Argument 1: Literacies Are Changing, and So
Must School Literacy Curricula
Article, preach. Someone would have to be taking daily doses of crazy-pills or be a Tea Party activist to deny that times are changing. Bob Dylan wrote it, we are living it. We don't make students separate by gender, women actually go to school on the same terms as men, and we don't beat students with rulers because they fail to recite the Aeneid in its original Latin. Students have access to a slew of new technology. My parents talked about sitting in school watching "In Cold Blood" on film strips and later typing up responses on typewriters. By the time I was in high school, a DVD had been procured as had computers which allowed for new fonts and styles for writing. At this point in American education, even DVDs are obsolete. Students reading Capote could feasibly do a virtual walk-through of the Clutter farmhouse and tour Holcomb, Kansas getting the same view as Capote and Lee got when they interviewed its residents in 1959. Then they blog about it. They send out a tweet from the perspective of a Holcomb citizen after the murders, about Dick Haddock and Perry Smith going on trial, about the eventual execution. The traditional essay on printed paper is almost a relic. It doesn't need much help making its way to the museum. The ante has been upped and as such, technology and literacies change.
Article, preach. Someone would have to be taking daily doses of crazy-pills or be a Tea Party activist to deny that times are changing. Bob Dylan wrote it, we are living it. We don't make students separate by gender, women actually go to school on the same terms as men, and we don't beat students with rulers because they fail to recite the Aeneid in its original Latin. Students have access to a slew of new technology. My parents talked about sitting in school watching "In Cold Blood" on film strips and later typing up responses on typewriters. By the time I was in high school, a DVD had been procured as had computers which allowed for new fonts and styles for writing. At this point in American education, even DVDs are obsolete. Students reading Capote could feasibly do a virtual walk-through of the Clutter farmhouse and tour Holcomb, Kansas getting the same view as Capote and Lee got when they interviewed its residents in 1959. Then they blog about it. They send out a tweet from the perspective of a Holcomb citizen after the murders, about Dick Haddock and Perry Smith going on trial, about the eventual execution. The traditional essay on printed paper is almost a relic. It doesn't need much help making its way to the museum. The ante has been upped and as such, technology and literacies change.
Argument 2: Youths Bring Multimodal
Practices to School
As previously viewed, students are no longer content with Microsoft Word, Powerpoint and the occasional in-class movie. Students spend their time engaging in literacy on a constant basis through text messaging, writing Facebook posts, reading Buzzfeed lists and articles. These practices, simply put, can be sucked dry of any fun by applying them to educational content! It does a lot of the leg work for teachers and allows students the opportunity to look at familiar literacies mixed with new literacies to round out a student's education about the different purposes and styles of writing.
As previously viewed, students are no longer content with Microsoft Word, Powerpoint and the occasional in-class movie. Students spend their time engaging in literacy on a constant basis through text messaging, writing Facebook posts, reading Buzzfeed lists and articles. These practices, simply put, can be sucked dry of any fun by applying them to educational content! It does a lot of the leg work for teachers and allows students the opportunity to look at familiar literacies mixed with new literacies to round out a student's education about the different purposes and styles of writing.
Argument 3: Multimodal Practice Can
Reframe At-Risk Students as Learners
of Promise
There are just some students we have to love to keep from killing. One child in particular walks into my classroom every day with a smile on his face that would match, as my Nanna Shook would say, "The cat that ate the canary." For a great many days, I simply assumed the child's default mode was destruction. A productive and silent classroom meant that he was either absent, sleepy, or kicked out. I washed my hands of him and his crap and would whisper to myself "It's just until June" when he would randomly fall out of his desk or loudly ask questions that had just been answered. Yet when reading Art Spiegelman's Maus, his attitude towards class changed. He was suddenly silent, engaged and the first one to sit down and instruct his classmates to "Shut the hell up" so he could read. To him, Maus was not an ordinary school book. He'd had his time with those and only associated them with failure and something he wasn't "good at." However, the multimodal text offered him a fresh take on what it meant to read and be a literate person.
There are just some students we have to love to keep from killing. One child in particular walks into my classroom every day with a smile on his face that would match, as my Nanna Shook would say, "The cat that ate the canary." For a great many days, I simply assumed the child's default mode was destruction. A productive and silent classroom meant that he was either absent, sleepy, or kicked out. I washed my hands of him and his crap and would whisper to myself "It's just until June" when he would randomly fall out of his desk or loudly ask questions that had just been answered. Yet when reading Art Spiegelman's Maus, his attitude towards class changed. He was suddenly silent, engaged and the first one to sit down and instruct his classmates to "Shut the hell up" so he could read. To him, Maus was not an ordinary school book. He'd had his time with those and only associated them with failure and something he wasn't "good at." However, the multimodal text offered him a fresh take on what it meant to read and be a literate person.
Isn't how funny how you can get a kid you had previously written off to smother himself into a novel? I found that to be one of my greatest triumphs this year, specifically with a student who a) was a safety transfer from a different school b) was held back 2 years and really should have been in 9th grade which mean that c) he was bigger than all the kids (and some of the smaller teachers, like me). I thought this kid was going to be the death of me...until I gave him a novel called "Bang". During independent reading time, other teachers would walk in shocked that you didn't even notice him there...what did this tell me? That students are engaged in what they are interested in. And what are they interested in? Novels about kids like them. Novels about sports. Novels that look like picture books aka graphic novels. Cause that's the stuff they're used to! They feel confident reading that kind of literature. This, therefore, shows me that, by using multiple types of genres and literacies, I would not only make my teaching more interesting to me, but also more engaging for my students as well! Why not use schoology and buzzfeed articles that I can remake to teach them? It gets them engaged and learning.
ReplyDeleteLove the direction you take this. Also have to totally agree with Erin that Multimodal ed like this can be a godsend for students who need new avenues for engagement. Not only that, but it doesn't take much for a student to be self directed. It can be as little as letting them explore a new resource on their own.
ReplyDelete