9 /24 post

One of the most crucial ideas from the reading is something that is quite prevalent in my life. People read differently. “A person who understands one type of text is not necessarily proficient at all reading types. An experienced reader of mathematical proofs may be perplexed when asked to make sense of a metaphor in a poem” (Reading for Understanding, 20). One of the most evident examples of this in my life is my relationship with some close people in my life. My friend, who is an engineer, often has me proof read her work. Often I am there to examine for grammatical errors, however, I cannot speak to any of the content. I rarely have any idea what is being written about despite everything being written in English. I do not have the educational capital to understand it. However, on the flip side, I have friends involved in education and special education and I am far more adept at understanding their writing and conversation. To expect everyone to be able to perform reading without learning how to in different disciplines is setting up a reader for failure. Reading is not a universal skill.

A comical analogy to this idea is from “The Big Bang Theory” television show. As many of you have seen it, Sheldon, one of the main characters, is a nerdy genius who knows a great deal of just about everything. However, he often misses the nuances of conversation and specifically sarcasm. While adept at any sort of academic language, Sheldon is deficient in social interaction and social verbal literacy. While this is a comical example, it shows that literacy is involved holistically in our lives.

In my high school career, I remember all of my teachers working together to reinforce good writing. All the writing rules and standards that were put forth in our English classes were mandated in our history papers, science write ups, and any other class that had papers due. My high school experience reinforced the characteristics of reading into our writing. Because reading proficiency varies with the situation, reading is problem solving and also a complex, our teachers reinforced this into our writing across all subjects. While this process was not perfect for all of us, we still learned proficiency in reading primary sources, textbooks, novels, plays, newspaper articles, and more. As such, I have a wide discipline understanding. However, even with that understanding, there is so much I do not comprehend because of the specialization of material and content.

As teachers therefore, I find this quote important for the culture that we create in our classroom. “We see the kind of teaching that learning environment that can develop students confidence and competence as readers of various kinds of challenging texts as one that requires the interaction of students and teachers in multiple dimensions of classroom life.” We need to facilitate as educators, or for that matter, facilitate in role of life we fill, a culture of helping students to examine literature critically, and teach how to understand in the variable contexts that we experience.