Erin's+Who+is+the+Literate+Reader+of+What+Texts

This week's readings offered a myriad of things on which I need to ponder. Each reading offered insight on my current situation and also acted to illuminate the path I am currently traveling towards becoming a teacher researcher. Also, each article linked with the others forming a web of ideas and thoughts that have been percolating in my brain since I read them. Their intertextuality was both interesting and inspiring. They urged me, mutely, to renew my pledge to make apparent the connections between reading, writing, thinking about one's own learning, and expressing oneself as a literate, educated person. My high school students need to be able to so easily connect the texts with which I provide them to the objectives for the lessons and then to their own personal lives and modern society. This week's readings held a mirror up to my practice. What I find reflected there currently needs to evolve and firm up to more closely mirror the coherent whole that was presented neatly to us this week.

The golden kernel of Stacy Brigg's unit plan was the real-world difficulty of boiling several subcategories of research inquiry down to a main question that is "significant [and] research worthy" (Briggs 2). Another brilliant suggestion was not a new, or novel, one; however, the author's suggestion to cooperate with faculty and colleagues reminded me that no research occurs in a vacuum. I will need to think and then discuss with my peers, professors, principals and colleagues. Lastly, I dream of the day when I can share what I have learned with my professional learning community within my high school setting. For, as Briggs suggests, "The desire to share your information shows ... that you're a reflective educator who cares about the profession of teaching and the institution of education" (Briggs 10). I yearn to have that said of me.

Sheridan Blau's article was very useful and encapsulated information that was shared in the article "Perspective-Taking as Transformative Practice in Teaching Multicultural Literature to White Students." Blau offers seven "habits of mind" that separate good readers from those "less than expert readers" (Blau 19). The main premise of performance literacy, as I was able to distill it, is class discussions plus perspective-taking, raised to the power of willful action towards one's own education equals the creation of meaning and knowledge that cannot exist without such active participation. (Now you see why I was not a math major.) Quirky attempts at mathelete humor aside... I was pleased to have the articles converge in their ideas around what we must instill and insist upon in our students' practice at becoming literate members of the 21st Century.

Lastly, I love the idea that reading is a process, just like writing. I have always been a strong reader and have often exhibited the seven habits of mind discussed by Blau. However, the portion of Blau's article that calls for literature to be "taught in a way that recognizes that reading, like writing, is a process of text construction -- a process through which meaning is made in the head of the reader...through the reader's encounter or transaction with words on a page and in the course of conversations with other readers" (Blau 21) is a call to action for me. It is not the road most travelled; but it feels like it could make all the difference.

Works Cited:

Blau, Sheridan. "Performative Literacy: The Habits of Mind of Highly Literate Readers." //Voices in the Middle// 10.3 (March 2003): 18 - 22.

Briggs, Stacy. Unit Plan: Transmediation with Romeo and Juliet. Teacher Research Project: Unpublished, 2012.

Thein, Amanda Haertling, Richard Beach, and Daryl Parks. "Perspective-Taking as Transformative Practice in Multicultural Literature to White Students." //English Journal// 97.2 (November 2007): 54 - 60.