Week 4 Blog posts, comments, dialogue

So I've been thinking through a lot. Truthfully, this book really hits home for me as I can relate to the author/progtagonist. I see a lot of parrallels in our lives, even though we're not exactly the same. what appealed to me was the idea that even if you have all the smarts or ability in the world, that doesn't mean academia is kind to you. I sometimes wonder if I'm cut out for this place or if it's something else I'm doing or if I'm mearly an x-grade student. The author's journey is very inspirational, but it's also a testiment about how there is more than one path to success. We all have different strenghts, and we will all get to where we need to go in time and the journey is a big, integral part of our end. Also, there is no end, we keep going, becuase life isn't a means to an end, learning isn't for one goal. Learning for me, might be more about how to deal with and get the best out of the journey of life. When he began to talk about his dislike then love of English and Philosophy, I was turned off because I did not see how those two feels are very relavant; I found them fun, but I figured, maybe I was missing the special something needed to interact with the humanities well. What I think is more the case is that I didn't allow myself to feel as the humanities require me to. Sometimes these fields feel made up, but it's more that I didn't have the time or brain space left over in life to allow myself to interact with what these subjects speak about. Orginanally I wrote a journal entry about language and plenary but I think this one is much better. 

Lives on the Boundary have led to think that despite so much injustices and inequalities in life, there is still hope. Even Mike Rose himself is a symbol of hope despite his struggles throughout high school. This novel also demonstrates how it takes just a single person such as the English teacher, Jack MacFarland to influence and somewhat change Rose’s life. Jack MacFarland reminded me of one of my English teacher during Grade 11. All it took was her faith in me.  Most importantly, she did not label me as an ESL student when I’m surrounded with native English speakers. We still keep in contact until today and I am forever thankful for her support. 

In the first chapter of Lives on the Boundary, Mike Rose describes the students in English A: “They know more than their tests reveal but haven’t been taught how to weave that knowledge in coherent patterns” (8). Earlier this semester, when I tried to describe myself “as a writer,” I wrote about my summer research experience.... At the end of the summer, I needed a way to communicate my work. I started a research report, and ended up with a seventy-page document that relayed everything I’d learned—well, most of it—and the ideas I’d developed over three months of reading. For me, my summer research experience stands out—not because I wrote a really long paper (though that’s cool too), but because for the first time, I recognized the purpose of academic writing. I was writing to share my ideas, and to describe my work and my results to the rest of the academic community.

For a long time, I really didn’t understand the purpose of essay-writing and book reports and journaling and lab writeups…. If you asked me why I needed to write essays and reports, I would probably have answered, “because you need to know how to write if you want to do well in school,” or “because you need to know how to write if you want to go to college,” or maybe just “because you’re supposed to know how to write.” I didn’t recognize any larger or more practical purpose, and I certainly didn’t recognize any communicative function.... I think my summer experience stands out, and represents an important literacy experience, because I finally wrote to communicate something I actually wanted to say. I was proud of my work and wanted to communicate my results to other people.

Anyway, I wonder if students who “know more than tests reveal” face the same sort of problem—if they don’t know, because they’ve never been told, that writing is a means to an end, not the end itself. In other words, in my own experience, I lacked more than the skills to express myself in writing; I lacked the very insight that it’s possible to express oneself in writing—that writing allows the communication of knowledge and ideas, and isn’t just about the formulaic composition of sentences and paragraphs that look and sound “right.”

Okay, so bear with me--I've been thinking about this and I might have talked myself in circles.  Current thinking:  We have pieces of punctuation that don’t actually exist.   They have meaning and they symbolize a sentiment but they do not have inherent meaning?  They exist on paper but not in life?  (Also, I just inadvertently equated “spoken language” with “life”... what does that mean and say?)  For example, let’s consider a semi-colon.  I use them in writing and could recite off the list of times when it’s acceptable to use a semi-colon over XYZ.  However, in speech, you never _think_ in semi-colons, and you never _hear_ a semi-colon.  However, when I’m in “writing mode,” I do all the time.  What does it mean that there is something that’s well-known, functional, and popular, that exists only on paper, but never indicates an audio cue?  If you can hear a sentence in English, you can transfer that sentence onto the written page, and theoretically punctuate it with a semi-colon, even if you didn't hear it... because no one _could_ hear it.  Right?  If there's aspects of discourses that only exist in written/spoken English and don't transfer to the other, does that say something about those aspects?  Does written English exist only to record spoken English or does it serve its own purpose?  If not/if so, what does that say about discourses/punctuation--honestly, maybe even regional accents, to a certain degree--that only exists in one "version" of English?

