For this weeks reading I will be focusing on two readings: Works Intimacy: Performing Professionalism Online and On the Job and Time Management and the Quest for Organization. Although both readings focused on how we can function within the intimacy of the workplace setting, I particularly found one piece of Performing Professionalism Online interesting. Gregg states, “the autonomy of salaried work comes at a price: to constantly prove responsibility”(13). This struck true to me because at my job during the summer I am salaried and what I do is sometimes not at work. Some of my responsibilities include running errands, emailing and prepping events at my house. Although I am technically getting paid for all that I do, sometimes it is easy to think that since I am salaried I don’t have to put in the best effort because I will get paid either way. When I apply this to teaching practices I think completely different. Knowing that I am salaried on a graduate assistantship and that my work makes a difference in students learning, I continually find myself putting in more and more effort in hopes that students will gain a better experience and improve their overall writing skills. Like Gregg initially mentioned, salary work makes you continually prove responsibility in the fact that you are completing all of your work and with an adequate effort.

Within the article, Time Management and the Quest for Organization it mentions that, “productivity improvements manifest as the ability to detect inefficiencies and eliminate waste from ones schedule” (56). I was thinking of a way to apply this to my writing and how I could be more productive when I sit down to write something without getting distracted. I remembered at orientation they told us to set a timer and then take a break for half the time we worked. So if you worked for 30 minutes you would then take a 15 minute break. I then thought how does this connect to economics of literacy and I realized that we are all working to produce research for the university that they can further expand and profit from. However, as this ended on a depressing note, I do recommend the above method of work because it does eliminate those distractions that we all tend to fall for.

            Throughout the book, The Mind at Work, Mike Rose exposes different job experiences that mask complex, moving environments where the worker is much more than they seem. The first chapter focuses on waitressing and the complex parts that play into the importance of the job. In the beginning of the chapter Rose describes his mom’s experience as a waitress and how she worked well in an intense environment. Rose then describes each aspect of the job including decision making, memorization, selectivity, economic benefits and intelligence. One of the interesting characteristics to me was that of attention selectivity, Rose states, “Attention is described in terms of its selectivity, a focusing on particular aspects of the environment” (14). He used the example of a disgruntled customer and compared it to a regular clanking his cup of coffee, while both are important, as the waitress you need to carefully select who you are going to be able to get to first. This reminded me of my job working at a city skate and ski rental shelter. At times there would be lines wrapping around the building and you would sometimes see the face of someone familiar. In that case they already know your work ethic and are more understanding then the brand-new face waiting for their equipment. Your attention naturally shifts from the familiar face to the new face and you grab their stuff first, while grabbing their equipment you grab the familiar face equipment at the same time, and everyone is happy. However, like waitressing you have to continually keep in mind customer service. If you hand out the wrong size equipment and the person has to come back and ask for a different size that’s strike one. Strike two is if you mess up twice and strike three is if you take so long exchanging their size that the size they need is rented out. You have to constantly be thinking on your feet and converting sizes, memorizing heights and moving people in and out of a line. While reading Rose’s work it made me realize how a job from the outside looking in may seem incredibly easy however, the mind is constantly challenged, and the choices being made are made under the constraint of the customer/coworker.

In the beginning of chapter 4, Watkins stated, that while technological advances were increasing “educational attainment lagged behind, resulting in the reversal of the progress made in reducing income inequality” (125). I thought this was particularly interesting because as much as we want to keep schools an equal opportunity atmosphere, we have to continually update the resources which not every school has the budget to do. It is also interesting to note that schools are not only unequal with the resources that they provide to groups of students but this in turn can force the students to be at a disadvantage when they complete their schooling. An overall domino effect that leads some students that have the same amount of schooling as their peers at a disadvantage in the real world.  Also further in the chapter Watkins mentions the work of Goldin and Katz from the book, Race between Technology and Education, where it was stated, “The K-12 system is less than perfect for many students, but it is important to recognize that schools are essentially failing particular students”(127). The particular students that are being left behind are youth who attend inner-city schools and are not college ready. How are youth at inner-city schools at a disadvantage? Can the teachers help with this at all or is this a larger issue beyond the school in which they teach? How can everyone help students graduate while providing a hope of income equality? As Watkins stated, “the more important the production of human capital as an economic asset becomes, however, the less likely it is that other educational goals… can be met at all” (130). With this in mind, what does this mean for the future of education? How could this change the K-12 curriculum? Would this mean that inequalities would rise or decline?    

Brandt describes in the Rise of Writing how the declination of reading and how that has changed the culture of writing. Brandt uses each chapter to discuss factors of writing that have shifted such as status or occupation. For this post I will be focusing on the third chapter titled, “Occupation: author.” Brandt states, “Learning to read is an expectation and a rite of passage for children… But the idea of being or becoming a writer has more profound aspirational power” (98). Brandt then details different interviews of young adults were most describe the prestige of becoming a writer. Many described how they always dreamed of becoming a writer or how writing runs in their family and explained how awesome it would be to be an author. One thing interesting Brandt recognized throughout this chapter that young adults were more inspired by writing masters than they were by their parents. For example, a student had written to Nikki Giovanni and was incredibly honored and amazed when they saw that she wrote back. Brandt makes note that the parent passing along writing skills or being the iconic figure within this culture remains mostly hidden and students are more inspired by famous writers than their family. Nearing the end of the chapter Brandt notes that writing promotes self-improvement by having students choose to write, perspective-talking students try to rationalize with their audience and social uplift by bringing everyone together. Brandt ends the chapter with, “the dependency of writing upon reading is not assumed” (133). The most interesting part of this chapter to me is that we can no longer say that reading is more important than writing because writing is now equal if not more empowering than reading. I find this interesting because for so long reading was pushed as the best skill and benefit to learning. I personally was not great at reading. My mom had to sit with me each day and go through picture books and chapter books to make sure that I was staying on pace with my peers. I also was put in remedial reading in middle school because I simply could not keep up with the average student. However, my writing was always above on test scores and classroom assignments. This makes me think that my love for writing has always been greater than my motivation for reading. This begs the question that when did this “rise” in writing truly begin?

