Monday, April 27, 2009

Ethnography and Literacy

One of the most basic elements of any functioning society is the ability for its members to read and write. Throughout modern times, both reading and writing have been commonly thought of as skills necessary to participate and interact with others so that a person could earn and sustain a suitable living. In this case, Szwed describes literacy as something commonly mistaken as something that is black and white, “either one reads and writes or one doesn’t.” The concept of illiteracy currently carries a highly stigmatized notion of an unskilled poverty class unable to transcend and progress, but Szwed encourages all of us to take a closer look at what exactly it means to be literate, and how those skills translate into social contexts and functional purposes. He also contends that most societies have produced specialists that “handle many of the necessities of literacy” through his example of the countless immigrant neighborhood where many of these specialists function as “interpreters of law, as well as readers and writers of letters and public documents.”
With the example of our public school system, Szwed highlights the importance of taking social context into account when determining if a student is capable of reading and writing. He points out that “non standard” forms of reading and writing are also acquired skills, such as a student that might have considerable skill reading and interpreting comics that shows little interest for assigned reading content. These discrepancies between literate and illiterate are merely different “configurations” of literacy, or by what level literacy is functioning, rather than imagining the concept of literacy being on a single, collective, and absolute measure. Continuing this notion of what makes a person literate, Szwed wishes to look closer at what exactly do people read and why, beyond the conventional mediums, such as novels, books, and other mass printed media for society to consume, but to break reading and writing down further into functional or artistic purposes. He wishes to include other forms of reading and writing such as “handbills, signs, graffiti, sheet music, junk mail, cereal boxes, captions on television, and even pornography.”
Szwed also sees the significance in differences amongst public and private literacy, between what is read at school or work and what is read at home in a private setting outside the public sphere. His example of the ability of a person being able to read and comprehend street signs outside in the public is requiring a different set of skills that are used than private reading, and reflects the importance of recognizing the distinct types of reading and writing involved with a variety of tasks and contexts. Szwed continues to look at this relationship through a variety of cases, such as in advertising, where non-standard text is used to invoke specific emotions towards a product, or the process by which an author’s book is published through a collaborative effort, rather than mastered by one single person; Szwed is interested in studying and observing the relationship between school and the outside world.


I believe that Szwed brings up several different concepts that are important to take note of, most importantly by which the levels that literacy operates within us and a society as a whole. Academically speaking, literacy is a skill needed to enter into a professional, specialized workforce, we acquire through formal education and earned credentials, but it should be thought of as a form or an example of literacy, rather than being thought of as literacy itself. At multiple levels I think that we all function as being literate, but it is unfair to declare one’s ability to demonstrate their skills of reading and writing through one absolute set of conventions, and we should work to understand how literacy works within our own social context to better understand just what it means to be literate, and what literacy itself means. More often than not, we are surrounded with “non-standard” texts that we habitually assess and interpret without much reflection and thought of what and why we are reading it, but either way we are demonstrating our ability to acquire meaning through written graphics, just in a different context than the student who is assigned to read out of his textbook for homework. I view Literacy as a multifaceted skill that is determined by function and context in the relationship between the reader and writer.

Week Four: A Tree Is Following Me

I think the moment where my language abilities made me feel important was when I was in the second grade. In the class our teacher focused a lot of time in making projects based on a book that we read in class. The book we read was The Great Kapok Tree, and that book has been involved in my life so many times after I read it in the second grade. The book was essentially about trying to stop a lumberjack from cutting down a tree in the rain forest by having the animals talk to him while he sleeps. The animals would each tell them how important the tree was to them, when the man woke up he saw all the animals and decided not to cut down the tree. I loved this as a kid because of the animals so it got my attention. But the teacher was also making learn about how we should save the rain forest and be good to the environment.

