The Right to Literacy in Secondary School: Part III

Part III of Right to literacy was about getting students to be actively involved in their learn process, to not just be receivers of curriculum and instruction in a passive fashion but to think and bring their own experiences into the learning process. Another item brought up in this section was that students develop content knowledge and conceptual understanding that will be remembered and stored for long term use instead of just memorizing steps or applications that will not remain in their long term memory. Chapters 11 deal with the utmost situation that we as teacher’s desire and that is students’ independence to work with their peers and alone. This is how students can take their own intuition in learning and become the owner of their thinking. The students after doing this can analyze and explain their discoveries. What this all means to students is that when literacy is included in their learning it puts them on an even field with others in the pursuit of future jobs that will require technology, concrete/abstract thinking, social skills (both written and verbal), historical inquires, and scientific applications. When teachers focus on learning and not the state required mandates the students will benefit. The right to literacy is everyone’s right. Teachers should do their best to use literacy in their classrooms no matter what subject they teach because literacy is connected to each subject and each subject has uniqueness when literacy comes into practice. For example math teachers can have students solve math problems by using Polya problem solving strategies and not just see numbers and symbols but written words. The students can then use literacy to explain how they got their results when the teacher asks for clarifications. So teachers should be inter-disciplinarians (the study of two or more disciplines) as it pertains to literacy and the subject they teach. Schools should include literacy in teacher’s pedagogy to insure that literacy is transitioned throughout students’ learning experiences from pre-k to secondary education. Literacy connects across content areas so teachers can understand and support each other when a teacher needs advice about different subjects. A Language Art teacher can help a math teacher bring creativity into a lesson by including literacy that appeal to the common interest of the students. In algebra students have trouble with grouping like terms- same variables. They will group unlike terms but if they can be taught to identify like terms that is connected by scaffolding language art with the equation. Both teachers can design a lesson that metaphorically substitutes the last name for a variable. By explaining that family with the same last name live together (combine) and families with different last names live in different houses (do not combine). The teachers are making connection to how students have common knowledge about math and language art with literacy.

You Gotta Be the Book

The meaning I get from the author about the book is that he was a reading enthusiast and thought that because of his under-graduate studies as a teacher he would be a good reading teacher. But his encounter with the various high and middle schoolers in English and other reading courses revealed to him that something is missing because the students' did not want to read but only a few achievers. All through this he continued his love for reading by reading numerous books even reading to young children (his own nieces and nephews) and discovered that children like to be read to but when they enters middle and high school they lose interest because school reading is not like home. While he was in graduate school and doing research on his students resulted in him re-examining himself and reading strategies. This opportunity lead to his theory about teacher-research and that this teacher-research is his foundation for empowerment. The story is not about his students but in fact about him and his developmental aspects as a teacher and using literacy in the classrooms.