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In Funds of Knowledge, the writer raised an idea that "teachers work as co-researchers to study household knowledge and build upon this knowledge to develop a participatory pedagogy." and develop a new concept of "fund of knowledge". It is so true that different students have different background, personal experience and knowledge. They can bring different approaches and ideas into the classroom which is valuable for the others to consider and learn from. Those ideas and previous knowledge should not be simply ignored.

It reminds me a method of teaching that I learned last semester, called Socially- and culturally-based approach teaching in math education. It is a special curriculum design that require students to reflect on their own ‘ethnomathematics’, conceptualize the math concepts from their personal experience and develop new knowledge upon the previous. The examples and questions in this educational method should be carefully picked related to students' social and cultural aspects, which provide more opportunities for students to to critically analyze the political, social, and cultural issues and increase their engagement at the same time.

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From reading through Wilson & Chavez's work, there seems to be an emphasis on the idea of using semiotic theory and applying to the concept of literacy within content areas. I think this method of thinking does contribute to some discussion of the meaning of "literacy" but possibly from a point of view that diverges from a practical sense to a theoretical sense. But how I might see what counts as "literacy" is centered around the concept of reading the signs of a particular area and being able to meaningfully interpret them. While I may very lightly tread on the idea of myself being a semiotician, I do see how the broader view of literacy can lead to understanding what counts as being literate in other content areas. Semiotics defines "fluency" in something as being apart of the social community that uses specific signs to mean specific things and have that shared understanding among all the members of the community. Of course, this is more commonly applied to language, but this definition can also be applied to the concept of emoticons/Emojis.
Thus, literacy in content areas would be identifying and gathering the relevant signs that simply exist throughout the content area and knowing their meaning and interpreting that into a response. While I see that this definition is quite vague, I think the term "multimodality" that Wilson & Chavez is using goes beyond the idea of visual or digital media but even further into a meta of signs.

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Throughout these reading, I have been critically thinking about what it means to be literate in social studies- and how vastly different that definition varies from teacher to teacher. Obviously it will vary what it means to be literate in geography, history, economics, and political science, (although there are similar things), so I'll focus on history because it commonly takes the priority over other subjects, which don't get me wrong, you can argue is problematic. But for the sake of appealing to the masses I will focus on history. Traditional history classes ask students to read a textbook, take notes, answer a few questions that usually involve identifying key people and settings, maybe some story telling, then a test that asks students the date of an "important event". I use quotes there because the importance is relative to the type of narrative being enforced, and it might not be all that important after all. Identification and memorizing is key in this sense of literacy. But actual application of themes and ideas for the betterment of the community is a rarely a goal with this type of literacy. Additionally, with this type of literacy, a culture of white supremacy is being enforced that implies any other culture is either not worth studying or does not have a place in history. So with this knowledge, it was great to see that in "Funds of Knowledge for Teaching," cultural identity and individual identity within a culture was seen as the best foundation for learning. The article exhibits that every student brings their own brand of genius to the classroom, and grounding that identity and building off of it, students were able to become more and more literate as their learning grew. I thought this was an intriguing study, and proves the fact that teachers, especially social studies teachers, need to teach students to deconstruct and learn their identities before real learning can begin. This does not fit, however, within the constraints of many types of AP, PSEO, CIS classes that require a rushed schedule and continue to under represent and therefore harm students with identities that do not fit the master narrative. Ss teachers need to be completely aware of this and disrupt the norms that enforce harmful literacies and cater education to the true literacy of the students.

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While reading about Moll et al.’s research (1992), I was shocked by the idea of using students’ “funds of knowledge” in our lessons. As a minority foreign-born immigrant student, I’ve never questioned why what I learned in Korea before I came to the U.S. and what my family put emphasis on at home are not considered “important” knowledge at school. Back then, I was simply busy catching up to learn what my middle-class Caucasian classmates have already learned since they were young. Looking back, even in the courses such as World History or Asian studies, my knowledge of Korean history and culture was not needed since the World History course covered mostly European History, and the Asian Studies course covers mostly Chinese history and culture. If my “funds of knowledge” were not ignored, my learning path may have been very different.