After we read the story, the teacher made us turn the book into a play for our parents. Since it was a bilingual class we got to read both versions of the text. We understood it when we read the Spanish version but the play helped us understand it in the English version. It gave us a chance to get a perspective on why the rain forest was so important. And in the play I was the porcupine which sucked because I wanted to be the jaguar. As a class we started to learn about how the rain forest was being destroyed by reading small articles, looking at pictures and watching videos. Our literacy about the background of the story was expanding every time. Most of our writing was centered on the rain forest and the animals so I was really enjoying what we were doing in class. The most important project we did was sending President Clinton cards, that we made ourselves, telling to stop cutting down the trees in the rain forest. I designed my card with a jaguar pop-up with both Spanish and English writing. This project was helping us understand how to write in English and in Spanish. It was fun taking a stand about something that the whole class was passionate about and it felt great when we got a letter back saying that our cards have been read. Our teacher was passionate about this and her passion was transfer to all of us in that class.

What we did in that class will always stay with me because it always finds a way to come back when it slips my mind. In fifth grade we read the book again and did another play about the book and this time I was able to be the jaguar. Another moment came when I was working in the Literacy center in CSUSB. I was tutoring a boy in the second grade and we always start off by reading which ever book he finds in the library. The boy found The Great Kapok Tree which was surprising to me because I’ve been working there for a year now and I’ve never seen that book in the shelves. It was a joy watching the second grader read the book and start to comprehend what the book was about, took a stand for something you think is important.

Ethnography and Composition

· How is research conducted in the most effective way?
· Will the ethnographic research have more validation if researcher is from the same community?


Ethnography is a subject in which can derail many researchers from their primary focal point. Thus, as a researcher it is vital to understand and be clear about your hypothesis/ main point of research. In order to understand ethnography and its components, we need to understand, what the goal of ethnography is. According to Beverly Moss in Ethnography and Composition: Studying Language at Home, “the goal of ethnographer is to study, explore, and describe a groups’ culture. Ethnographers tend to focus on the daily routines in the everyday lives of the communities being studied” (Moss 389). Ethnography is a study with various compositions that complete it. It contains three different types of ethnography:

1. comprehensive-oriented ethnography
2. topic oriented ethnography
3. hypothesis-oriented ethnography


When conducting research within a classified group in which we are from it can be either good or bad. As researchers with similar background to the one we are studying can hinder our research. It can contaminate out work due to our preconceived knowledge in that specific group. Nevertheless, despite, the many obstacles a researcher encounters the single most important factor when concluding ethnography is
the emic perspective.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Autobiographical Blog # 2

The first book that really affected me in some way was The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. It’s a story about a tree that loves a little boy and gives in to his needs as he grows up. The tree shows unconditional motherly love to the boy and it reminded me how my parents love me. I was in first grade when Mr. Oakway read it to the class. The storyline really made me sad because I felt that the boy grew up to be selfish and never thanked the tree for everything that she provided him. I think what really made me sad was that I saw myself in the little boy and I did not want to be like him. This book mattered to me because it made me change the way I viewed what my parents did for me and I never appreciated that. The Giving Tree was an eye opener for me and it made me change my ungrateful ways. In my childhood books did not have a big role in the family; my parents never read me bedtime stories in the traditional sense. They always told me stories about their childhood and about our family from memory. They did take me to the library once a week to check out whatever books I wanted and that was as much as they contributed to me reading. Something that my father always read daily was the newspaper and he would always give me the comics section, my favorites were Garfield and Dennis the Menace. Sometimes my father would put me on his lap and read the comics section with me that was always fun. The most recent book that I read with real enjoyment was Betrayed by PC and Kristin Cast, it’s the second book in the House of Night Series, I am currently reading the third and I find the series very entertaining. I started reading the series because thanks to Stephenie Meyer I now have an infatuation for vampires so I was curious as to what the House of Night Series’ take of them was like.

Posted by Isabel

Precise for 4/23

The reading was trying to express how the a stronger involvement of teachers with the students social environment would help student achieve more in the classrooms. All the teachers in the stud participated in a project that had them be very involve with the students life that was outside of school. Having the teacher do this help “debunk ideas of the working class.” They interpreted the actions of the students outside of school as “funds of knowledge” which can be seen as the knowledge and skills that are essential to the well-being of the students. Not only did this project help the teachers gain a different perspective of how the students lives really are but the teachers were able to use all that they learn coincide with lesson plans.

