My first question in response to this article is this: As middle/high school teachers, how should we be prepared to deal with children who still have not learned literacy? This article seems to be related to grade-school teachers more than secondary school teachers. If students come into our classrooms at 14-17 years old and still have not had the experience with literacy necessary to become good readers who can comprehend large pieces of literature, how are we supposed to deal with that? It seems that it would be very difficult to try to teach someone the skills necessary to keep up in a literature class if they've had experiences like Donny did all of their lives. The only solution I can think of is an enormous amount of supplemental tutoring.
This article actually made me think about possibly going into primary education for the first time in years. I have always considered reading to young children in the home one of the most important responsibilities in raising a child.
Joan Wynne offers what could be rather practical answers to the questions that you pose above. Her focus on more accurate diagnoses of perceived reading/writing problems lends itself to the type of analysis that a practical inquiry such as yours suggests.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with students who are perceived to be illiterate is often a problem of attribution errors. The assumptions that students who struggle to read or write Standard English are lazy or incompetent often flies in the face of good sense. In many cases, the students are simply not being challenged and/or reached.
Wynne tells us that in order to help students who appear to be struggling, we may have to change our approach. Using texts and materials creatively and critically could help disenfranchised students to become more involved and to find meaningful relations between literature and their own lives that will serve them well in the future.
(This answer is admittedly a bit indirect to your question, as some students will be at a distinctive, purely mechanical literacy disadvantage; however, the advice to be careful in appraisals of such students is sound, and Wynne's suggestions for handling cases of apparent apathy are likely to be prominently applicable.)
I agree with Chad on the answer to this question. Wynne showed that many of the students who are labeled as "illiterate" are really not. The labels given to these kids are purely political and not scientific. The first thing you should take into account is that this child is no different from the rest of the kids in the class. If the others can learn then so can this child. Acceptance of the student as "normal" and not "illiterate" will prove to be very helpful to both you and the student in the long run.
ReplyDeleteI would like to pick up where Chad let off in answering this question. No doubt about it, we will have some kids in our class who lack mechanical literacy. However we must be aware that they only lack this knowledge in a certain dialect of English (i.e. "Standard English"). This is where Wynne's work becomes important. The student who we label as incompetent may very well be incompetent in SE but not in say for instance AAVE. Thus we must feed off what the child knows and guide the child using what he or she already knows. If we take into account that the child is a competent speaker in AAVE and allow him or her to express themselves using the language he or she is comfortable with, we may start to see changes in the student.
What Wynne presents us with is the fact that we can not allow the child to think that he or she is totally incompetent because it makes the student not want to try. It suffocates the learning experience for the child and makes it impossible for us to teach them. I think the acceptance of the home language is the only way to deal with a struggling student. If they are truly incompetent in SE than us talking and conducting class in SE would be totally useless. This seemingly self explanatory conclusion is often overlooked by many teachers. So my answer to your question would be to allow the student to express him or herself in the language that they can do so in best. As a connection begins to form then and only then can we begin to work toward helping the student to learn SE.