As a former middle school teacher, however, I am not quite sure how students’ “funds of knowledge” could be applied to the existing curriculum, especially at the secondary level. I believe that the idea of it is next to perfect; the “candy” project that was developed based on the information gathered in the interviews sounded extremely engaging, not just for Carlos, but for all students. I also thought that it could become a great example of project-based integrated-across-curriculum learning. However, most secondary teachers at decent-sized schools are assigned to teach over 100 students; I myself taught at least 120 to at most 200 each year. Will any of us have enough time to participate in the research such as what the article describes? I would love to meet all my students at home and work with the parents on a personal level but I also must meet the goals and required standards that are expected of me as a teacher. Will we have time and resources to discover our students’ “funds of knowledge”?

Moreover, if the lesson is created on the idea from students’ “fund of knowledge,” it would definitely motivate students, especially the ones who crave the real-world application of anything we learn in class. Would the lesson be able to prepare students for the standardized test though? At one of the schools I worked in the past, all grade 8 students must pass the standardized test at the end of a year with 60% or above to move onto grade 9. Will these standardized tests value our students’ “funds of knowledge” as we do?

I am certain that anyone in this profession probably can all agree that we want to learn more about our students in any way possible, so we can help them to find their own ways to succeed in life. However, realistically, there are so much that must be changed for this to happen; the whole education system - funding, resources, standardized test, goals, and objectives of education at the moment. The article definitely excited me because it’s brilliant but it saddened me the most because it sounds nearly impossible.

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While reading about Moll et al.’s research(1992), I was shocked by the idea of using students’ “funds of knowledge” in our lessons. As a minority foreign-born immigrant student, I’ve never questioned why what I learned in Korea before I came to the U.S. and what my family put emphasis on at home are not considered “important” knowledge at school. Back then, I was simply busy catching up to learn what my middle-class Caucasian classmates have already learned since they were young. Looking back, even in the courses such as World History or Asian studies, my knowledge of Korean history and culture was not needed since the World History course covered mostly European History, and the Asian Studies course covers mostly Chinese history and culture. If my “funds of knowledge” were not ignored, my learning path may have been very different.

As a former middle school teacher, however, I am not quite sure how students’ “funds of knowledge” could be applied to the existing curriculum, especially at the secondary level. I believe that the idea of it is next to perfect; the “candy” project that was developed based on the information gathered in the interviews sounded extremely engaging, not just for Carlos, but for all students. I also thought that it could become a great example of project-based integrated-across-curriculum learning. However, most secondary teachers at decent-sized schools are assigned to teach over 100 students; I myself taught at least 120 to at most 200 each year. Will any of us have enough time to participate in the research such as what the article describes? I would love to meet all my students at home and work with the parents on a personal level but I also must meet the goals and required standards that are expected of me as a teacher. Will we have time and resources to discover our students’ “funds of knowledge”?

Moreover, if the lesson is created on the idea from students’ “fund of knowledge,” it would definitely motivate students, especially the ones who crave the real-world application of anything we learn in class. Would the lesson be able to prepare students for the standardized test though? At one of the schools I worked at in the past, all grade 8 students must pass the standardized test at the end of a year with 60% or above to move onto grade 9. Will these standardized tests value our students’ “funds of knowledge” as we do?

I am certain that anyone in this profession probably can all agree that we want to learn more about our students in any way possible, so we can help them to find their own ways to succeed in life. However, realistically, there are so much that must be changed for this to happen; the whole education system - funding, resources, standardized test, goals, and objectives of education at the moment. The article definitely excited me because it’s brilliant but it saddened me the most because it sounds nearly impossible.