In Boston a teacher saw that many students were struggling in understanding how to use the scientific method and it was due to the lack of experience the kids receive by just reading about it. The teacher made the students do an outside project that made the students use the scientific method and it changed everything for the students. The students wanted to participate more in what they were trying to do with their project by making it beneficial to the community. We saw the same thing with a school were the parent that was never involve with the school was helping the class with their projects and later became the leader of the school PTA.

What this study was trying to show was that having the teachers trying to connect the lesson with the students, either by understanding the students or letting them get involve, is greater than just trying to teach a standard curriculum. This study wants the teachers to challenge the status quo and by having the students getting involve, it could help change the way that schools create curriculums.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Literacy: Crayons Are Delicious

When I was younger I only knew how to speak Spanish and never really understood how I learned to speak English. I guess it was all the cartoons and Disney movies that helped me out. My parents didn’t speak English that well and only used Spanish when we were home so I wasn’t fluent in English when I started going to school.

When I look back at my first years of elementary school I can’t remember a lot of it. But when I do look back at a clear memory I realize that it’s like I’m watching a silent picture film without the descriptions of what’s going on. I can see everything that’s going on but when I see the students and teacher talking I don’t know what they’re saying. I remember for kindergarten just writing down letters and looking at the other student’s papers to see if I was doing it correctly. I don’t think it made a different if I knew a lot of English in kindergarten because the other kids didn’t know that much either. As a class, all we knew was that crayons were delicious.

In one moment when I was in my first grade class, all the students were drawing on a blank piece of paper. We didn’t get to draw whatever we wanted because the teacher was instructing us what we needed to do on the paper. I remember seeing the teacher next the board talking and then drawing and the students drew what she wanted them to draw. I had to wait and see what the kid next to me was doing and copied what he did. I didn’t last long in that class, the teacher decided to have me moved into a class that was for bilingual students. In that class I understood everything and my memories for that class have sound. I remember practicing writing my first full sentence in English, it was about a mouse. I remember telling my brother in English not to call me my nickname around my friends. I would practice a lot of English with my brother since we were a year apart we had almost identical knowledge of the English language. I started to learn more English but maybe that was due to the Power Rangers blessing me with their presence on Saturday mornings on my television screen. In my second and third grade I was still in bilingual classes but I was getting more comfortable with my English. The second grade was great for me because that’s where I read one of favorite books and reenact it in a small play. A lot of our time was spent around the topics the books discussed so every time I was willing to do class work. I remember that my best friend and I were the first to check out an English book from the school library from our third grade class.

For the remainder of my elementary grades I had to go to a new school and I was placed in normal classes. My fourth grade year was full of memories playing with toys while the teacher was looking away and not understanding some of the class work. Halfway through the fifth grade I was placed in a program that was helping me with my writing and comprehension. It helped me out a lot because sixth grade went by great and I realized that the science project I did in the fourth grade was a disaster. I think the only reason I got credit for the project was because everyone liked the mess the volcano made.

It seems that school played a large part in my literacy because that was the only place where I was learning and using the English language. Outside of school a lot of my resources were limited to entertainment stuff. Television isn’t bad in helping out but I don’t think that the teachers want you to write about why Tommy was the best Power Ranger since he beat up Jason in the karate tournament.

The development of Initial literacy

How do we acquire language? Where does language come from as we grow up? As we get older, how do we develop the skills necessary to defend our points of views either written or spoken? Does language affect us all in the same way weather we’re deaf, mute, or neither? These are all questions that arise when I think of the development of initial literacy.

The development of language occurs in various steps, unnoticed when we are growing up, but noticed by the adults around us. As Goodman explained “…literacy learning is the idea that leaning language is leaning how to mean. The child leans how to mean through written as well as spoken language.” (317) This takes place sporadically as we are young. As we get older literacy transcends into daily rituals of simple tasks that involve reading and writing.

What plays a role in our development of literacy?

As children we don’t realize what literacy is, but we develop it progressively. There are many influences as to how we learn how to be literate. According to Goodman, factors such as our personal experiences are immense aspects on how we approach literacy: reading and writing. Due, to our dynamic backgrounds, we each individually view things in different perspectives. Thus, because of our different point of views we approach the art of literacy in a different way than the person next to us. Hence, our environment is a great factor as to how we approach reading, writing, and comprehension.

