Shick 1
Elizabeth Shick
Content Literacy Paper
February 21, 2012
ED 228/AM
I have watched and listened to my seventeen-year-old brother, Jake, try to read Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre for almost his entire high school career now. He disagrees with his English major sister that it is one of the most fantastic pieces of literature of the 19th Century. I decided long ago that something must have been missing in his attempted reading of this literature; rather, Spark Notes was missing some exciting details. I explained that it is such a grand representation of the coming of age of this lady as she faces her lot in society as a dependent woman, but nothing seems to pique Jake’s interest. I am realizing more and more that not only will most of my future students be on Jake’s side but that it will be my responsibility to encourage them to see more in the novel than an antiquated style; they will have to see the societal issues at large. This will require me to find ways to incorporate literacy into my classroom and to answer the question: how do I nurture understanding of literacy in my classroom and encourage students to apply his or her understanding of English to the outside world?
The main problem, I am realizing is that most 21st century teenagers are unable to wrap their minds around what it meant to be an orphaned governess in England. This is what content literacy in an English classroom aims to explain – on a greater scale. According to the National Council for teachers of English, a literate society would have citizens who could “pursue life’s goals and participate fully as informed, productive members of society” (VanDeWeghe 29). In order to do this, an English classroom needs to focus on ethical responsibility. Through reading literature which students deem to be “boring” I must instigate the principle of unity: showing students how literary works show true human emotions.
According to VandeWeghe, a literate personal learns personal responsibility and ethical behavior. Through a proper education in literacy, “Students should have the capacity to understand other perspectives and cultures” (VandeWeghe 28). This, VandeWeghe suggests, is possible by having students emphasize character struggles.
Regina Derrico looks at the responsibility of teachers to create literate students as more of a democratic responsibility. She says, “the ability to embrace ambiguity, voice ideas and opinions with supporting evidence; to view complex issues from multiple perspectives and to work collaboratively with others as well as independently to solve problems are characteristic of a literate and democratic society” (24). Derrico tells teachers to create a classroom environment which nurtures student responsibility because that will make them democratic people and enhance democratic principles. She says that students should be placed in situations in which they must confront differences in past experiences and must be encouraged to participate, such as in the democratic model.
Content literacy appears to be more than just teaching students the ability to sounds out words and structure sentences properly. Content literacy makes students human engineers of democratic principles wherein they might find the ability to understand human experience and learn to empathize with the human situation, in turn encouraging students to do their part to help the world.
After taking a class on Women in Afghanistan, I have learned that there is no greater example of the power of education and literacy than that of the Taliban. The Taliban gained its power by taking poor young boys in refugee camps and teaching them the way of the “Islam” its leaders made up. Students were not encouraged to think further than what they were being told and were taught only to understand what their teachers said. September 11th is enough of an example of the devastation which came from the inability of students to think for themselves. I understand, as a future English teacher, that I will be teacher the class deemed “almost as boring as history.” It will be my responsibility to make it important for students. After reading a little bit more about content literacy, I am beginning to understand that my role in the grand scheme is to encourage students to understand why different people act as they do. It will be my responsibility to teach students that they must feel some sort of responsibility for what is going on in their own society.
As VandeWeghe said, it will be my responsibility to teach “otherness” (29), meaning that I must teach students to have a concern for their role among others. I do not believe that I can “teach” compassion, but I believe that I can instill it in my students. By creating a classroom environment where students feel comfortable to open up to their peers and responsible for listening to their peers, I think I can encourage my students to looks deeper into the “boring” texts curriculum lays out for us and find the struggles of the characters.
What I truly want from my students as I begin to understand content literacy in deeper terms is for them to desire to understand their peers. Understanding that I will have students from all across the socioeconomic spectrum, it will be important for me to push students to want to understand the experiences of the peer they know nothing about. Speaking in terms of Jane Eyre, the student from the projects will probably have more to say about being a dependent than a student from the suburbs. The question is: how do I encourage students to share these experiences and how do I make my students comfortable enough to do so in the confining atmosphere of a classroom?
Though I would love to lecture to my future students about the beauty of Bronte’s sentence structures, I will need to be aware that the most important thing I can teach is how to take the message of this book, and books like it, into the world. I know classics are boring for fifteen-year-olds, so through my teaching I will need to connect the literature to my students’ experiences, in turn making them desire to learn about other peoples’ experiences. The greater hope in this method of teaching is that my students will develop a feeling of responsibility to the outside world. Through being literate citizens, the hope is they will become driven citizens.
Perhaps I will try that method with Jake.
References
Derrico, R. D. (2005). A Balanced Approach to Literacy: Raising Student Achievement and Raising Active Citizen.English Journal,95(4), 23-25. doi: A Balanced Approach to Literacy: Raising Student Achievement and Raising Active Citizen
VandeWeghe, R. (2011). A literacy education for Our times.English Journal,100(6), 28-33.