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According to Gee's opinion, literacy is not only about decoding, words recognizing, and comprehension of literal meaning but also focusing on language using and literacy learning. Gee approaches literacy as part and parcel of, and inextricable from, specific social, cultural, institutional, and political practices. therefore, teaching certain content areas and literacy are complementary and mutually. Some people believe that while literacy education in written texts is crucial, it isn't enough to help students understand disciplinary topics delivered across a variety of mediums. Furthermore, many adolescents spend a lot of time interacting with media. These media are extremely multimodal. As a result, several scholars have proposed that disciplinary literacy instruction should include assisting students in comprehending a wide range of multimodal texts. (Wilson & Chavez,2014). But there are also some people who think that those instructions “productively constrain” students’ understandings by forcing them to think about disciplinary concepts in particular ways. (Prain and Tytler, page 2751). These two arguments actually remind me of how we identify students' ability in literacy. I know a student who doesn't like to read any books because that makes her emotionally uncomfortable. Instead, she loves to watch videos. and learn stuff from pictures or videos. When she was in school, her teacher identify her as an "at-risk" student. She said she likes to watch videos and pictures because she feels connections between the content areas and her real life. I'm thinking maybe teachers can provide students with multiple ways to show their literacy abilities.

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With “Funds of Knowledge for Teaching” it was heartening to read an example-in-action of local resistance to the technocratic philosophies of teaching and teachers-as-researchers, practitioners, and curriculum developers—what is disheartening is that these philosophies have grown more widespread and standardization has gained a stronger foothold in education than it had when Paulo Freire railed against it in 1968 in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and more widespread still since Amanti and Neff published their findings in 1992. Regarding the question of who determines what literacy means, or what counts as literacy, for me, it comes down to how we define counts. Who is doing the counting? The same institutions who are writing the tests, who are, by extension, writing the scripts they give to teachers in technocratic models that drill students to “succeed” on standardized tests, like New York’s very own Success Academies. This model of teaching is in direct opposition to considering students’ funds of knowledge and amounts to erasure.

The trap is that opportunities like higher education and scholarships that make attending possible are still in many cases gatekept by standardized tests whose methods of measuring literacy are highly culturally biased, but who offer families with economic advantages direct academic advantages. Study materials are expensive, tutors are expensive and there’s a whole industry around it, and even the tests are cost prohibitive to take. A student from a family with more means can better prepare for test, retake it until they achieve a desirable score, AND are more likely grew up with the cultural references that the tests err toward. In another one of my classes, we discussed a particular question on a standardized test for middle schoolers that used an example of a ski lift to test arithmetic competency. The ski lift was not essential to the arithmetic concept, but knowing what a ski lift is made the question comprehensible and allowed students in the know to visualize the problem, while students who didn’t know were left more confused than if the concept were simply presented numerically, with no “real world” framing.

Reframing how we think about texts and literacy and ascribing authority to our students by recognizing the rich, pluralistic funds of knowledge they bring to class, promoting critical literacy in our classrooms, resisting, as teachers, the idea that we are technicians and not practitioners—these are essential, I think, to fostering a socially just practice. But advocating for change on a larger scale, resisting the reticular forces like grossly culturally biased standardized tests and curricula, also seems like an essential piece of enacting some of the philosophies behind what we read this week, and these are forces I struggle to see ways of resisting. It’s certainly resistance that would have to be mounted on a huge, communal scale. We’ve seen some institutions cast aside standardized testing requirements due to covid, just more proof that it can be done, that these metrics are vestiges. But there’s a lot of money and private interests involved in keeping the lights on at ETS, ACT, the College Board, etc.

