Susannah Smith March 19, 2015Building the Foundations of Literacy Jason Wirtz

Part I

As the daughter of two educators, I had no problem entering the Discourse

community of the classroom because it aligned with that of the home. I don’t

remember learning to read and write, probably because I acquired English at home

in a natural context. Likewise, I learned to listen, and then speak, at home, hearing

the phonemes of English constantly from my parents and my three siblings and

learning how to match them to the objects around me. Music was also a scaffold for

my primary literacy. I remember listening to songs and attempting to de-code the

lyrics: “Lucy in the sky with diamonds” was to me, “Lucy and this guy with

diamonds”. When my brother heard me sing the wrong lyrics, he helped me

understand the concept of contextual interpretation, introducing me to that literacy

skill.

Before entering school, I had my first indirect experience with a different

primary Discourse- through my best friend and her family. The daughter of an

Ethiopian and Nigerian, her family dressed differently, spoke with beautiful accents,

and made food that was eaten over a long time, with no forks or knives. Her way of

speaking was not very different from mine. However, she listened to different music

than I had ever heard, a music with lyrics that were markedly different from both of

our primary discourses. I embraced this music and would sing along in its language

and would dance to it with her in her attic. This undoubtedly prepared me for the

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Secondary Discourse of the playground of my elementary school- a second

classroom- where I would assume some of the aspects of that Discourse to fit in

socially. I remember learning a non-verbal gesticulation from these friends in that

community that involved my hands, neck, and head that expressed something to the

extent of “I’m cool”. I communicated and internalized this persona to the extent that

I became a part of this second community; my first kiss came from one of its

members, a sign of intimacy and trust. When I brought this identity home, a conflict

would sometimes arise when I spoke using its language; I learned a hard-lesson

about code-switching in the car once with my southern Grandmother. I uttered a

curse word and she whipped her head around to glare at me. Her own non-verbal

expression- another form of communication- and one I had experienced before with

her son, my father- was sufficient enough to teach me that context was essential to

language and behavior choices – both important elements of Discourse- and that I

had just ignored that principal.

These early experiences with two different discourse communities

undoubtedly helped me understand the very concept of literacy as it is framed by

Discourse. Being literate in the language and behavior of the playground community

was different from being literate in the language and behavior of home and school.

Within school, I discovered the distinct literacies of content areas.

Specifically, I became aware of academic literacy in a middle school English class, as

we learned about grammar and vocabulary. Concurrently, I was starting to study

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French, and the two disciplines complemented each other’s literacy goals.

Fundamentally, they shared those of reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

French differed in that it forced me to expand upon the acquisition model of

language learning that had dominated my English learning. It forced me to think

about language outside of itself, as something able to be learned and analyzed.

These “little l” literacy skills- the ability to speak, read, and write in French-

comprise the “communication” standard of the Common Core. At this beginning

level of language learning, students must be able “to talk about familiar content in

the target language,” (Common Core, Languages other than English). At a higher

level, students are expected to “understand and interpret written and spoken

language on a variety of topics” (idem), and then, at the highest level of thinking,

“present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers on a

variety of topics.” (idem). What else does French Literacy- with a capital “l”- demand

of its learners? To move beyond- and even, in fact, to realize or effect- this beginning

stage, students must first conceive of themselves as French speakers and then grasp

certain concepts essential to second language learning. Jeffrey Wilhelm summarizes

this idea in his article “Imagining a New Kind of Self”:

To learn vocabulary and the conceptual and strategic tools thataccompany it means to imagine yourself as a new and particularkind of person, the kind of person who can use language to do science, math, or ethics….. (1)

….or French. What are the “conceptual strategic tools” that Wilhelm mentions in

passing, required to be able to read, write, and speak in French? Students must learn

about the value of engaged study: how to use mnemonic devices, comparisons (both

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within French and inter-linguistically), contextual frameworks, and pro-active,

relevant, memorization, to learn everything from vocabulary to verb conjugations.

An example of a comparison would be identifying a morpheme in a new word that

has been seen previously in a known word. The authors of “What content-area

teachers should know about adolescent literacy” stress this morphological

awareness as a key to literacy. Students must also understand language at an extra-

linguistic level; they must grasp the idea that language has rules and patterns that

hold it together. Syntax, grammar, and parts of speech are a few examples of these

structural elements. Understanding these concepts will help students

compartmentalize and analyze new information. Moreover, these concepts will

generate many terms specific to the academic language of French- and second

languages in general, such as “infinitive verb”, “literal meaning” and “figurative

meaning” (in the context of adjectival placement), and “personal pronoun.” Students

must understand the concepts of translation and cognates and their relative limits

