unexceptionally into the status quo

Adrienne Rich 

Are they understanding their position in the world? Do they get how the status quo shapes them?

If we can look critically and think about the status quo and our relationship to it we have critical literacy.

[olongenbaugh]

Critical literacy should not be an add-on but a frame through which to participate in the world.

(Vasquez, 2010, p. 2)