A Reflection

Hello Bloggers! I began this blog for a summer course on diversity and literacy. Blogging was a brand new to me, so it has been a learning experience. Now that my course is quickly ending I would like to wrap up this blog by discussing the main purpose and concepts of it. In essence, this post serves a reflection on my experience blogging as a whole. My blog served two purposes. The first purpose was to give me multiple opportunities to learn and reflect on the readings for my course by writing about them. As I mentioned in several of my posts, people learn through writing. As Reif states, “Writing is one way of representing and communicating our thinking to others, using our experiences, our knowledge, our opinions, and our feelings to inform and negotiate our understandings and misunderstandings of ourselves and the world in which we live” (191). In other words, writing is one way of learning to communicate and deeply think about the information we receive.  One way to provide students’ time to reflect and to check their understanding is having them do an exit slip. An exit slip is an inquiry/reflection question that students have to answer before leaving class. I have seen exit slips used successfully in several classes. Here is a link that has a template and sample questions for exit slips; http://cityteacher.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/student-reflection-ticket-out-the-door/. You will find that it is a great writing reflection activity. Writing this blog has not only given me time to reflect using digital literacy, but allowed me to organize and build upon my knowledge of diversity and literacy. The second purpose of this blog was to share and communicate with an audience real issues that affect everyone. After all, education affects the lives of every U.S. citizen. I hope you were able to gain knowledge and interest in diversity and literacy from this blog.

In May I began my first post with the question of what Americans need to know and introducing the debate of how literacy should be taught. Then, in June I explored the challenges and problems in literacy education including racism, segregation, neoliberalism, ineffective assessment, and sameness as fairness along with some possible solutions to the problems. Lastly, this month I investigated critical literacy learning, which I believe brought the topics discussed in the previous month together. In the later posts of my blog the over arching ideas became clearer because as the course progressed I gained more experience and insights found in the themes of the course. Also, as I became more acclimated to blogging and as a result I gained confidence in my blog writing. Overall, I believe the theme of this blog is exploring issues in literacy education and discovering new pedagogies and theories to improve literacy education for diverse learners. Common sub themes that ran through my blog include neoliberalism, diversity, multiculturalism, social injustice, oppression, inquiry, and critical literacy. There were many recurring ideas in this blog which were a result of the major theme and sub themes that unified my posts as I mention above. I think a major idea was neoliberalism or No Child Left Behind Policy being the source of problems in literacy and education in general. Although it was not the focus of all the posts, I brought it up in most of them because the idea was imbedded in most of my readings. Overall, the neoliberalism and NCLB was discussed by most professionals as the problem in education and something teachers have to resist or work their pedagogies around. Another running idea in this blog was teachers learning about students, so that they can incorporate students’ cultures, litearcies, and experiences in lessons.  For instance, Carini, Delpit, and Gatto are just a few authors I discuss in my blog that argue students should be involved in their own assessment. Jackson and Cooper, Purcell-Gates, Delpit, Gurtierrez, Wiliams, and Gee are just some of the authors I explored in my posts that provided pedagogies and example activities that support using students’ interests and experiences to engage them in lessons that have meaning to them. Specifically, I explained in this blog several times that using students experiences helps students build or scaffold new knowledge. Also, it is brought up in my multiple literacy post and critical literacy posts that involving students’ communities helps them connect to the topics they learn in school. Overall, I think the basic ideas of involving students’ worlds into lessons benefits students in multiple ways as oppose to the current high stakes education which does not acknowledge students as individuals with experiences.

I have made a significant turn since my first blog based on Hirsh’s theory. As I gained more knowledge about multiculturalism, bilingualism, and neoliberalism I changed my perspective that students should all know the same list of terms or the “same” education.  At first, I agreed with Hirsch that the aim for literacy education should be a “universal literacy”. During that first week it seemed like a good theory to have students learn and practice the same literacy, so that the nation communicated effectively. But as the course progressed I realized that students’ diversity and multiple literacies need to be incorporated in schools because the “sameness as fairness approach excludes groups of students. This is shown in my posts on neoliberalism and “sameness as fairness”. Moreover, in these posts I am clearly against high stakes education and students having no connection to what they are learning, which is the exact opposite of Hirsch’s pedagogy. It is evident my perspective changes in my later posts because I support Gutierrez and Gatto in that students should be taught and assessed as individuals and not as cookie cutter objects. Hirsch is against what he calls cafeteria-style education and schools that provide “the offerings include not only academic courses of great diversity, but also courses in sports and hobbies and a ‘service curriculum’ addressing emotional or social problems” (20). In other words, Hirsch does not support schools that match students’ diverse needs through a variety of courses because he has a more traditional theory that students should be taught the same curriculum. All in all, my view on Hirsch’s theory turned as I learned more about diversity and involving students in their own education.