and value. Language is culture-specific; therefore, certain things cannot be

translated. Moreover, translation should not be the platform for language learning;

rather, one should express oneself the best s/he can in the target language. Cognates

are useful tools in recognizing and remembering new vocabulary, but one must also

be aware of false cognates. Other concepts students of French must internalize are

those of gender and formality. Nouns in French have gender, and this has

implications for other structures (adjective agreement, etc.). Pronouns in French

have informal and formal forms, a reflection of the cultural practice of respecting

those you do not know or those who are older than you by addressing them

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differently. This concept relates to another essential component of literacy in a

second language: the idea of communicating beyond the classroom. Understanding

potential applications of French to their personal lives, professional lives, and lives

as world citizens will motivate them throughout their learning careers.

At a later stage of second language literacy, academic language functions are

developed. These skills are shared by other language arts content areas and include

analysis, description, comparison, identification, and interpretation. Students use

these functions to speak and write about content area texts or autobiographical

experiences. As Kate Kinsella points out, these cognitive processes, or language

functions, must be explained, or else students will not develop the skills required to

become fully Literate: “we simply can’t expect language-minority students to be

armchair applied linguists successfully deconstructing the nuances of school-based

language.” (4).

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Evolution of the Literate French Student

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Part II

On February 22nd, 2015, I observed two middle-class, white, female seniors in

high school as they ate lunch. The most notable aspect of their interaction was the

fact that they code-switched with one another, as the topics of their conversation

changed. The beginning of my observation coincided with the middle of their first

topic: theater. They discussed how they felt acting in a play, using metaphorical

language, steady tones of voice, and respectfully waiting for each other to finish

their thoughts before responding. They used academic language and one of its

functions: justification, to back up their own personal insights; one girl expressed

how her stage character was blinding her judgment in real life: the character was

affecting how she related to her real boyfriend. This conversation segued into the

topic of their social network of relationships. They first discussed their own

relationships, and then brought in a discussion of mutual friends’ or acquaintances’

relationships. Their method of communicating changed drastically. The discussion

was emotionally charged, their tones of voice varied depending on the content, their

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facial expressions and gesticulations were abundant and intense, and their ability to

respect each other’s completion of an utterance compromised. Interestingly,

although conversational language, including “filler” words such as “like” and “um”

abounded, they still borrowed academic language functions more typical of the

earlier topic’s discourse. For example, one of them expressed why she had broken

up with her ex-boyfriend, using evidence to justify her reasons for leaving him in a

methodical, clear fashion. Ignoring content, which at times was very confidential

and would be inappropriate to share with an adult, I imagine that the

communication between these young women does not differ greatly from the

communication they have with teachers and other adults. For these women, it is

likely that “the literacies taught in the Secondary Discourse of schooling reflect

those implicitly taught in the Primary Discourse of home.” (Hagood: 65).

Part III

To further research Discourse and Literacy, I interviewed two adults who

have devoted their lives to literacy. Gray Smith is the former Executive Director of

The Street Theater, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering

underprivileged individuals through an artistic approach to literacy, and Sarah

Smith (unrelated) is the former Children’s Book Editor of the New York Times and a

professor at Johns Hopkins University. Questions common to both of them revolved

around their early experiences with literacy and their definitions of literacy.

Questions specific to S.Smith related to her encounters with varying levels of

literacy as a teacher, literacy as informed by her experience as a mother, and how

her experience as an editor of children’s books has informed her about literacy.

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Questions specific to G.Smith centered around his engagement with members of a

Secondary Discourse, his professional movement from late literacy to early literacy,

and whether there should be literacy standards. Interestingly, the results of the two

conversations sometimes informed each other, shared some points, and also

differed. Full transcripts of the interviews can be found in the Appendix.

Both individuals spoke about motivation as essential to literacy, with

emotion being at its center. In S. Smith’s case, the motivation for learning how to

read stemmed from the cherished emotional time she had reading stories at

bedtime with her father, who otherwise worked constantly. If he felt she was

drifting off, he would challenge her to repeat what he had just read. Later in life, she

was further motivated by her family’s tradition of reciting poetry at family

gatherings, which incentivized her to become literate in this manner. In G. Smith’s

work, he theorized and then discovered that the participants in his prison theater

program would be motivated by their personal experiences. He leveraged this to

collaborate with them in creating plays around these experiences within the

framework of theatrical literacy and writing. G. Smith elaborates further on this

idea of experiential education, asserting that it is only by feeling confident and

comfortable first- something accomplished by engaging a student in his/her

Primary Discourse- that that student will then take risks outside of that comfort

zone- for the purposes of our discussion, into the realm of a Secondary Discourse. In

his article “Using Discourse Study as an Instructional Practice,” Hagood cites an

example of a similar manifestation of this idea in the field work of Fisher and Lapp,

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who worked with African American LGBTQ adolescents to help them develop their

own secondary Discourse so that they could interact and influence members of

other Discourses.

