Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Piggybacking off of Heather

So I read Heather's post and it made me think about illiteracy. We talk so much about different forms of literacy but it seems that we never really address the skin and bones definition of literacy of having the ability to read and write. I guess I can read a lot of theory but there is no chance in all the world that any article will ever make me think that the inability to read and write is not illiteracy, sorry Warner. My next question is what does a teacher do if they have a student that enters their classroom without these basic abilities? What are the sources that are available? Let's face it no matter how educated we may be there are basic skills that are needed to function in society. The other year at my summer job, my friend and I met a 41 year old woman who was illiterate. I remember thinking "how in the hell did this happen." I was appalled, then I got to thinking that this woman could be taken advantage of by anyone because she can not read or write. So what do we do about this problem?

1 comment:

Dougyfresh04 said...

Heather

I really do not know what we do about this problem to complete solve for it, but I do agree it is an ignored issue. During my teaching placement there was a student who came to my class a lot b/c my CT was his soccer coach. He was a great kid, very funny, a great worker when he tried, but somehow he was a freshmen in high school who could not read above a first grade level. no matter my personal connection to this student I could not help, but wonder how this kid passed any state examine to proceed on and when I was asked I did not get any answers. Now this student was not born in America, but he was not learning English as second language, but either way i was puzzled by how he slipped through the cracks. as i continued my practicum I was shocked to find out this was more of a norm - albeit not in such an extreme case. to me i feel this is caused by the culture of high stakes testing. kids have to be moved on or the school is punished, so the school finds someway to progress them.