As many subjects have a “root” so does literacy. The place where our literacy is fostered from plays a vital role as to the future development of language. Goodman points out that there are three important factors when it comes to literacy.

1. “The functions and forms that the literacy event serve,

2. The use of oral language about written language, which is part of the literacy event and reflects society’s values and attitudes towards literacy,

3. Conscious awareness about literacy, including its functions, forms, and context” (318).

Since, we are young before we learn to talk we begin developing pictorial language. For instance, when a child wants something they begin to point at it and when they lean the name of the thing they want they begin to sound it out, which soon turns into speaking it out. As we slowly develop speaking, by the time we begin head start we already know how to speak and some what write. At this point we slowly develop written language, which will eventually lead us to progress in literacy.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Don't Walk.

It was sometime in March, early morning on a busy weekday when I was holding the hand of my great aunt, whom I was very close with at a very young age. Much of the sun was concealed in rolling cloud cover, but there came a moment or two where the warmness of energy sank deeper than the lulling breeze. Much of the walk consisted of a stroll around systematically colored stucco houses. People all around me crossed paths from every direction while the roar of yellow school buses waxed and waned through the grid of roads. When we would come up on an intersection, I would fix my eyes on the different traffic signs, trying to visualize what the flashing lights and pattern were trying to say to me. One sign in particular I would continue to remember to this very moment was the flashing lights pulsating in vibrant color of red that read “DONT WALK.” The first time I came across this sign, I remember trying to discern what it was trying to say and coming up with the simple phrase of “Don’t Milk” due a developing imagination and an expanding vocabulary. Along with these invigorating walks, Sesame Street played a huge factor in how much signs and visual learning helped me develop a vocabulary and ascribe meaning to the world around me. My mother and father noticed my heightened sense of fondness to reading traffic signs, railroad markers, and other vibrant markers throughout the suburban landscape of my childhood; that same year, Santa brought me a train set with large, self standing traffic signs carved out of wood.
By the time I was ready for kindergarten, I was beginning to read simpler books, and was beginning to write. One assignment in particular that stood out to me the most was the second assignment (which was a comprehensive follow up assignment to my first one) that asked me to spell out my first and last name, along with my address this time. Instead of completing the assignment, I threw a seemingly uncontrollable tantrum and cried myself to sleep because my last name was far too complicated for me to write and spell out compared to single syllable words like cat. Instead of still wishing that I had a different last name, I managed to complete the assignment with relative ease the following morning before I left for my third day of class. That same school year towards the end of it and my graduation into first grade, I wrote and mailed a letter to the President of the United States of America, Bill Clinton. I owe much of my positive academic experience to my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Nagel.

Literacy:crayons are delicious

When I was younger I only knew how to speak Spanish and never really understood how I learned to speak English. I guess it was all the cartoons and Disney movies that helped me out. My parents didn’t speak English that well and only used Spanish when we were home so I wasn’t fluent in English when I started going to school.

When I look back at my first years of elementary school I can’t remember a lot of it. But when I do look back at a clear memory I realize that it’s like I’m watching a silent picture film without the descriptions of what’s going on. I can see everything that’s going on but when I see the students and teacher talking I don’t know what they’re saying. I remember for kindergarten just writing down letters and looking at the other student’s papers to see if I was doing it correctly. I don’t think it made a different if I knew a lot of English in kindergarten because the other kids didn’t know that much either. As a class, all we knew was that crayons were delicious.