G. Smith experienced the idea of borderland discourse1 in his work. He had

this experience in his early encounters with literacy, in an ironic reversal of the

dominant direction (mainstream language/Primary discourse-> minority

language/Secondary discourse) of Discourse development. That is, he assumed

elements of the literacy of his family’s African-American workers, whom he felt

were his teachers, before ever entering a classroom. He learned about the “verbal

economy” and “precision” of the language of this community, and learned of the

value of non-verbal communication. Later, in his professional work, Smith helped

his collaborator-students achieve borderland discourse by teaching them how to

leverage the tools of playwriting and its associated language in service of the

storytelling of their Primary Discourse experiences. In this professional capacity,

Smith himself had also achieved borderland discourse, since he was able to

converse, interact, and share not only in the community of people he worked with,

but outside of that professional environment in the local neighborhoods that the

inmates had come from. S. Smith did not have a similar experience with her

students. She taught a “genres of literature” class, where students had to write

pieces in certain conventional literary styles. The closest she might have come to the

experience of mutual recognition of diverse literacies was with an African student

1 Gee as cited in Hagood

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who wrote and shared in African folkloric discourse consistently, rather than

writing in the styles prescribed by Smith. Smith only noted that this was

“interesting”; she did not describe any shifts in that student’s discourse or the one/s

that had been assigned, nor did she say she herself was inspired by it or used it in

her own writing or instruction.

Prior to interviewing both Smiths, I had imagined that a good teacher would

be able to assume nearly fully, the Primary Discourse/s of her students. I learned

from both interviews that this is not at all the case. The discourse/s of minority or

non-mainstream groups are sacred in some way, since they necessarily reflect

cultures that have most likely been oppressed by the culture (and dominant

discourse) of the teacher. Moreover, since the role of the teacher is to teach the

(dominant) literacy standards- namely, the Common Core standards- s/he would

compromise this goal by fully assuming the discourse of students. S. Smith

expressed discomfort at the idea of having the publishing industry commission and

then distribute children’s books written in AAVE (African American Vernacular

English), since the tacit goal of children’s literature is to educate its readers in

standard American English. However, she still lamented the apparent lack of books

with which minority students could identify. G.Smith also didn’t feel comfortable-

unlike some white activists he knew- assuming the speech, behavior, and

mannerisms of the population he worked with. He instead emphasized the

importance of being genuine, separating the work and language itself from its

embodiment in his person. Ironically, the work of G. Smith suggests a potential

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compromise for S. Smith’s desire for more literature relevant to a reader from a

non-mainstream discourse community. By telling stories and honoring the

behaviors, beliefs, and other cultural characteristics of this community, through the

vehicle of mainstream language, a borderland discourse can be achieved. The

implicit, eventual outcome from this approach in the classroom would be an relative

increase in the number of children’s books with which minority Discourse members

could identify.

I asked S. Smith about the non-academic literacy levels of her students- the

little “l” literacy skills of writing, listening, and speaking of her students- to

understand how she may or may not have integrated literacy instruction into her

teaching. She did acknowledge writing and speaking deficiencies of students; one

student never spoke articulately and another’s grammar hampered the quality of his

work. Smith explained that it was not her job to teach basic literacy skills and did

not offer any suggestions for integrating such instruction into a class focused on

other content. The targeting of such basic literacy skills became the mission of the

Street Theater, as G. Smith realized that literacy programs would have the greatest

impact on younger people.

G. Smith and S. Smith both volunteered that electronic communication and

visual stimuli are impeding literacy. G. Smith observed that the brevity of content

and expected speed of exchange in e-mail and text messages was corroding the very

quality of thought behind literacy. This presents a difficult challenge to teachers, as

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students are “practicing” hours every day in these media, sustaining these habits.

S.Smith spoke of how difficult it was for her to get her own children to read instead

of watch something. Moreover, she lamented the Common Core’s use of a video as a

stimulus for a writing response in a test her children were preparing for.

The last question I asked of both S. and G. Smith was to define literacy. S.

Smith defined it as a function of writing. She then expanded on her definition,

identifying the knowledge of Latin terms and other English-specific devices and

analytical tools as marks of a very literate individual. I would expand on her

definition, arguing that both writing and speaking are marks of a literate individual,

because these skills are the generative results of their passive, more “consumptive”

counterparts: reading and listening, respectively. In support of this argument, G.