While reading Rose’s Lives on the Boundary, I thought about some of the educational inequalities that occur when some students struggle with the traditional methods of schooling in this country. When schools do not provide students with adequate assistance and accommodation, students suffer and cannot reach their full literary potential. I was particularly struck by the quote, “Some…are struck dumb by the fear of making a mistake;…and still others…know more than their tests reveal but haven’t been taught how to weave that knowledge into coherent patterns” (Rose 8). I have a friend who is extremely intelligent, but struggles with learning disabilities (dyslexia and ADHD). He went through middle, high school, and college asking for proper aid and not receiving it. His conclusion is that “school is not set up” for him. This may be true: schools rely heavily on standardized testing and essays as their main methods of evaluation, when my friend has difficulty with both. He has trouble concentrating for long periods of time, and has difficulty reading and writing effectively and efficiently.

                Therefore, his tests do not reveal the knowledge and ability that he actually possesses, just as Rose describes of students in Dr. Gunner’s classroom. Instead, he should have been given special attention and accommodations throughout school such as extra time during tests, and one-on-one tutoring in reading and writing. In grading his work, teachers should have kept his disabilities in mind so that they gave him a fair evaluation. 

Journal Entry 3

My post for week 3 was inspired by theories of multi-literacy presented through Noa’s Ark. As a child I was introduced English and Portuguese Creole at the same time. I usually spoke English at school and Creole at home with family. I had and still have many members of my family who cannot speak English or prefer to not speak English even after living in the United States for many years; speaking Creole to them was sort of communication and survival tactics. I needed to speak it in order to communicate and understand family members. In honor of finishing Noah’s Ark I wanted to reflect on my own multi-literacy and ways my parents introduced language proficiency to me as a child. I do not remember being sat down or taught Portuguese Creole it was something I grew up listening and speaking in my household, I was just able to understand it. When American influences and the English speaking culture entered my life through Elementary school, I remember being spoken to in Creole but always responding back in English. I distinctly remember my parents always wanting my sisters and I to practice by ordering us to respond back in Creole. My parents would also facilitate fun little competitions where my sisters and I would compete to see who could last the longest speaking in only Creole all day long. These moments were definitely impactful in my speaking proficiency in Portuguese Creole.

Journal Entry 4

I wanted to take my week 3 post and use that to create my week 4 post in hopes of now connecting my bilingual childhood to the events that occurred in the beginning chapters of Lives on the Boundary. I initially related to Rose, both of our parents being immigrants to the Country with his language being Italian and mine being Portuguese Creole but I found myself dissimilar to Rose and his student Laura. Being that I learned Creole and English at the same time I did not struggle with English learning at school. I did not have many of the hardships of feeling dumb or remedial in learning because my foreign language was not solely introduced on its own. It bothered me immensely how Laura made it to UCLA but still thought that she was lesser than the other students because she felt her writing skills were not up to par with other students. I can still remember my struggles with learning Spanish at the high school and college level and I feel that many who study new languages can relate, but yet at the same time are not sensitive enough to those who struggle with learning English.

… Just a bit of my train of thoughts while reading the first couple of chapters.

I am currently taking an upper level Psychology course about the obesity epidemic. In a discussion last week, the theme of literacy came up and my mind was immediately drawn to what we have been discussion and learning about in this course.  In the discussion we were talking about legislation in New York that requires restaurants to print the number of calories next to all of their menu items.  While this is obviously and important step forward in combating obesity, there are some major issues that arise when considering what kind of impact this will actually have on the public. For someone who is not literate in this area of personal health, reading numbers of calories would not mean very much.  It would be much more productive to spend resources on educating the public on how to have a healthy diet so that more individuals are literate in this area.  This will lead to a decrease in obesity much more quickly that just posting the number of calories on restaurant menus.

            Making this connection across my classes reinforced the idea that there are multiple types of literacies and that each has value.  It was also evident in this class that the legislation concerning posting the number of calories was created by a privileged class of people and is necessarily leaving out the “illiterate” individuals who come from a lower socioeconomic class.  Unfortunately, the individuals who are most likely to become obese are from low SES neighborhoods.