Beyond Gadgets:
What Does It Mean to Be a Literacy Teacher Today?
Franki Sibberson
I have been doing a lot of thinking about what it means to be a literacy educator at a time when the ways we read, write, and access texts are changing so quickly. With all of the new tools and the talk around "21st Century Literacy," I know that reading books and other texts are not the only ways to be literate.
I've learned that it's no longer an option not to try out some of the new tools, forums, and media available for reading, writing, and sending text. When I look honestly at my habits over the past few years, I realize my own reading and writing habits have changed dramatically.
The NCTE Definition of 21st Century Literacies includes these powerful words: Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. I love reading books and want to share that passion with my students, yet my own reading/writing life involves much more than reading books. That leads me to think hard about the messages I give my students about what "counts" as reading and writing these days.
My Reading Habits
I am reading more than I ever have before. The information and ideas I have access to have expanded to include almost unlimited sources and formats. Some weeks, I spend hours reading without ever finishing a book. Instead, I spend quite a bit of time on websites and blogs, watch video clips, and chat with friends from many different places and professional communities on Twitter. I follow several teacher blogs and also find comfort in blogs written by working mothers. I find recipes on the internet from people I have come to know well from following their blogs.
Several years ago, I would spend my Saturday mornings sipping a cup of tea while reading the local paper. But my Saturday routine has changed. Now, on Saturday mornings, I still sip tea, but I read the Big Fresh, the online newsletter from Choice Literacy. I skim through the articles and view the videos included in the week's newsletter. I don't watch the television news as regularly as I used to, but I check CNN.com frequently throughout the day.
My writing has changed as well. I have learned to text because my teenage daughter will communicate with me via text when a phone call is "too embarrassing". Thinking back to my writing process years ago, I realize that I initially loved the idea of computers and the tools they provided for word processing, but never imagined that I would be able to actually compose on the computer. I truly believed that I would always be writing my first thoughts on paper and then transferring them to a computer. I couldn't imagine writing any other way.
What is most valuable is that my literacy has expanded my communities. Instead of learning only from literacy leaders and the few authors I've been fortunate enough to hear at an annual conference or two, I can now learn from so many different people on a daily basis by accessing the internet. The thinking that is possible when I interact in new communities has been key to who I have become as a reader, writer and thinker. I love the way that I can become part of a community that I did not even know existed only a few years ago.
When I really think about it, my literate life has changed dramatically because of the 21st Century tools available to me, and the communities I've been able to become part of because of those.
Sharing Our Literate Lives with Students
So what does this mean for me as a literacy teacher? Over the next year, I am going to explore this question in a new monthly series for Choice Literacy. If you're a tech expert, I'll apologize in advance that I'll probably use some of the technologies and tools in nontraditional ways, since I'm coming at them as a book lover, and as a person who isn't an early adopter for new ways of doing things. But that's part of the point of the series - I think those of us who are starting from a love of reading and writing and a sound knowledge of literacy instruction need to integrate the tools with the needs of our students. That means their purposes and uses will evolve as we try them out with students, and allow children to help us see how they can be integrated into classroom and daily life. My focus is always going to be on how I can help students use a new technology to develop lifelong reading and writing habits and skills, even as those habits and skills are changing rapidly.
I will start by bringing my new and emerging habits to the classroom and school library. I am going to make sure that I don't rely on the things that I've always done. I am going to include new ways of supporting my students. My goals are to be conscious of the messages I give my students about the many types of reading and writing I value, and to share my own expanding literacy experiences. I'll make sure to include the favorite sites that I visit, blogs that I follow in Google Reader, and favorite people I have come to know when chatting about children's books.
I am going to focus some of my learning this year on the ways that these new literacies will influence my teaching. I plan to once again expand my learning community to include people whose expertise is a bit different from mine -- educators who are focusing their thinking on the role of technology in education. I want to learn ways to include these new technologies into my teaching without compromising the beliefs I have about literacy and learning. This will mean figuring out ways to engage in conversations with learning communities I am not currently part of, taking risks with new projects with my students, working closely with other teachers, and finding print and online resources around the area of technology.
I love books and children's literature, and these will always be the anchors of my own work. But I can't be comfortable being a literacy teacher today without expanding my notion of what it means to be literate in the 21st Century.
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