Smith discussed speaking- in its musical form- as being the earliest form of literacy,

before writing- recalling it the method by which people communicated and shared

ideas. This was the foundational principal behind his early literacy program “Singing

to Read.” These elements of literacy- because they are creative- also occupy the

summit of Bloom’s Taxonomy, which further underlines their importance. Smith

also reiterated the importance of motivation in shaping a literate individual, and

agreed that there were Literacies specific to disciplines that differed from basic

literacy skills.

Part IV

What defines literacy, as informed by the preceding research experience?

Literacy cannot be separated from one fundamental feeling on which it depends:

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motivation. Both interviewees cite motivation as key to their respective literacy

development/applications. Motivation, in turn, partially stems from the ability to

share personal experiences. S. Smith learned poetry through the experience and

feeling of wanting to belong at family dinners. G. Smith’s inmate-actors/playwrites

learned playwriting by virtue of being able to share their own stories. Authors

Randy Bomer and Michelle Fowler-Amato, in their article discussing writing

literacy, agree that teachers must draw student interest by asking them to share the

writing they produce outside of school:

Although academic literacies require different skills and forms of knowledgethan those that young people often call upon when writing for their own purposes, the motives, processes, and forms of thinking are similar. So why not start there? Why not begin by seeking an understanding of what writingis to them, building on what they are already doing, in an effort to connect the curriculum to the lives of the students who are experiencing it? (161)

With student experiences at the center of a writing or related literacy task, students

are more receptive to learning how to manipulate it to have characteristics of the

literacy or literacies teachers are seeking to develop. In beginning and

intermediate French classes, one strategy for developing a motivating,

literacy-based curriculum would be to effectively co-construct it with

students. Just as G. Smith entered the communities of the demographic he

worked with to better understand their values and then co-construct plays

based on their experiences, teachers of adolescents could interview students,

spend time in their communities, and even interview previous teachers, to

better understand the experiences and language of their Primary Discourse/s,

inspiring relevant, engaging Units and lessons. One concrete assignment that

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might stem from such research might be asking students to co-write a

children’s story based on real experiences, then having students continue the

writing process with multiple revisions that demand a focus on more

academic literacy functions and language. In later French classes, literacy

development might these would be understanding key concepts of translation,

memorization, active study, gender, and formality, to frame and support the

development of communicative fluency. At a higher level, Literacy becomes, as

S.Smith put it, “… [the ability] to respond to the literary qualities of a text and notice

what the author is doing to create those qualities. Not just understanding what’s

being said, but the techniques being used to convey what is being conveyed.” Smith

describes here what Gee calls “powerful literacy”, and which includes the tools and

academic language used to talk about a discourse.

Powerful literacy is control of a secondary use of language used in a second-

ary discourse that can serve as a meta-discourse to critique the primary

Discourse or other secondary discourses, including dominant discourses.

(Gee 261)

Much like the experience I imagine I will have as a teacher of adolescents,

both Smiths worked with populations (G. Smith directly, and S.Smith primarily

indirectly) that had problems with basic literacy skills. G. Smith’s decision to work

with younger and younger populations is telling, but mainly counter-productive to

addressing how to integrate literacy instruction into the adolescent classroom. His

program using “singing” to read does not, in fact, have to be limited to young

children. As a second language teacher, one could certainly use existing songs in the

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target language to teach certain grammar skills or have students invent musical or

rhythmic phrases to help them memorize or internalize something that is

challenging them. Also taking Smith’s theater program as inspiration, students could

create dialogues together in the target language related to their own experiences, at

once addressing the critical skills of writing and speaking. How could S. Smith have

addressed the basic literacy struggles of her student? She might have had her

students work in groups of two on short writing assignments, pairing that particular

student with a stronger student, for constructive feedback, or spent a few minutes

after every class working with her one on one. Both G. and S. Smith lamented the

insidious influence of technology on literacy. S. Smith’s concern that her children

have too much “screen time” could be in part addressed by teachers. Teachers could

assign students the task of writing about something that they watch, forcing them to

use the literacy skills of listening and analysis (and writing), instead of passively

viewing. G. Smith’s concern is more difficult to counteract. The “sound bites” that

characterize texting and emailing, as well as the frequency with which this

communication- and the anticipation of this communication- interrupts thoughts, is

a serious threat to thought in and of itself, no less the literacy that is a vehicle for it.

One potential strategy for mitigating this issue would be simply raising the

awareness in students of the nature of this “e-Discourse.” One could ask students to

define it and talk about its benefits and its disadvantages. One could also ask

students to transform a segment of this Discourse into more expressive- if not

academic- language, much in the same way Fisher and Lapp did in their work with

African American students, where one task included the “…identification,

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transcription, and analysis of written and spoken language patterns of prominent

African Americans….., and then student rewriting of the language….” (Hagood: 68).