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“To know a particular social language is either to be able to “do” a particular identity, using that social language, or to be able to recognize such an identity, when we do not want or cannot actively participate” (Gee, 2001, p.718). Based on the descriptions provided by Wilson & Chavez (2014) of the inquiry-based practices used in an Earth Science class, scientific literacy can mean to engage in an activity that requires students to think (or act) like a scientist. In taking on this identity, students begin to familiarize themselves with the language of science as it is unveiled by the process. This might be viewed as a continuation of the socio-cognitive perspective that suggests “[i]t is a mainstay of child language development that the acquisition of a function often precedes acquisition of a fully correct form…”, a form that is guided by the ways that are modeled for the child (Gee, 2001, p.722). Teachers can facilitate an approach to conquering disparities in cultural and social discourses that may impact the ways students communicate their understanding by providing positive reinforcement to participation that shows a student is engaged in the learning process, even if the style or format of their responses or contributions to discussions presents as stylistically different. Based on the principles of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework, teachers should provide multiple means of engagement, representation, action and expression (Turnbull et. al, 2020, p.167). “…[W]hen [students] otherwise create multiple forms of representation in regard to the same concept, they adopt different ways of processing that concept” (Wilson & Chavez, 2014, p.3). By offering diverse presentations of material and opening the dialogue to include pluralistic viewpoints or different ways of answering a question science teachers not only model how scientists work to rationalize conflicting opinions, but also how they come to put the pieces of a puzzle together through collaboration. It often takes more than one approach to see the whole picture. A teacher that embraces the principles of UDL may become more familiar with how individual students think, speak, and learn by the anecdotes students share or the language(s) they use to express themselves.

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The goal of a model should be to convey information in a way that is easily understood. When students first learn of the solar system, they are typically shown an illustration which depicts all the planets. Students understand that the images are representations of the individual planets and do not reflect the actual size of the planets. The purpose of the illustration is to familiarize students with the idea of large celestial bodies. However, if one were to scale the planets and their distances from one another properly, they would find that the size of the planets, distance between them, and their orbit are nothing like the diagram. In another example a teacher may have students represent different celestial bodies to represent orbit. The different representations emphasize unique characteristics that other modes of representations may not be able to successfully convey. Each of these characteristics are distorted to help students understand different properties.

Therefore, it is important to consider the different representations and how they relate to one another. Mathematicians are familiar with this idea. In Algebra I students are taught multiple says to represent a given function. It could be through an equation, a table of values, or a graph on a coordinate plane. Teachers are tasked with teaching students that each of these are different representations of the same function, but one model may be more useful than the others when trying to determine certain characteristics of the function. They then go a step further and relate each of the models to one another. For example, students will need to be able to create a table of values given a graph and vice versa.

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Moll et al’s (1992) assumptions with regard to the inclusion of pupils’ funds of knowledge into the classroom seem to be plausible and beneficial. Accepting and recognizing that students have more to offer from their lived experiences certainly paves the way for more meaningful learning experiences. In this context, it is suggested that teachers ought to impersonate the role of students in order to properly learn about the social and historical context of pupils who daily inhabit their classrooms. This idea reminds of a passage I read in a book about the connection between a knowledge-led curriculum and social justice. It basically alluded to one particular story in which a child alleges that the sum between 2 and 2 equals 3. The instant reaction of an unmindful teacher would then be to remediate this child out of such an evident mathematical inaccuracy, since the universal truth postulates the result comes up to 4, and mathematicians can surely prove it. However, this authenticity character does not extend to Maori children who are raised in a set of circumstances that lead people to believe that 2 + 2 = 3, since in New Zealand fishing communities, fishermen send back one fish to the sea for every four they capture. Similarly to the case study of Cathy and her student, if the concept of ‘funds of knowledge’ was present in the scenario brought up in the book, the teacher could have derived benefits from the pupil's evident knowledge to introduce important topics, such as the need to preserve fish population and potential risks of overfishing. That requires a flexibility that unfortunately many teachers claim not to have. However, in automatically disapproving student’s lack of numerical competence, teachers unconsciously position Maori experiences in the periphery of a normative curriculum, potentially hindering prospects of further learning. This is not teaching for social justice.