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The Worlds and Words of Adolescents' Literacies
Joe sits down and leans low into the seat and his head floats barely above desk level. It's 11 am on a Tuesday morning, ninth grade History class. The desks are arranged in groups of four and he is one of two students present in his foursome. He does not look at the other student and busies himself with trying to catch the attention of a girl in the class who he would like to get to know. Fully engrossed in this delicate dance between making eye contact with the young woman of his affections while avoiding the expectant glance of the eager young teacher, Joe is unresponsive when he is asked to "Turn to page 98" and begin reading the first paragraph. The young teacher, newly out of his master's program in teacher education with a certification in secondary English and Social Studies, keeps a smile plastered on his face as he walks over and attempts to open Joe's book for him. Caught off guard, as his whole body is turned toward Vanessa - the girl across the room - Joe scowls at the teacher when he sees him standing above him and pushes the book away from him. The teacher then picks up the book, opens it to page 98 and places it back on Joe's desk in front of him. As he returns to the front of the classroom, the teacher asks Joe to "please begin reading at the top of the page." Joe does not respond. Yet, despite (or perhaps in spite of) his disinterest in the teacher's request, Joe's eyes wander onto the page full of timelines, pictures with captions, and a column layout of text; the teacher observes Joe's finger linger near the middle of the page. Three minutes have transpired since the class bell rang and the other students are beginning to resume their pre-class conversations. As the teacher decides how to proceed, one of Joe's classmates begins to read the page so that the class "can just get through this!" Once again the teacher notices that Joe's finger lingers near the middle of the page on a photograph of a noose and then after several seconds he moves his finger to another photograph. Joe's teacher is convinced that he isn't "following along," but what is Joe doing? Joe has an IEP that follows him from class to class, but it only gives information about his significantly low scores on reading exams and state tests, as well as minimal information from running records and oral reading assessments that the district reading specialist has administered. But, Joe's teacher wondered, what sense about Joe's literacy could he make from the behaviors that he observed in class? And what did they have to do with reading comprehension and critical thinking - two elements he understood to be important in successfully navigating a high school history class. Although fabricated, this scenario reflects aspects of classrooms nationwide when there is a disconnect afoot between teacher and student in a context where print-based literacy proficiency and non-print literacy practices come into contact. Some (e.g. Kress, 2003) would argue that literacy is always multimodal, that is we are always engaging multiple modes to convey meaning. So that in the above scenario, the flirting practices of a young man involve gestures as well as whatever he may be conveying verbally. We could further deconstruct the situation and argue that his choice of clothing, use of non-verbal actions, and positioning in relation to the other activity in the classroom are also a part of this layered communication. In a related way, the pages in a history textbook that contain powerful images are more than just the words on the page, and represent important relationships that images and print (in the form of captions) have with each other. The pages, too, have been mediated by someone's - e.g. the publisher's - intention to convey particular meanings that were likely constructed in response to curricular and assessment standards and guidelines. Both of these examples speak to both the multimodality of the literacy, as well as the particular contexts in which literacy is situated. Such an understanding of literacy as a social practice is summed up by Barton, Hamilton, and Ivanic (2000) in this way: "In the simplest sense literacy practices are what people do with literacy" (p. 7). The following set of statements further fleshes out this notion.