Integrating literacy instruction into the adolescent classroom is essential to

success as an adult. Numerous studies point to the steady decline of literacy in the

United States. As recent readings and this research paper have taught me, literacy

not only predicts academic and professional success, but teaches tolerance. As my

own experience and that of G. Smith illustrated, having interaction with another

Discourse leads to having an understanding and tolerance of other cultures and

communities. Hagood summarizes this powerful idea beautifully: “Through

instructional practices that examine Discourses, literacies, power, and agency can

we actually help to develop the literacies of adolescents prepared to live

successfully as critically conscious citizens in a diverse society.” (Hagood 77)

Susannah,

Excellent work on this assignment. Each section is complete and thoughtfully

rendered. Your writing is articulate and insightful throughout. I appreciated your

own recognition of how your upbringing sponsored your literacy development (I

wish we could count on such sponsorship with all of our students).

The interview section was particularly strong. You interviewed two people

who really had a lot to offer your own thinking about literacy. The several key

themes you hit upon in your research continue to be major touchstones in the field

of literacy. Motivation, the influence of technology, the integration of creative

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pedagogy, the question of valuing primary discourse while at the same time trying

to explicitly convey a secondary discourse—these are central ideas and tensions

that continue to be debated within the literature. It’s a testament to your own

thinking that you were able to surface so many of these complex ideas.

When revising this piece for the final portfolio I would like to see you grapple

with this question: What are some specific strategies you plan to integrate into your

own teaching that reflect the ideas surfaced in your research?

Again, excellent work here overall. This was a pleasure to read. Grade: A

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Appendix

Interview with Gray Smith, former Executive Director of The Street Theater, a

nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering underprivileged individuals

through an artistic approach to literacy 3/8/15.

1) What was your early experience with literacy like? How did the language of the

home differ from language of school or of the community? Did this inform your idea

or understanding of language and literacy?

I don't know that it informed me about literacy, or about language, but it informed me

about different cultures and different people, on both a cultural and a character level

of individuation. For example, there were lots of black people in my life that would be

thought of as in some kind of a serving capacity (I never thought of them that way- I

thought of all of them as teachers), and there was a great deal of difference between

the way they spoke, even thought they were all from the same so-called culture, and

maybe that was related to how interested I was in listening to them, but, I remember

four, specifically, and their way of speaking was quite different, although it was a while

before I reached a point where I thought I was getting the benefit of the stories they

had to tell. So I didn't have that kind of lengthy exposure to them. There was a stone

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mason who had worked for us- he may have even been related to my family- there was

a lot of stone work around the property where I lived. I mainly just got to know him

through watching him work, rather than through conversation. Then there was a man

who worked in the yard, and I learned how to split wood from him. Again, very few

words. And I guess that was the characteristic that they all shared. I don't think they

thought of me as some "wierdo" ("who is this white kid thinking of me as a teacher"),

but I don't think they ever broke out of the "role" that they had to play in the larger

culture, until later, when I was older, and had a different relationship with some of

them. So, in terms of what these 4, 5 6, people shared, and what I learned, was

the careful selection of words- the total absence of any kind of verbosity, and the

integration of the language with the work that they did; and some of that was

not crossing certain social lines. As I got older, I would try to talk to a woman who

had served my parents for decades, and I thought of her as a second mother, and I was

foolish enough to try to talk with her about race relations. She wouldn't have any of it.

She was just not interested, etc. She probably wouldn't even have been interested if her

audience was her younger, activist, black relatives. She had to find herself in certain

ways….she was a person of enormous integrity, and, even though she was a maid and

cook in a white household, a person of enormous character: she did not need to make

any changes in her life- she had settled on some level, I guess- but without compromise.

There were others like her.

I suppose that these experiences gave me- at an early age,-a profound sense of the

viability of verbal economy (something I've never been good at unless I'm under the

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pressure of writing in a particular verse form, or trying to write dialogue in a play), of

language that's always precise in naming its objects and experiences.

2) Did these experiences/exchanges with these other groups of people/individuals

make you able to have a secondary "tool kit" and use the discourse of those people

you are speaking with from a different community?

That's a very tricky line to cross. My work- the most significant work I've done- was

largely with black people (I ran a theater that started out where I was the only white

person in it), and it was a very radical theater, very involved with the development of

original plays, the telling of stories that hadn't been told before, by street people, by

inmates, and I was very lucky to have a staff composed of some of the top black

improvisational directors and actors in the country, and I was never able to look at

myself from the outside, but I had some sort of intuitive sense of being real about who I

was, and connecting to their reality, in a genuine way, and there was never a conscious

modification of language, as there was with many many young white people who were

trying to identify with the movement, who were trying to speak like black folk, develop

the repertory of social gestures used by black folk. Somehow or another, these people

got tolerated (laughing). I don't know where it came from (this was the early 70's) but

I was able to go to places where other people would say "that's not safe for white

people:- but I never had any trouble. I think it's because I was focused on the work.