All of the readings assigned for class today dealt with some type of globalization whether it be language, education or workforce centered. Each reading described in detail the changes that would occur if English was the primary language taught in schools or used gaining work capital. However, the two readings I will be focusing on for my post are “Globalization, Corporatism, and Critical Language Education” and “Eduscapes.” Before describing in detail the educational shift globalization would have on the curriculum, in the article “Educscapes” Carmen explains to the reader that, “So while we might accept that greater educational standardization is part of the globalisation and massification of higher education, educational provision in fact looks very different on the ground where it is culturally, locally, and regionally differentiated” (99). This is important to recognize because if the U.S. was ever to globalize education and shift education policies, they will look and act completely different compared to Singapore or England. One of the main concerns discussed in, “Globalization, Corporatism, and Critical Language Education” is that, “Issues of language rights are now compounded by another level of complexity: the shifting and ambiguous positions and relations of the state, the nation, the multinational corporation, and their real and virtual borders” (2). If we take a closer look at this statement, we realize that even if policies were to switch regarding language curriculum, they would need to switch with knowledge of the corporate order pertaining to that language. For example, if we required Mandarin to be taught within school and all students were required to learn it, this would mean that the language of Mandarin must have some financial and entrepreneurial gain for students. The questions I still have regarding this shift in policies and literacy education are: What would this look like regarding lesson plans? How would assessments be based? Would writing and reading outcomes shift? How could we tell if this type of learning was successful?

In the chapter, “English During Communism” Prendergast discusses the limitations of the English language and how English was being taught in Czechoslovakia during the time period of communism. As the country tried to become more and more “normalized” there was little presence of the English language. Because the usefulness of the English language was limited there was very little teaching of it and the schoolteachers lack proficiency. For this chapter Prendergast uses many real-life examples to portray how different families learned English during this time period. One of the examples that I found most interesting was the story of Jan. Jan’s parents were determined to teach their children English through any means possible. They would set up in their house “English Speaking Zones” where the children were only allowed to speak English. They would have Jan immersed in an environment where English was the only language spoken such as on a vacation with representatives from England and there Jan was to only speak and learn English. Because English was not being taught in school with adequate proficiency, Jan’s father took it upon himself to teach Jan. For example, “Rather than having Jan look up each word he didn’t know in the dictionary, he instructed him to keep reading until he figured out the word’s meaning in context” (30). This shows that Jan’s father was not only trying to teach Jan the English language by memorization but by critical thinking as well. Jan’s parents knew that Jan was not going to be able to travel, support himself or make a living without the knowledge of the English language and continued to push for his future success.

 I felt this chapter said a lot about how language can limit our opportunities. In most high schools you have the option to take another language. But for most students this is something that they do for college or because they need another class. I know in my experience I took Spanish through my junior year but wasn’t very good, didn’t practice outside of school and didn’t mind dropping it my senior year. However, I was not acknowledging the fact that learning a foreign language was something that was going to help my future success. It is interesting to think about this in a different light. If I would have learned Spanish and became proficient how would this have helped my college career? Could I have obtained another teaching license? Would I be using it? Would I be making more money? I think Jan’s experience learning English sheds light on just how much we rely on language for economic success.

For this course I am hoping to better understand the intersection of economics and literacy. And continue to research the ties between race and literacy.

Goals:

• To be able to define literacy in a way that is applicable to teaching and restructure my instruction of writing and reading to improve student performance.
• Implement literacy theories and methods within a curriculum to improve student inclusively.

During the Brown vs. Board era the phrases “equal protection” and “importance of education” were redefined. However, as an attempt to make things equal and fair for everyone within the public education system, the conclusion was nowhere near fair. Catherine Prendergast in the article title, “The Economy of Literacy: How the Supreme court Stalled the Civil Rights Movement, argues that during the Brown vs. Board Era, literacy became white property, part of the white identity and a way to continue to devalue African Americans/Latinos in education. She used two major legal cases to depict this argument. The first one introduced was Washington vs. Davis (1976) where there was a mandated police force entrance written exam. The exam was found to be intentionally racially discriminatory and the results showed that African Americans were failing at twice the rate that whites were passing. The second case was Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke in 1977. A student named Alan Bakke got rejected from the University of California Davis medical college twice. The student felt as if he was getting discriminated against for being a white man. Prendergast aligned these two cases to demonstrate both perspectives of the “literacy crisis.” Similar to Prendergast the article “Resistance and Accommodation in Inner-City Schools” by Louis Miron and Mickey Lauria shows how kids tend to struggle when they experience an atmosphere with a lack of caring. The articles focuses on the African American student body of two inner city high schools, they briefly brought up that not only African Americans are shown to struggle on achievement tests, Latino students are as well. The article began by talking about minorities in a public-school setting and mentioned how they, “vigorously wish to compete for academic excellence…… [but are] denied the opportunity” (Miron and Lauria 1998). Prendergast mentions in the introduction and the chapter that literacy is used as a marker to continue to separate students within schools. This contributes to the overall achievement gap and other learning gaps that deeply impact the student. Not only can the reader see from Prendergast that literacy has continued to develop as a way to disrupt racial justice but as a way to devalue minorities in comparison to whites.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

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The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

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