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Hurray!!! Great to hear Harste’s voice and thanks for putting clips onto your podcast Vivian! Loved hearing his latest thoughts on drawbacks of routinization, putting an edge on learning, multiple literacies, and reflexivity in social practice. He’s always been one who’s pushed my thinking so I appreciate the opportunity to hear from him! Mahalo!
Anna

WOOOOOW! And I really loved his painting! Can’t tell what the medium is (collage? sponge? acrylics?) but it’s lovely!

[…] http://www.bazmakaz.com/clip/2007/02/28/what-do-we-mean-by-literacy-now-_-show-33/ General […]

Most teachers are expected to fulfill curricular mandates. By using materials outside of the textbooks and the lessons that are provided by the school or district, a teacher can bring lessons to life. Lively discussions based on exciting books about critical literacy topics that students can truly relate to can fulfill mandated curricula even better than the tired, old lessons from the publisher of the text. By being creative, as Harste discusses, teachers can keep an edge on learning and will keep kids engaged. As a teacher, there is nothing more exciting than fostering a love of learning in a child.

[…] http://www.bazmakaz.com/clip/2007/02/28/what-do-we-mean-by-literacy-now-_-show-33/ clippodcast, critical literacy in practice, General, jerome c. harste, literacy, Literacy Researchers, Podcasts, vivian vasquez […]

Hi Vivian,
Listening to Dr. Harste again really helped me better appreciate what he meant by “putting an edge on learning.” It’s amazing how much how changed this last century, yet for some reason our schools haven’t evolved as quickly. When you see what young kids are able to do today with computers, you wonder why school curriculum continues to focus on rote learning from tired text books. Kids really are more interested in the new, but teachers are held back by mandates and limited funds. In the case of using computers and other innovative ways of using literacy, it really does boil down to the issue of access. Instead teachers have to get creative, fortunately there are a number of great books that address this technological divide and help teachers create a curriculum from a critical literacy perspective. Dr. Harste offers many insightful ways on how to bring curriculum to the 21st century.
-Kristina

It was a great pleasure listening to the Prof. Harste’s lecture on critical literacy. I agree with many of the points he made, particularly the ones concerning making-meaning and language from a critical perspectives. I think that all teachers should make a noticeable effort to include critical literacy in their curriculum and daily lesson plans because it helps our students become lifetime active learners.
Additionally, he described multiple literacies as how cultural groups induct their kids in literature through different ways. He also stated that various cultures value different types of literacies. What this essentially means is that we have to be aware of the cultural and racial backgrounds of our students in order to ensure their academic success in the classroom. For example, the way a Mexican or an El Salvadoran student is inducted into literacy may be slightly different from the way an Ethiopian or a Chinese student is initiated. Each culture has a value system that may be specific to that particular region, which the teacher may not be familiar with. In order to engage the cultural or ethnic diversity that may exist in a particular classroom, we have to use teaching resources (texts) and class activities that harness our students’ diversity. Additionally, we have to help students become active participants in unpacking some of the systems of meaning that exist in texts the students read.

This was a great topic, especially with the no child left behind act in effect. As an educator in todays’ society the cirriculum or framework is the bible. For an experience teacher that has been in the field for several years critical literacy is looked at in a different perspective. By any means necessray to reach your target goal, whatever it takes to help the student read critically. For a first or second year educator, this is very hard. Trying to get settled in with the routines for the day and year, along with finding out childrens needs and interest is very demanding. While all along, information about students becoming basic, proficient, and advance are in the back of your mind. Todays’ student can run through computer programs better than some of their instructors, but cannot critically read. are we focusing on the wrong type of instruction, or do we have the proper materials to teach these children? The internet, computer programs, gaming systems, and cable tv has educated some of our children today, so advanced in years, that we as educators almost have to deprogram them in a school setting to look at information more critically, especially literature.

I enjoyed listening to Harste and the wisdom he brings to educationI thought Harste’s comment on how children need to see themselves in the books they read is so true. As educators especially those new to the field we tend to use the books that are provided for us whether that be in our curriculum or within our school library. We follow the curriculum to a tee in order to ensure that our students learn what they need to and also to help us with instruction. It seems hard to find time to fit in the things that we really allow our students to think critically about literacy. This is something that most educators desire - its just hard to find the time and resources to obtain this goal. I think about a certain curriculum my school uses and how it presents what books the children should read at each lesson. Most of the children don’t like the books and and sometimes laugh at the lack of plot. How different would they see reading if they were given books which meant something to them and ones which they could see themselves in.