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That was the goal, and the language that got used, the language was in service of

the work, it took whatever shape it needed to reach that goal.

3) What was that goal, that work, as it relates to literacy.

This was all about helping people tell their stories, in both street and prison settings,

and, at the same time tell their stories in their own language. The first thing was to

connect to the stories. Of course, these were professional people who knew how to do

that. Once the stories were out there, then they became formed and explored through

fairly systematic techniques that revolved around hindrances and obstacles

(improvisation). So, you would work through a scene that way, and it comes from the

action that is in the story, and the language is used to support that, and the

language had to be clear in its service of that goal. So, there's no question

whatever that people who were trained in these programs and were therefore

able to communicate about themselves and their work in general with greater

clarity after going through the program. But this was by no means early literacy;

this was done with mostly adults (I should've done early literacy first, but I didn't).

4) What compelled you to move to early literacy?

It was a lot of sloppy hindsight. There was a performance in 1970 of a play I wrote

about a black family on welfare with what was called in those days a "retarded" child

in it. And, in the course of that performance at Sing Sing (2,000 inmates), a great

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booming voice from the back said "boy, you get yourself educated, don't you come in

here." Of course, whether the child was educable or not was a mute question. The point

of the comment was that education is the tool for staying out of prisons. And of course,

later, when they Theater was involved with early literacy, we learned that federal and

state prison authorities used projections of literacy to plan their constructions needs.

That's cold, hard, objective data. The reason we ended up in early literacy was through

a discovery process. After the prison work, we went into alternative high schools, we

developed original plays there, but we just saw the need to get younger and younger,

we would get into middle schools, teachers there would say "it’s too late- you have to

work with younger children." so that's how we ended up with children in kindergarten

and first grade. So it took us 20 years to get where we needed to be.

5) It seems to be clear to me, from your life's work, that you can't really alter literacy

of adolescents as a teacher.

No, not true. Programs developed to address the large area/problem of literacy is a

different initiative from teachers who can make a difference with the right

resources/circumstances to have a meaningful encounter to change the literacy of an

individual. It is highly unlikely, for example, that in a classroom of 30, you will have the

chance to make a difference in literacy. But, there is always the chance, even late in

life, for significant interventions. But, again, depends on the right circumstances to

enable an intervention to happen. The main thing about literacy at any level is the

capacity to take risks. And that’s based on confidence. So, you cannot teach a young

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Latino or black child confidence about language/literacy in English without first

building some kind of confidence and capacity for risk that's rooted in their own

experience. This is a no-brainer. The only way to understand the approach to early

literacy that does not have that as a top priority is if it’s an approach centered around

politics and special interests- for example, education dept. head under George Bush

(for example; literacy is scientific, according to her). To me that’s a complete

aberration. So literacy has to be experiential before it can become cognitive. That

intervention thing can happen at any age. Once you can change the level of confidence

and put some kind of foundation in place for risk-taking, you are on your way.

6) The early literacy program you crafted revolved around using music and theater

and storytelling. Is this because that helped students be comfortable to take risks?

The quickest access to this experience (confidence, etc.) was through story-telling,

singing, professional actors coming in to classrooms and acting out stories with

children. One of the titles of the programs was called “singing to read” and there again,

that’s old hat now, that’s just the whole physiological memory that occurs when letters

are sung, like singing the alphabet, when nursery rhymes are sung, that’s as old as

language, all of those ballads that go all the way back before they were written down,

very musical language that was sung, and that’s how it was remembered. There were

other devices like rhyme and meter that were important but the singing and music

were what were most responsible for the memory.

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7) Do you believe there should be standards for literacy?

That’s a charged phrase that has all kinds of associations with criteria that have been

created to serve constituencies other than the illiterate. Yes, of course, you can’t teach

anything without having standards, but I don’t know. That’s a complicated question.

Because I’m just not current enough to deal with that. The things that come to mind

are not just literacy but languages themselves. If you start going in the direction of

standards, then you have to address the issue of whether or not everyone needs to

speak English, don’t you? I don’t think we have a National language, it’s not written

into our laws. The culture has been very accommodating to Spanish. Everywhere you

go, things are written in Spanish and English. I am not coming from a place where I

think it’s required that everyone speak English. But that’s a complicated question; I’m

not sure I have an answer to it. But of course there have to be standards. The written

word is thriving in some ways; I think books are alive and well, it seems, but you know,

language is under ferocious assault by the culture of texting, the culture of email, and

I’m not just talking about abbreviations that are used, I’m just talking about the

acceptable duration of a thought. Thoughts that are not expressed with concise

intensity seem to have a lower status in this culture.

