You can't give up till the final out is made... till then keep those expectations HIGH!

Iain't writin' nuttin': Permission to Fail and Demands to Succeed in Urban Classrooms was a very interesting chapter in Lisa Delpit's book, The Skin That We Speak. In this chapter, Ladson-Billings talks about teachers that allowed students to not do writing assignments on the sole foundation that they didn’t want to. Every day we here stories about students falling through the cracks and getting lost in the system. However when schools and educators allow students to take control and skip out on the learning process, it’s more like they are being thrown through the cracks. One example that we see is Shannon the first grader that tells her teacher “Iain’t writin’ nuttin’.” In this case the teacher instead of offering an alternative to writing or an idea on what to write, allows Shannon to slide on by.
As stated by Ladson- Billings, “permission to fail” refers to teachers that allow their students to coast through school without having to do the required assignments, when instead these teachers should be providing these students with extra attention. I feel that the reason that these kids don’t care to try is that they lack the support system and motivation that all kids need. These students either lack having parents that care about their education or even worse they lack teachers that care. Teaching is more than a job with summers off, to spend traveling or in my case going to baseball games, teaching is a demanding career and the main focus should be on the students and their success.

What are the impacts of over-looking the relationship between resistance to literacy and resistance to schooling?

I feel that part that resistance to learn is directly related to resistance to teach. What reason does a student have to want to succeed when his teacher doesn’t care any more or less if he does the work? Student lack the will when their superiors have no real expectations of them. It has been said time and time again that people succeed when they have positive reinforcement, and by ignoring their problems and flaws, aren’t these so called educators providing their students with just the opposite? Children need to be challenged and motivated, the last thing they need is people giving up on them from such a young age.
It is crucial for a teacher to engage their students by any means necessary, even if that means incorporating out side literacies into their lesson plans. The same goes with reading and writing, maybe a student doesn’t like reading because they had a bad experience trying to understand Shakespeare or even Dr. Seuss. Some times a teacher needs to get down to her student’s level to prove productive, whether that means using baseball to help teach statistics or the Wendy’s dollar menu to teach “3conomics”. Above all a teacher can not under any circumstances grant her students “permission to fail” no matter how reluctant they are to read and write.

Literacy after the bell

Through the course of many course readings, I’ve come to see that “code switching” is not something I’ve experienced on my own, but rather it is an actually phenomenon that has been studied and researched. These multiple literacies exist all around us, in the classroom, the school yard, at your mom’s house and at church, each of which require a different level of literacy.

Depending on the background and environment on the person these different literacies will form a person in certain ways. It is important to not label these out of school literacies as stereotypical, since there’s are infinite types of literacies. In his book Jabari Mahiri mentions several including rap music, low rider cars, and comic books. While looking into rap music, he found that rap has a greater meaning as a tool of expression. These out of school literacies are usually the most important ones. They are the ones that influence a person into acting, behaving, and even identifying a certain way.

Perhaps they are overlooked because generally they don't fit in with the traditional values of literacy in institutions such as schools. However, to truly understand the students which we intend to teach, it is only fair and incredibly important that we take the time to research, explore, understand, and ultimately appreciate the values that accompany literacy outside the classroom.

There are many reasons as to why these types of literacies are over looked because they’re not understood or considered acceptable. However I think it’s just as important to be able to understand and accept our students for their individuality as well as it is for them to be able to present themselves accordingly. It may even be helpful for teachers to reach out to these out of school literacies and try to relate lessons to better inspire students. I expect my students to come from many different backgrounds, and after reading about out of school literacies I also expect them to have a diverse extent of literacy.

Colorblindness

Reflect and write on the ties between Lewis’ discussion of the ways that colorblindness benefits white speakers, and Gee’s discussions of upper-middle class teens’ “distinctive social language” used to “strategically distance themselves from everyday social interaction (p. 418 in Teenagers in New Times).

In Lewis’ discussion she claims that “colorblindness” benefits white speakers. White speakers claim colorblindness in order to protect them selves from possibly being called racists. In our discussions on culture of power we’ve discussed that the culture of power is controlled by those of wealth. I think Bloome’s article brought up an interesting observation about the locations of Starbucks restaurants in Columbus. This restaurants that target people of a higher economic standing had no locations in the poorer neighborhoods that in itself is a type of discrimination. In Gee’s discussions where he states that “upper-middle class teens use a distinctive social language to strategically distance themselves from everyday social interaction (p. 418 in Teenagers in New Times).” I feel that this means that they are simply using their culture of power to hide from things that their social studies teach would make them describe as “different”. They are taught to use different words in order to avoid being offensive. This goes back to the issue of claiming colorblindness in order to avoid being considered racist.

1,2,3 x Literacy = multiple literacies

Literacy can mean many things hence the birth of the term multiple literacy. When you think of literacy you usually think of being able to read and write. However in their article, Bloome and Encisco show that literacy is so much more. Literacy is also having the ability to read a neighborhood and to understand why certain establishments function the way they do. Part of literacy also involves knowing when to act a certain way, or as Delpit defines it “code switch”. I recently saw a special on Comedy Central, in which a black comedian makes fun of why his friends can’t get jobs and then they blame it on the (white) “man”. The comedian then goes on to explain the language used by his fellow black friends. He describes them as walking in job interviews with their pants hanging below their butts and walking in slang and Ebonics. In my opinion this is the most important part of literacy, and knowing when to use which language is having multiple literacies.

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