Dr. Harste’s insights were extremely interesting, and hit very close to home. I am so interested in his comments about how different cultural groups introduce literacy in different ways. As teachers, how can we best acknowledge and support these differences? I teach a very diverse group of first graders. Earlier this year, we spent a week talking about reading mentors and interviewing adults about their reading lives. When the kids brought back their interviews, I was bowled over at how differently families approach and value literacy. This year I adopted the workshop structure to teach reading. I have been floored at how empowered kids feel when they have choice over their reading materials and choice in how they process their reading with partners. When Dr. Harste spoke of the need for curriculum to be organic, I thought about the simple ways in which we can allow our students to create their own curriculum. If we have libraries that reflect a broad range of topics (not to mention books with diverse characters! His point about kids needing to be able to see themselves in reading is *so* true!) and are at students’ reading levels, if we allow time in our classrooms for students to talk to each other — in an unscripted fashion — about books, and we come together as a class for critical discussions around read-alouds, we are on the right path.
- Kate F.

Dr. Harste is current. In the field of education this often means “in step with policies of the last twenty years,” since education is a lumbering and slow moving organism. Just in time to incorrectly educate children who had been short-changed by by years of slimsy standards and shoddy teachers, NCLB burst onto the scene as the latest bitter pill. Hegel’s Dialectical Approach to History gives us some insight into what is going on here: every movement in history is a statement of something, a Thesis, an ideal that you can boil down to a simple, core belief. In this case, NCLB is about a nationwide standard for enducatos and children. The next step is for someone to formulate a response that speaks to the failings of this thesis, the Antithesis. Finally everybody puts their heads together and comes up with the best idea of them all, which combines the two halves, and is called the Synthesis. This Synthesis is then another Thesis, and so the process begins again.
So here we are with NCLB, a response to kids getting into high school without being able to read and teachers taking smoking breaks outside while yelling through the window, “I hear y’all in there! Shut up!” (This happened at my school six years ago). Unfortunately NCLB goes too far, asking children who barely speak English to take the same nuanced tests after a year in the country. So no VA schools WERE going to draw a line in the sand and challenge NCLB. Turns out we’re still pretty far from an Antithesis, as VA backs down under pressure to lose $17 million in federal funding. Does this mean NCLB goes ahead as planned? You know they kept educators out of the meetings when this thing was developed, right? Too much dissent from early on and Edward Kennedy doesn’t get his nice photo op signing the bill next to a smiling George Bush.
So, what next for this curriculum mandate? Dr. Harste’s great idea of developing curriculum with children is no where near where the US is going with this thing, unfortunately. Could you imagine a nation-wide order saying “Just develop curriculum with your kids, we trust you.” What’s great for a first grade teacher like me is that this thing is so unwieldy it can’t be enforced. I develop curriculum with my kids all the time in a school that pays a LOT of attention to the DC CAS and my certification.
My belief is that educatino should be passed right back to state control. This experiment was doomed to fail. Which businesses really take the interests and personal needs of kids into account, huge gigantic corporations, or the smaller endeavor that really needs your business and knows your face? This is an extreme example, but the federal madate for education has not and will not succeed due to the facts that 1) this country is far too diverse to hand down one way of doing things, like Dr. Harste sayds, and 2) this country is just too big for this to work. My best anitithesis–State control of education. Let the states compete for students like they have been. Watch districts get in line when it IS up to them. How about the Synthesis? How about federal control ot things like reduced lunch, graduation requirements, maybe driver’s ed., and the states handling everything else. Who knows?

I loved the reading conference at AU. The speaker was very informative and interactive. The books that were chosen and the tools we used, the graphic organizer, which was easy to understand help me put my thoughts together. I am sure it wil take my students some to get used to… but with some practice …. Here is my difficulty, developing a curriculum based on what the kids know for science, Honestly, if I depended on that… we won’t be able to get very far. But I could get a collective of different experiences. As we draw from their science experience, we build content around that. My favorite part of that day…playing with the clay. I have it as a must try for next year.