8) And also wouldn’t you say that communication without real time exchange with

another person is not as meaningful?

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Yes, well that’s become anachronistic these days. That probably about to disappear as

a criteria for literacy. But thank God in the corporate culture there are still meetings,

for example.

9) How do you define literacy, then?

Well, it’s a process that has different stages. The first stage is to get totally outside of

yourself, so you can respond to the external world. That’s an emotional and a

cognitive process; they’re both equally important. Reading things, reading situations,

reading human behavior, intuitive intelligence, to me is far more important on the

status scale than cognitive intelligence, and of course, intuitive combines emotional

and cognitive intelligence. So all, of this is again experiential, in terms of its constant

anchor, and I think it provides great stimulus to intellectual activity. I don’t think that

there’s conflict. I can’t help but thinking of Wordsworth’s definition of poetry which is

something to the effect of “a key to its creation is a strong emotion recalled in

tranquility”. Then of course, there’s the specialized areas of literacy which have

to do with specific subjects and specific areas of human knowledge. And of course

you’d have to pretty much accept the argument that those are more intellectual, but

they still stem from a motivation to become literate- which is essentially

emotional, or passionate. That’s my personal opinion. You do encounter these minds

that are exceptional- that have endless capacities, in those godlike human beings,

those that end up doing things like winning Nobel prizes and stuff like that, it’s pretty

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clear that the mind is the dominant driving force, but I have to feel that it’s always

somewhat fueled by some kind of passion rooted in feeling for the subject.

Interview with Sarah Harrison Smith, Former Children’s Book Editor of the New

York Times and Professor, 3/3/15

In pre-discussion (talking about her own children):

My kids were online a few minutes ago taking a practice Core Curriculum test. I am

horrified that part of the core curriculum test is watching a video and answering

questions about the video.

1) I know that you love to read. What do you remember about your early

experience with books/reading/writing? Was/were your family or

professors more helpful?

I remember learning to read at school, but also at home, my mother tried to

teach me with some Victorian primers that she had reproductions of. I did not

really like learning to read with her. I was close to her, but it made me

uncomfortable to read with her, so I would squirm away. Maybe it was because

I wasn’t ready, or maybe it was because I didn’t like the pressure. I think one

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reason I became such an avid reader was that my Dad, who was very busy with

his career, read to me every night. But I remember him reading to me all the

time. And he used to say to me, if I was drifting off to sleep, “what was the last

thing I just said”, and I think that was a great way to train my memory because

I would always have to answer so that he could continue reading. And he read

old-fashioned things like “Madeleine”: classic children’s literature. And when I

was older, a teen, my parent would read aloud to each other, and the whole

family would read aloud, and at big family dinners, we would all recite poems

by heart. We knew a lot of those, and we would say them in a silly way at the

table. I was one of five kids. So books were a big part of my life growing up. And

this fed naturally into my career, which was very helpful to me.

2) I assume the language/discourse of school was the same as that of home? No

conflict?

No, my parents were both first generation Americans. They were both

European, and therefore the literature was the same literature of the

established canon, the one used by my school.

3) Have you ever taught?

Yes, I taught ESL when I got out of college, to adults, in Italy. And then I taught

in the states for a semester when I returned.

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4) Was there anything interesting about the level/s of literacy of your students,

in Italy or/and the US? Was there literacy in their native languages a

stumbling block for them in trying to learn English? Did they have questions

that belied a lack of literacy in their own languages?

No, they were all wealthy enough that they were educated in their own

languages. I don’t remember any literacy problems.

5) If you were to teach French or any other subject besides English….”actually

I’ve been teaching writing to undergrads at Johns Hopkins; if you’re interested

in the undergrads, some of them do not speak English very well or write English

very well.” Great, tell me about that, how are you addressing that? How do

you incorporate literacy into that instruction?

Well, in general because my responsibility is not to teach them English

language, my job is to teach them to write in different genres, so, some of these

kids who can’t speak English properly, were still very witty writers, but their

writing was hampered by their lack of grammatical knowledge. I decided not to

focus on vocabulary and grammar because I just didn’t have time. I would say,

culturally, one student from Africa, and he tended to write within an African

folkloric tradition, and he was resistant to writing a fairy tale as such; he

wanted to write like, “folklore” and that was interesting, that made him

different from the other students. And sometimes you could see interesting

things happen with students who turned out to me different from what you

thought they were. For instance, I had a Muslim student who was really shy in

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class and would never speak up at all, and then she wrote a charming story that

read just like a romance novel. And I thought “I know what you’ve been

reading, romance novels. And she was great at writing in that genre. I don’t

know if that’s exactly literacy, but she clearly spent all of her time in her room

by herself but was a good genre writer.