In one moment when I was in my first grade class, all the students were drawing on a blank piece of paper. We didn’t get to draw whatever we wanted because the teacher was instructing us what we needed to do on the paper. I remember seeing the teacher next the board talking and then drawing and the students drew what she wanted them to draw. I had to wait and see what the kid next to me was doing and copied what he did. I didn’t last long in that class, the teacher decided to have me moved into a class that was for bilingual students. In that class I understood everything and my memories for that class have sound. I remember practicing writing my first full sentence in English, it was about a mouse. I remember telling my brother in English not to call me my nickname around my friends. I would practice a lot of English with my brother since we were a year apart we had almost identical knowledge of the English language. I started to learn more English but maybe that was due to the Power Rangers blessing me with their presence on Saturday mornings on my television screen. In my second and third grade I was still in bilingual classes but I was getting more comfortable with my English. The second grade was great for me because that’s where I read one of favorite books and reenact it in a small play. A lot of our time was spent around the topics the books discussed so every time I was willing to do class work. I remember that my best friend and I were the first to check out an English book from the school library from our third grade class.

For the remainder of my elementary grades I had to go to a new school and I was placed in normal classes. My fourth grade year was full of memories playing with toys while the teacher was looking away and not understanding some of the class work. Halfway through the fifth grade I was placed in a program that was helping me with my writing and comprehension. It helped me out a lot because sixth grade went by great and I realized that the science project I did in the fourth grade was a disaster. I think the only reason I got credit for the project was because everyone liked the mess the volcano made.

It seems that school played a large part in my literacy because that was the only place where I was learning and using the English language. Outside of school a lot of my resources were limited to entertainment stuff. Television isn’t bad in helping out but I don’t think that the teachers want you to write about why Tommy was the best Power Ranger since he beat up Jason in the karate tournament.

Posted by Ruben

Literacy is ...a big cloud of emotions

Language was always confusing to me from the beginning. My parents only spoke to me in Spanish, my native language. I had heard my father speaking in fragmented English here and there, but it was never a concrete idea to me as a four year old. That’s when I started preschool, and I interacted with English speaking people. The language sounded alien to me, but I was fascinated by it and I wanted to know it all. It was hard for me to acquire the new language, (well new to me), because my parents didn’t speak it and the school I attended was not fully English speaking. My kindergarten teacher was Hispanic and she taught us mostly in Spanish. In the middle of my kindergarten school year we moved to Chicago from Los Angeles and I started in a school where English was the only language taught, it was one of the most confusing experiences of my life. My teacher was Caucasian and did not know a word of Spanish, it was hard for me to express myself , to communicate, I remember the frustration I felt because I so much wanted to ask questions and I could not get anything out, I mostly expressed myself in gestures, I felt like a total failure. I did eventually grasp some things like the alphabet, counting (I loved the “Little Indians” song she used to teach us how to count); I even read a short story once and felt really proud of myself. My family lived in Chicago for about 3 months, during the winter my infant brother caught influenza which was accelerated with the inclement weather so we came back to the California sun in December of 1993. Again, I started Kindergarten for the third time at Woodworth Elementary School in Inglewood. This school separated students who were English learners and integrated both Spanish and English in the classrooms. Here I was comfortable and I learned how to read and write in two languages, Spanish was easier for me because of my family background and I struggled with my English but I learned it. When I was in second grade the school completely switched to English and it was a really hard time for me, but time passes and with time, patience and the help of my teachers (who I am forever grateful to) I became literate in English. When graduating from Woodworth I was in the top of my class and went onto the magnet program in middle school. So when I was asked what literacy was to me I said that literacy is a big cloud of emotions, because for me acquiring literacy was and still is an emotional experience. Posted by Isabel

Memory Lane

Being bilingual became a formula, which obligated students to be placed into ESL. Only because I knew two languages it did not mean I needed that extra help. When I was placed in ESL, the teachers made me feel as if I were handicap. It almost became impossible to try to argue otherwise, so I took matters into my own hands and began excelling in English. It was my goal to be the best in reading, writing, and composition.

As I slowly began proving my case, I was excited and no longer felt like an alien among the other students. As time went on, I realized that I actually enjoyed reading specially writing. One specific incident I remember is in eight grade my teacher had us write an essay and first place would win a free lunch. I knew I had to do my best, not for the lunch, but for the reputation of having first place (I can be very competitive). Hence, when the teacher finished grading the essays she handed them back to us. Even though I got second place it never discouraged me from writing. At this specific moment, I definitely knew that I no longer saw literacy as a challenge to prove the acquired abilities that I developed. I simply realized that I have an immense passion for writing and reading.

Posted by Claudia