The authors that had the most influence on me and my blog are Delpit, Apple, Guttierez, Freire, and Gatto. Their pedagogies, ideas, and theories were constantly integrated in my blog because they had the biggest impact on literacy education.  Delpit had a major influence in my blog because she is in the frontline of advocating for oppressed students and fair education/social justice. She connected how the use of different literacies impacts the amount of power or lack of power students and teachers have. I used Apple and Guttierez theories in several posts when I wanted to explain the negative effects of high stakes education and using the same curriculum for diverse learners. In other words, their works were the base of explaining the current problems in literacy education. The pedagogies of Freire and Gatto connected to so many of the previous posts. Also, I was able use their works to bring the themes of my blog together in the critical literacy posts. Freire’s argument that problem-posing education should be used helped me understand the importance of students using higher order thinking and connecting to their environments. Gatto’s butterfly unit is proof that Freire’s work can be put in to practice. Delpit, Apple, Guttierez, Friere, and Gatto were most influential because their theories pulled the themes of my blog together and they sparked my interest.

There are some unanswered questions I have still on the topics I have covered in my blog that you might also be pondering. Here I will address them and hope to read later comments from you with possible answers.  I mention several times in my blog the negative effects of neoliberalism and NCLB.  An unanswered question I still have on these topics is: What should the national education policy be if NCLB is dismissed? Another unanswered question is: How can all of the themes and theories I discussed in this blog be used to create an effective education policy that acknowledges diversity? Carini and other authors in my post on assessment suggest unique or out of the box ways of assessing students.  I am still left wondering how I would get support from administration and parents if I were to use the forms of assessment suggested by Carini. Gatto suggests great activities and ways for students to learn. However, she admits she does not get support from her peers. How would I facilitate a unit like her butterfly unit without the funds and support from peers and school administration?

There were some unexplored connections hidden in my blog that I would like to address now. There is a connection between Hirsch’s theory of a universal literacy and neoliberal policies discussed by Apple that was missed in my blog up until this post.  Hirsch can be seen as a neoliberal because he argues that students should be treated as the same and prepared to contribute to our modern society and economy. As I stated earlier, by connecting Hirsch’s theory with neoliberalism I realized that I did not agree with his theory. Also, the connection between identity and technology was not highlighted in my blog. Although I briefly mention the two in the identity and literacy post I think I could have dug deeper. Specifically, teenagers use technology such as Facebook to explore their identities. Another unexplored connection in my blog is between the multiple literacy posts and Engaging students in critical literacy post.  Both Gatto and Haneda both stress the importance of engaging students in a wide range of literacy practices. In addition, both authors provide examples of students using other methods of communication to support what they are saying in words. For instance Haneda states, “Nan was able to draw on her existing artistic and performance skills to compensate for her limited English, whereas at school she was not able to access them fully” (138). Similarly, Gatto does not limit students to textbooks, but allows them to construct and use their butterfly museum to convey information about butterflies to their audience. Gee’s language based perspective on assessment links well with Hilliard’s theory on assessment. Both authors argue that current assessments are not fair because one type of language is used on the test that not every students has had experience with.  Hilliard states, “the results of standardized testing favor children who speak common American English simply because these children are able to respond to questions that are couched in a familiar language based upon familiar experiences” (98). In connection Gee states, “an evaluative assessment is invalid and unjust if the people being assessed have not had, in terms of the sorts of principles I have developed here, equivalent opportunities to learn” (44). In essence, some groups of students have an advantage to high stakes tests because they have more experience with the literacy used to make the tests.

This is the final post of Jessica’s Blog, but this is not my final blog. Now that I know more about Blogger I will be more creative choosing a title for my next blog. Starting in September I will be taking two more courses on literacy. Pending on the amount of time I have I would like to start a blog based on what I learn from those courses. Specifically, one course is about multiculturalism and literacy, which I believe will connect nicely with what I have discussed in this current blog. It would be neat to also link themes from this blog to my new one. My reasoning for starting a fresh blog is that I want to work on formulating a blog that has a clearer theme then this starting with a more poignant title. Moreover, I would like to work on the voice and tone of my blog so that it is a little bit more conversational like this post. It has been a pleasure writing this blog and I hope you find my next blog informative and engaging.