It is very important to realize relationships between literacy, language, and power. As teachers, we should feel responsible for giving every student a fair and equal opportunity to learn. A quote from one of the articles we read said this, "Some children bring literacy knowledge to school with them." Being able to identify students who bring different levels of literacy knowledge with them to the classroom is very important. Each students' experience and knowledge needs to be embraced, nurtured, and furthered. We need to use different strategies to make sure students with different dialects and backgrounds are not left with a poor educational experience because we refused to teach in any other way than the way people who have control and power dictate. Moll contends that "existing classroom practices underestimate and constrain what Latino and other children are able to display intellectually." (Moll, 1992) We should never judge students or assume they won't be able to learn just because they come from a different experience or come to our classroom with a different type of literacy knowledge. We should believe in ALL of our students!
I think teachers have contributed to poor literacy instruction over the years by neglecting how well we learn from working together and using each other's knowledge, experience, insight, etc. to relate to the material or skill we are learning. Teachers for too long have taught literacy skills in a straight-forward by the book way, refusing to break out of the typical ways of teaching that just want to achieve certain standardized testing scores and cover all their CSO's. We need more interactive work in the classroom with groups and activities. "Teachers, parents and students involved admitted that they had gained insights from the process of sharing information across groups." (Bolima, n.d.)
In this article, teachers used the fact that their students had cultural capital from their own heritage and funds of knowledge that could be valued and used to help them succeed and transition their own dialect into complete literacy."Collaboratively, these teacher-researchers compiled the rules and structures of their local dialect as a tool for transitioning young writers into Standard English." The students dialect and culture was embraced and was a big help for the teachers in transitioning them to write in Standard English. I plan on using many ways to reach all cultures in my classroom. Teaching health and physical education I will have many opportunities to relate the material to the different cultures in my classroom. I could be an inclusive teacher by teaching a sport or dance from different cultures in physical education or giving a cultural background to the foods eaten in those cultures and the healthy byproducts of eating those foods in my health class.
Sources
1.)
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6DFAmexYq7vMGQxMjI1OTEtMjAyZS00NzJmLTg1OTUtODlmMGQ0ZDIxOTVk/edit
2.) Moll, L. (n.d.). Funds of knowledge: A look at luis moll. In Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B38BSV_Zo7aHSGVoMWEtOFRGMVE/edit
3.) Bolima , D. (n.d.). Contexts for understanding: Educational learning theories. Retrieved from http://staff.washington.edu/saki/strategies/101/new_page_5.htm
4.)
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