"All five student that were there [school] didn't learn anything. So there was no reason to go. And it was too far from where we lived. It was really far; we had to cross the trails, and there was a ravine that got so full in the winter, we couldn't get through."

I chose this quote from the passage we read because it saddened me. As a future teacher, it makes me sad to think that there are places in this world where not everyone can attend school. For some it is physically impossible, others financially impossible, and then there is the option of school  not even being an option for them. Us as Americans definitely take school for granted. We wine about going and doing the work when others would do anything to be able to go. Some go to college, party, and fail out wasting their parents or their own money. For some there is that "ravine" called money that is keeping them from attending college and furthering their education. College is expensive. My parents couldn't afford to send me which is why I studied hard, got scholarships, and applied for loans. Not everyone can afford that and its sad. As a teacher, my goal is to get students thinking about furthering their education past high school, no matter what age group I may teach. I'd love to be a guidance counselor one day as well. I want students to know that that "ravine" isn't as big as they think it is and that they can cross it someday.

Literacy knowledge is knowledge that children bring with them when first starting school. It is their knowledge that they acquire about literacy before they actually start kindergarten. Some examples would be when a child scribbles down letters and thinks that they have written words. The child knows that adults use a pen and paper to write things but the child hasn't quite learned how to spell yet. Another example would be when a child opens a book and uses their finger to skim across the page while talking out loud. The child may not be saying the right words, but has the concept correct.

Stereotypes whether we want to believe it or not effect the way we teach. This is especially true for literacy. Statistics show that children from poverty aren't as efficient in reading and writing as children from middle class or upper class homes. Why is this true? Children from poverty do not have as much access to reading and writing because their parents most likely cannot read and write as well either. I am certainly not saying that this is true in all cases but this is the stereotype. To fix this stereotype, teachers need to look at these children being culturally different instead of deficit. In some cases, which I am first hand on this subject, teachers will just "pass along" a student even if they are not as fluent in reading and writing as the others and then that student will get behind and never get a good foundation of literacy. This happened to both of my cousins. Instead of holding them back and fixing the problem, the school just passed them along because they didn't want to deal with it. My aunt had to fight for my cousins to get help and they ended up having to attend a private school to get the help they needed. I'm sure this is not the only case of this happening either. Teachers think that they will just get the help they need in the next grade level and will be able to catch up but what some teachers do not realize is that those students never catch up.

Should social class and language effect the way you receive an education? Certainly not! But does it? The answer is sometimes. This brings us back to the stereotype. In the article, Donny did not receive the best education he could have because he was a "poor white" or a "hillbilly". His mother, Jenny, was not taken seriously because of her accent and her inability to read or write. She was seen as unimportant because of these factors. She did not speak the way proper educated people speak. She was not from the same social class as the faculty members she spoke to so they looked down upon her. All she wanted was for her son to get the help he needed because she did not want him to go through what her and her husband go through everyday. Because of the ignorance of the school system, Donny wasn't getting the help he needed. Because of the way he spoke, the teacher pronounced him helpless and unimportant to her. This should never be a factor when teaching a child to read or write. Not everyone speaks the same way and we shouldn't. Just because a student pronounces a word differently does not mean that they do not know how to spell it. A teacher should never ask a student to lose their dialect. The teacher can explain how to properly pronounce a word or letter but as long as they are reading and spelling it correctly does it really matter if it sounds a little different from the way the other students are saying it? Being from West Virginia, I know I pronounce things differently. I say "huntin" instead of "hunting" but either way, everyone knows what I am talking about. This brings me to the subject of "proper English". There are certain times when a student should know when to use proper English such as writing a paper, in a job interview, college interview, writing a letter, and many more but when talking to one another, talk the way you talk. It says in the article that "no one talks like written English" and I completely agree with this statement.

I think I may have touched on this subject but in order to improve literacy in the schools, we can never give in to the stereotypes or give up on our students. We must work individually with them, not just pass them along, and treat them as individuals that need different instruction, not "hillbillies" that cannot talk.


"Bright, capable, young men and women do not think they belong in college because they are hillbillies."

This quote above breaks my heart. To think that this stereotype of being a "hillbilly" makes young men and women not want to attend college saddens me. No one should ever feel like they don't belong somewhere and to think that that stereotype makes them back away instead of standing up to it makes me sick to my stomach. I'm not one to back down from a challenge or for someone to tell me I'm not good enough. If I know I am capable to do something, I'm going to do it and work ten times harder at it just to prove you wrong. I live in West Virginia, and I'm not a hillbilly. I'm from a middle class, may even lower income family. I have a slight accent at times and I am attending college and I will make something out of myself. My parents didn't go to college and I won't let people think that just because they didn't means that I'm not going to make something of myself. I had a good life growing up but I want better for my children and I will not let my future students ever think that they are not good enough to do something.

I chose this picture because this is what the two articles we read were about. No one likes to be a victim of a stereotype and nothing good ever comes from it. This is something we need to think about and us as West Virginians know what it is like to be a victim. Do you think you should stereotype your students?

References

Purcell-Gates, V. (2002). "..as soon as she opened her mouth!": Issues of language, literacy, and power. In A Journal of LiteracyRetrieved from https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6DFAmexYq7vMGQxMjI1OTEtMjAyZS00NzJmLTg1OTUtODlmMGQ0ZDIxOTVk/edit?hl=en_US


O'Brien, J. (2003, May 10). Tall tales of appalachia. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/10/opinion/tall-tales-of-appalachia.html