Taken from Local Literacies, p.7; D. Barton & M. Hamilton (1998)
Therefore, if we recognize and accept that literacy is not, in fact, neutral but is practiced and engaged for specific purposes in particular contexts through a variety of modes, how might we make sense of a sixteen year old who is presumably having trouble decoding text? What is our course of action when that same sixteen year old, as we can surmise from the vignette above, is engaging in a range of non-verbal and multimodal literacy and discursive practices as he navigates various communication landscapes in his everyday life. I rather like the optimism of the teacher in the scenario because despite his potentially overwhelming act of stepping too far into a student's personal space, he recognizes that something is going on that the available measures don't explain; and that he, as Joe's teacher, has valuable information that could be important for how he and Joe relate as teacher and student in this teaching and learning context. We might ask the following questions of the situation in order to be better positioned to respond as educators:
We might also wonder, more broadly: Is there more to adolescent literacy than reading? The proverbial space between reading and literacy can be seen as small as nonexistent to as wide as the Sargasso Sea; that is to say that definitions of reading and literacy are not only evolving but have long been contested ideas, in and of themselves and in relation to each other. Specifically, what do we mean by adolescent literacy? Rycik and Irvin (2001) suggest that the very "term adolescent literacy itself signals a shift in thinking from previous terms such as content area literacy or secondary reading" (p.1, emphasis in original). In saying so, they refer to the growing number of studies in literacy research that are noting and describing the richness of literacy in the lives of young people outside of the school walls. They, along with other literacy practitioners and researchers, are identifying more and more examples of not only diverse non-school reading and writing, but the emergence of new ways of meaning making that are connected with the availability of new media and technologies. As the evidence continues to demonstrate, these all-too-often disparate literate worlds can not and should not continue to be dichotomized in adolescents' literacy learning experiences (e.g. Alvermann, 2003; Knobel, 1999; Hull & Schultz, 2002; Moje, Young, Readence, & Moore, 2000). What does this mean for how literacy learning is supported in school, and especially in the intermediate grades (e.g. fourth through eighth)? And who decides? Adolescent Literacy: Words on the radar
In the era of Reading First and especially the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, performing below grade level in reading and writing carries increasingly higher stakes for retention and ultimately withholding of high school diplomas (U.S. Department of Education, 2003). (p. 7)
I reproduce them here to set up a worthwhile conversation between the primarily reading-focused emphasis of Reading Next and the diverse literacy landscape described by a growing number of studies of youths' engagement with literacy. Found in this tension is the potential to develop a new approach to supporting the literacy learning of adolescents, and it is precisely this task that has been at the center of Cornerstone's Adolescent Literacy Design team over the last several months. How can we recognize and support adolescents to recognize that their reading of the world is connected with reading the word? Adolescents' Literate
Worlds What, then, would we say to Joe's teacher about how to make sense of his observations of Joe's participation in History class? As a teacher he wants Joe to be a more active member in the class and extend his verbal insights into connecting with the print based text. Joe moves through this world as not only an occasionally unresponsive student in History class, but also as a young man, as someone who is older that his peers, as someone who employs his whole being to convey meaning, and on and on. Joe's literate world extends beyond ninth grade History, and the classroom can be a site to explore connections across the diverse locations in which Joe makes meaning. In a recent article that recounts a dialogue between Linda Christensen and Jeffrey Wilhelm (2004), Christensen notes "When we expand the definition of literacy, we see that students demonstrate incredible ability to learn outside of school." Wilhelm adds that in his research into the literate lives of boys (with Michael Smith) he found that young men who resisted participation in school-based literacy activities were routinely engaged in a whole range of literacy activities that included, but was not limited to, "reading wrestling or car magazines, rapping and beating, designing Web sites, videos or hypermedia, giving church talks, engaging in electronic role playing or video games, critiquing and writing poetry, music, films, and videos, and even writing recipes." How might this help our classroom situation? What are the implications for intermediate teachers and teaching of all this vast and diverse non-school literate activity? And what needs to be in place - content and structures - in order for the intermediate grades to be sites of literate possibilities, learning and exploration that respectfully recognize and engage adolescents' complex literate worlds while supporting their deep engagement with the words? Cornerstone's role in the conversation about literacies in the lives of adolescents is partially informed by the ongoing work of designing plan to support the literacy learning of adolescents through embedded professional development for educators of adolescents. The role and work of Cornerstone is also informed by the hundreds of students who have been a part of defining how educators move the ethos and practice of their literacy instruction through reflection, inquiry and collaboration. As these students continue to outgrow current Cornerstone elementary schools, we are presented with both the challenge and opportunity to sustain a rich literate learning environment for them in collaboration with local schools and communities. Perhaps the bigger question is has to do with how we might effectively address the space that exists between reading and literacy in the politics of pedagogy… |
