For this blog post I decided to write on Narratives of Struggle by Bell Hooks. Although I am a white woman, I can empathize with the feelings and sentiments she writes about. Please do remember I am reading this through my own perspective lens, but will do my very best to highlight what I feel to be most pertinent. This quote in particular I could strongly relate to because education is powerful, “I wanted knowledge only to the degree that it would enable that suffering to end. I wanted education to offer the critical guidance that would provoke, stimulate awareness and the will to change. I learned about the importance of critical reflection, cultivating strategies that would ensure survival in the face of abuse and open up the possibility of a transformed future for us, the black poor, the underclass, the disinherited.” (P.54) Education can be a powerful way to change the mind. I connected to this quote on a deep level, in my college years, I took many race and gender classes, these were all pivotal in their own ways. They have made me into the person I am today. Knowledge and education to Hooks means the end of sufferings. She too was searching for guidance through her education, much like I am. I do not feel as though I have learned enough to be the best person I can be, there is always room for improvement. This quote especially made me think of the experience I had during my middle/high school years, “My mind became a place of refuge, a sanctuary, a room I could enter with no fear of invasion. My mind became a site of resistance.” (P.54) The kids were vicious with me, because I was seen as the outsider. In reality I just had not found myself yet. Although my grievances could never equal the grievances of people of color, I am able to empathize through the pain I incurred from being different. In her mind, much like me in mine, she is freed from the sufferings through her reading and writing. I read thousands of books all through middle school and high school but one that stuck out to me in particular was “Chicken soup for the soul.” https://www.chickensoup.com These set of books helped me enormously through this very painful period of time in my life. This quote from hooks also expresses the same idea, “I chose to be a writer in my girlhood because books rescued me. They were the places where I could bring the broken bits and pieces of myself and put them together again, the places where I could dream about alternative realities, possible futures.” (P.54-55) Reading, writing and learning are very liberating, life changing experiences. Hooks clearly values them at the same level as I do. 

Now bringing these ideas into the classroom. With the aid of technology it will be much easier to treat readings as a “living document” I also think this way of writing/reading will allow the students to have the growth and drive to be motivated to write and interpret texts better. I also think that having technology be a part of the “living document” idea can help the students to stay engaged, while keeping them interested. As the forbes article mentions, making the writing process more interactive also gives readers more control. Reading and writing as expressed in Louise M. Rosenblatt’s article, The Literary Transaction: Evocation and Response connects to the Forbes article when considering reading becing more like a two way street. Previously reading was very linear, a single laned one way road from start to finish. However technology allows for the readers to interact with the reading, and explore their own ideas, even express those ideas to the writer. Technology is opening door we did not even realize existed. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/07/13/how-technology-is-changing-the-literary-world/#55c221ce4fc3

        The situation with modern technology is very interesting, as you discuss. The Forbes’ article adds other elements to the transaction between the reader and the text, since the modern web allows for so many more kinds of transactions. For example, social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, add other “voices” to the reading transaction than the standard reader and the text. Thus, a student may encounter other readers of a text, who may present alternative perspectives of the text. Moreover, the reading transaction via technology (such as social media) may provide more of a back-and-forth conversation among readers of a text, or between the author of a text and multiple readers. This back-and-forth conversation is different from that of a simple one-sided transaction between a reader and a text.   

Thank you, Adele 

https://knowledgeworks.org/resources/8-ways-encourage-student-voice/

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/four_ways_schools_can_support_the_whole_child

Yang, G. L., & Pien, L. (2007). American born Chinese. First Second.

https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/55039/how-the-disrupttexts-movement-can-help-english-teachers-be-more-inclusive

Freire, P. (2018). Chapter 1. In Pedagogy of the oppressed. essay, Bloomsbury Academic.

https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/library-knowledge-services/collections/diversity-inclusion-belonging/anti-racist