I think that I am really going to enjoy this course. As an English teacher I believe that literacy should be valid not only within every English classroom, but within every school classroom.
Literacy, to me, encapsulates not only the basic skills of reading and writing, but individuals’ ability to make their own understandings of the world and to communicate with others. As a literate individual, I can not even begin to understand what life would be like if I was illiterate. I remember watching a documentary in English last semester that looked at the lives of a few individuals who could not read. Until I seen his doco I had never considered the extent of the impact of being unable to read had on people’s lives. These people had been affected in several aspects of their lives, from their ability to do tasks most people consider to be basic such as shopping and driving, to their own self esteem and feelings of value and self worth that had influenced many of their relationships, job opportunities, interactions with other people, etc, etc.
When I started thinking about who I could interview for our first assessment, Michelle came up with a great idea of a man we could interview as a group, Don. We met this man while doing our PCD’s, and while he has achieved a lot in his life, he has poor literacy skills. We have organized to interview him this afternoon which I am really looking forward to. I am incredibly interested to learn more about Don and his poor literacy skills and the effect of this on his life.
My initial response to this courses underlying question is that literacy is all teachers responsibility. I firmly believe strong literacy skills are essential for individuals throughout their lives. I think literacy skills give individuals opportunities, allow them to branch out in the world, allow them to create understandings for themselves of the world in which they live in. Perhaps my interview with Don this afternoon will challenge my beliefs?
Within the context of school, the basic literacy skills of reading and writing are critical to every subject. Most subjects are based around textbooks, the majority of HSC subjects (even PE) requires students to sit an exam that students need to be able to read and understand and write to answer the questions.
The diagram used in the lecture to demonstrate the way different individuals learn really got me thinking. The two learning methods that individuals learn the least from, lectures and reading are how studies have found we learn the least, sort of ironic given this is often what university courses revolve around! I think this idea neatly coincides with the diagram of the bird flying for the first time, if we want our learning to fly, we need to jump out and expand our minds, we need to develop ways to take what we learn and consider it outside of where we learn it. Perhaps this blog will help us to take what we learn through this course, and apply it to ourselves and our own lives.