#2 - Adaptable Literacy

[I think I accidentally saved this post as a draft instead of publishing. I promise it was written a while back & just not posted! =P ]


Adolescent literacy: Turning promise into practice.

Chapter 10: “Teaching English Language Arts in a ‘Flat’ World” by Jim Burke

Key Points of the Chapter:

Necessity of Adaptability in the Face of Change (p. 150)—students need to learn not only how to be literate adults, but to understand how, why, and when to adjust their methods of communication, whether this is in the intake of information through reading or in their own communication with other people, either in the personal or private sectors.

Variety of Necessary Literacy Skills (p. 151)

Information and Communication Skills— relationship of information and media and their roles in society; connection between forms of communication and understanding their uses in carious contexts

Thinking and Problem-Solving Skills— connections between logic/reason and creativity; capability to recognize, analyze, and solve problems

Interpersonal and Self-Directional Skills— teamwork and leadership capabilities; recognizing cross-contextual information; exercising personal responsibility; setting personal standards; communal responsibility

Different Kinds of People (pp. 152-160)

Collaborators and Orchestrators —are skilled in the organization of people and resources, often recognizing and utilizing relationships between the two.

Synthesizers — are capable of recognizing connections between pieces of information and using them to adapt the same information to different disciplines.

Explainers —often assist others in understanding presented information. In the business world this often takes the form of training and informational seminars.

Leveragers —are capable of gauging and managing, and adapting their own skill levels by having a thorough understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses in a given circumstance.

Adapters — have the capacity to adapt to the ever-changing workplace through the acquisition of new skills, abilities, and information. They understand the necessity of general and basic skills that can be adjusted for various situations.

Green People —use their surrounding environment to determine what skills or knowledge apply in a certain circumstance. They observe carefully and grasp opportunities that apply to their skill set or can adapt their skill set based on the environment.

Personalizers —can take a basic service or skill and adjust it to meet a need in a particular context or community.

Localizers —utilize global resources on a local scale. This requires the ability to look for resources outside the local context and adapt them to a smaller scale.

My Response:

One of the key words that I noticed throughout the chapter is adapt. It did not always appear in the same manner—words such as adjust, alter, change, manipulate, expand, and several others were often used, but they all suggest the same theme. Both in school and in the working world, a certain flexibility is required in order to be capable of both standing out as a unique, creative individual and fitting in with the particular group of people that you are working with. As far as literacy is concerned, one might say that a student has to be multilingual, so as to be capable of adapting in various scenarios.

In the classroom, these skills are not easy to teach if they do not come naturally to a student. The best way is to simply provide students with opportunities to branch out and learn as many basic skills as they can, they create situations in which those skills need to be applied in various combinations. Like many things in life, the simple answer is potentially the most difficult: practice, practice, practice.