Teaching Literacy as a Power

As has been the norm, the week began with an introduction to a wealth of information given in such volume my head is struggling to assimilate. Today's focus was literacy: the importance of being literate, the importance of stimulating a love of reading and the ways in which literacy skills can be incorporated across the curriculum. 

Having read Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", I was already aware of the power of being literate. Meek writes that upon leaving school “[children's] level of [literacy] attainment will attest their fitness to belong to, or be excluded from, the group of powerful literates who dominate the dialogue of others.” (1991, p.233). These are very powerful indictments of the need to ensure all children have access to this power. Yet, it is clear, from global statistics, that it is not as easy to achieve in practice as it is to argue theoretically. However, today's sessions provided me with techniques which, I hope, will help me to enable ALL the children I teach to grow into literate beings. 

Our second speaker, quite an inspirational woman, spent an hour or so on speaking and listening; skills that are the foundations of being literate. The tips she gave us were brilliant and brilliantly simple. It was exciting to contemplate putting them to use in class, which I most definitely will when I get the chance. 

Her main message concerned using speaking and listening to develop critical thinking or as she described it the difference between being a Dr. Watson or a Sherlock Holmes. The quote I recorded was:  "In a really good lesson the teacher vanishes in the pupil discussion". I know that in that training room, and here in my reflections we are dealing with the ideals, and that in practice it can be difficult to nurture such skills in discourse. However, I have to believe that it is possible because my transaction with Freire has left its mark and in today's training I saw a way -in to fanning the flames of consciousness.

“To acquire literacy is more than to psychologically and mechanically dominate reading and writing techniques. It is to dominate these techniques in terms of consciousness; to understand what one reads and to write what one understands; it is to communicate graphically.” (Freire, 1973, p.48)

Our speaker also demonstrated the use of images to encourage reading skills of inference, deduction and analysis among others. It really was a very simple idea, but the effect was instant engagement. It was easy to see how such activities would be enjoyable to learners, I have not created a document with all the ideas and how to use them, that is tomorrow's job. 

In summation, Lesson No. 7 in Learning to Teach is that I aim to develop critical thinking and questioning skills in the learners I teach, especially now I have the tools to do so.