To be literacy literate

As an English teacher, I assumed I knew the definition of literacy.  I studied literature, written literary analyses, and even written analyses of Brazilian literature and I still lacked a full understanding.  Through my university classes, I mainly studied the written word.  Through the lens of a fuller understanding of literacy, I realize many of my classes lacked the well-rounded approach.  Well instructed classes could have become amazingly instructed classes with implementation with one or two of the methods I learned.  This may come off as hyperbole, but I believe it.  Having trained in the corporate world, I have seen the difference between mediocre, good, and amazing instruction.  Competence in tasks increases exponentially when a teacher applies amazing instruction.  As a teacher, I receive an obligation to use whatever methods to foster and ensure learning.

            Within the realm of critical literacy, I felt I had it made.  I have a few years on my peers within the education sphere.  Those several years of life experience could go to waste if I only rely on that lens.  To fully help students develop that critical eye towards the world, I must structure lessons that not only encourage or foster critical literacy.  Something I feel I will need to continually learn.  One idea uses world literature to create a focal point to discover multiple perspectives.  Take the graphic novel, Persepolis, and then use multiple other texts to create an environment for critical literacy. 

Once the students read the graphic novel, find articles, news reports, etc. about the contemporary history of Iran.  I looked at other lesson plans about Persepolis on the internet and found many lesson plans that really delved into the novel with graphic organizers and vocabulary tests, but I only found a few that implemented the use of multiple texts. As a teacher, I would need to help the students seek out materials that give various perspectives such as American, Middle Eastern, Iranian, outside the US.  Once several texts have been researched, the students could construct graphic organizers which talk the materials and organize them in credible vs. non-credible or biased.   With this many texts collected from different perspectives, a plethora of new vocabulary would exist providing a new for vocabulary instruction.  Students could form a word wall with the new vocabulary.  Each word they do not understand could be placed on the wall with the perceived definition granted from the context.  Another form of critical literacy could be discussed; did these words exist before the Iranian revolution in the American English vocabulary.  The students could do a podcast with opinions and perceptions of Iran before the lesson and then do a podcast after the lesson.  They then could compare the two podcasts and discuss what changed in their perceptions.  What fostered the changes of opinion and perspectives?  The students could then branch out and interview their families, friends, people in the community, religious leaders, and so on to see what opinions and perspectives.  They could then do a third podcast combining their changed or unchanged opinions and perspectives combined with the opinions and perspectives of the people they interviewed.  

These ideas would push the students to form an opinion perhaps foreign to them before the lesson.  The students could then look at the world around them with a deeper sense of evaluation or a critical literacy that forms an ability to create an individual opinion based on careful thought, research, and reflection.  I feel I could continue on and on with each lesson.  No lesson should exist in a vacuum.  It should push and pull and stretch the limits of the students' understanding.  I might not teach the next Hemingway, but I can help each student to become literate in the traditional sense and the sense of understanding fully the world around them. To become literacy literate, I must find the multiple perspectives from multiple genres and sources.  Maybe then I can start to scratch the surface of what it means to be literate and how to teach it.