6) How has your experience as an editor of children’s books informed you about

literacy?

I think that I would say that I was not sufficiently aware before I took the job of

how little literature there was in English about families of other colors,

different cultures; there’s an astonishing lack of that. and my comfort within

English literature was because I came from that background of Anglo-

European. But when I think about the experience of a kid from a very different

background I think that there’s just not enough literature there that they can

identify with readily. And they need to identify in order to enjoy it more.

Susannah: the motivation for reading would be improved if there was

something they could relate to. “I think that’s right. Most people of my

generation (late 60s) , our experience of other cultures and literature- e.g. “the

Snowy Day” a picture book with a young black protagonist with scenes from a

black child’s life- that was probably my only experience as a child into the life of

a black family. Was that ok for me? Yes. Would it be ok for an African American

child? No. It helps, of course, that a lot of young children’s books are about

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animal protagonists, so issues of race and ethnicity are masked. Although you

might make cultural assumptions based on what they are wearing, there’s

nothing else to really point to a race or ethnicity they might be from.

7) What do you think if publishers started publishing books that had African

American Vernacular English in them, for example? Do you know if there has

been any movement in your field in that direction? If there were more books

like “Snowy Day”, do you think that an African American child will identify

more?

You know, I am not aware of it. I think that ‘s a complicated question. I don’t

think there’s an established vernacular for African American kids use. I think

there are regional vernaculars; I don’t know that there’s a universal African

American vernacular. I think it may have been done, but I think it would be

difficult to do. And I think it might restrict the audience of the book. I’m sure

there are books that are set in regions, like, New Orleans for example, where

native New Orleans pp, regardless of race, speak with a patois, but that’s

regional rather than racial. I think it’s a bit worrying, it would be problematic,

it could be construed as condescending. There is an intention behind children’s

books to develop “mainstream” speech and enrich their vocabulary. What we

might hear in Tom Sawyer with natural speech patterns might not show up in a

children’s book. And we want books to reach as wide an audience as possible.

Can you imagine that this might cause difficulties, or seem to be pejoratively

racist if you had different characters within a book speaking in different

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vernaculars? I think this would have to be handled just right, by the right

person, if it were to be done at all.

8) How have the experiences of your children and how has being a mother

informed you about literacy?

I think I realize how much harder it is for my children to focus on books than it

ever was for me. Books were by far the most interesting for me when I was in

my house. Now, there’s a Pandora’s box of screen pleasures to be indulged in.

So, unfortunately, unless you don’t allow your children to have screen time at

all, there is an opposition set up between a desire for screen time and the

parent’s desire for less of it. My children still enjoy books, but books for them

are slightly less of a temptation than screen time is. That changes the dynamic

between parents and children and reading a little bit. Whereas I remember

reading being a great pleasure, sometime even a naughty pleasure, and now I

feel like I push books on my children. My children are literate, but they don’t

love to read the way I did. There so much tempting literature out there for kids.

There’s transgender literature, there’s so much for young adults to read if they

want to. I think that’s great, there’s no way to feel socially isolated with it.

9) How do you define literacy?

Writing about anything is a function of literacy. Talking about something is not

a function of literacy. To say someone is fully literate means they have to be

able to respond to the literary qualities of a text and notice what the author is

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doing to create those qualities. Not just understanding what’s being said, but

the techniques being used to convey what is being conveyed. That’s a high form

of literacy. Having said that, I think that compared to generations before me, I

don’t know the latin terms and rhetorical terms, so I think my literacy is less

good than people who are older than me.

Works Cited:

Fanetti, Susan; Bushrow, Kathy M., & DeWeese, David L. “Closing the Gap between

High School Writing Instruction and College Writing Expectations.” The

English Journal 01/2010; 99(4):77-83.

Gee, James Paul. “What is Literacy?” Teaching and Learning: The Journal of Natural

Inquiry. 1987: 3-11.

Hagood, Margaret C. “Using Discourse Study as a Instructional Practice with

Adolescents to Develop 21st- Century Literacies of Critically Concious

Citizens. Valuing Adolescence. 62-78.

Kinsella, Kate. “Cutting to the Common Core: Disrupting Discourse.” Language

Magazine: www.languagemagazine.com. Accessed 3/19/2015.

Wilhelm, Jeffrey D. “Imagining a New Kind of Self: Academic Language, Identity,

And Content Area Learning.” Voices From the Middle; Sep 2007; 15, 1.

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