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1. Define literacy.

This question brought me back to Kaestle’s list of different methodological questions, like “Does signing a document equate with reading ability?” (364).   It’s a fraught question without a simple answer!  If I was trying to trace literacy rates in the nineteenth-century, like Kaestle and Vinovskis – or do other historical research – I’d be inclined to rely on the most minimal sense of the term, assuming someone was literate if they could, e.g. sign their own name.  On the other hand, as a goal for teaching or Writing Center work, I think of it more expansively and in terms of students’ goals more than strict definitions: can you communicate what you want to say in writing?  Can you skim or summarize effectively?  Do you have strategies to figure out things that you don’t yet know?

Then, too, literacy will look different for every student.  In TESOL, we often talked about World Englishes as opposed to a singular definition of English – thus e.g. one student might want to be literate in Australian English, as opposed to British or American English; I had students who needed to become experts in different types of fish (for international fishing certifications) and others who needed terms of diplomacy.  A teacher’s understanding of literacy should follow the student goals, rather than being purely prescriptive.

2. Why study the history of literacy?

David Moore backtracks from his early claim that we need to study the history of literacy in order to anticipate possible mistakes, like mistakenly teaching students to obsess about eye movements that don’t actually matter – he suggests this might be overly simplistic.  But simplistic or not, this is the sort of story I personally find helpful; in seeing how people thought about what they were doing in the past, I find it easier to identify my own possible errors in thinking.

It’s tempting to become overly-rigid in teaching, exactly replicating the ways in which we were taught without questioning them; studying the history of how different teaching methods have evolved both helps me understand the goals behind them and to imagine my own changes.

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1. To me, I think of literacy as how we grasp information, whether that be visual or written. Furthermore, it is also how we effectively communicate our understandings to our audience in mind.

2. Utilizing our readings from this week, I like to say studying the history of literacy is important so that we can critique present and past assumptions/methods in literacy education. As Monaghan notes, "the debate should not be whether we should do history, but about how we can do it better" (96). From the start of the institutional disregard towards literacy history brought upon the IRA, its consequences towards giving educators the inability to contribute in talks about literacy history is a grave disservice. Now, with this course, I believe it'll expand upon why literacy history is still needed, and how we, as educators, can utilize it to make amends for its past neglect.

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Given that my concentration in the program is "Literacy" you might anticipate that I have this question ready to answer. This is far from the truth from an academic perspective. If I met you on the street, or because I have to type something in this box, I would define literacy as how a person comes to read and write. Adding that studying literacy includes the internal processes a person goes through in their brains from the smallest step (visually seeing and recognizing letters and sounds) and external processes such as books, teacher instruction, etc. I would like to journal each week to the prompt of "define literacy" as this definition will evolve greatly in this course.

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1. Define literacy:

Literacy goes beyond decoding and comprehension. Literacy is an encouragement of interacting between a text (or perhaps, not a text) for social and political purposes. This is because texts and readings are never necessarily neutral (Janks, 2018; Comber, 1999)- there is power in certain texts and certain authorship. Literacy, all kinds of literacy, are designs of accessibility.

2. Why study the history of literacy/why does/should this course exist?

In Kaestle's (1992) text, they respond to the question, "...how do historians know when they know something?" (p. 361). I interpreted this question to basically mean, "How do we know when we are generalizing something about literacy to a group of people?" As many of us know, CCSD is the fifth largest school district in the country. How do we know when we are generalizing something when we have an extremely diverse group of students across the state? In Moore et al. (1997), they cite Kaestle (1995) by explaining that history may not solve our problems but it provides understanding to the problems. We can hopefully understand the problems that each unique part of the district may be facing. They (as well as Monaghan and Hartman) also explain that history helps develop a sense of community. Community is the essence that is needed in this current political climate. Current literacy teachings need to go beyond and leverage our students' lived experiences, which is something that has been learned due to studying the history of literacy already.

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Repeated throughout our readings was the idea that studying the history of anything can help inform the present understandings of a topic and provide guidance on restrictions moving forward. Therefore, as students studying literacy, we should know the history of literacy, not only from secondary sources that may find their ways into professional development programs or teacher instruction courses, but more importantly from the primary sources of literacy. To move forward without this knowledge, as was suggested in the readings has frequently taken place, will be a detriment to teachers and students. For example, I was thinking about my own experience with the role out of the Common Core State Standards in 2012/2013 when reading Monaghan's account of the public revolt against the whole language movement. History seemed to be repeating itself here, so we must study history!