“Literacy narratives are powerfully rhetorical linguistic accounts through which people fashion their lives; make sense of their world, indeed construct the realities in which they live. Literacy narratives are sometimes laden so richly with information that conventional academic tools and ways of discussing their power to shape identities; to persuade, and reveal, and discover, to create meaning and affiliations at home, in schools, communities, and workplaces, are inadequate to the task. For this reason, the collection focuses on the work of both narrative theorists and literacy educators.”

My first encounter with the discourse of literacy was in my education courses.  I loved the pedagogical conversations literacy raised and the interdisciplinary nature of it.  Literacy was not limited to ELA concerns, but across all subjects.  Being literate is a definition that changes in so many different contexts, and I think the Stories That Make Us perfectly demonstrated that fluidity and diversity.

“Literacy is a fundamentally human activity,” which shows that it’s not supposed to be perfect, nor that there’s one specific way to do it “right” (Selfe).  I think this is a potent remark because too often, especially in education, there is a tendency to want a correct way to do things.  What’s the most effective way to teach? to engage students? to manage a classroom?  When you are dealing with young minds, there’s such a pressure to do it “right,” and I think in many cases that this mentality produces a stifling sense of control or rigidity in the classroom that doesn’t allow for the plethora of creativity and literacy practices of each student be explored, augmented, and shared.

In the Foreword of DALN, David Bloome warns, “A definition of literacy as a set of autonomous cognitive and linguistic skills posits literacy as something to be acquired by individuals.”  Coming from an educationally-based background with literacy, I find that to be absolutely true.  In the field of education, there is such a focus on teaching certain skills that are preordained by the state to be the skills that all students need to learn.  While they are mostly vague and open-ended enough to allow varied teaching, literacy education does tend to fit this mold of acquirement.  There’s less of an emphasis on the amazingly diverse practices students already have and building on those than there is on teaching them a specific set of ones that they will all share, but may not work for most.

One of the exhibits I was most invested in was “Scaffolding Stories.”  I really enjoyed the educational perspective of this as it tied into various examples of literacy narratives pertaining to learning to read and write.  Williams starts with the example and assessment that many times with educational systems, they can be classified as “a system they seemed to think might be engineered to meet the needs of someone else.”  However, this digital narrative reveals counternarratives to that claim in the personal experiences of the featured writers.

My own experiences really aligned with Beth’s, for example.  I have two younger cousins with whom I am very close, and they are only in elementary school right now.  I was there for their births and nearly every moment after that.  The older one (my mini-me) was classified as not as a strong reader from an early age.  This struck me so hard with me being such an avid reader and vocal advocate for reading.  So, I would sit down with her and read.

Reading/Watching Beth’s narrative made me think more critically about my cousin’s own literacy and reading development.  When her grandfather asked, “are you really reading to me or are you telling me what you remember is on the page?”  I FELT that.  Because I recalled my cousin reading the first two letters of a word and then jumping to a conclusion without even considering the last few letters.  While not exactly the same situation as Beth, there was such a reliance on the familiar that she wasn’t actually decoding to the best of her ability.

This led me to think about what she was reading and why.  Perhaps my cousin just wasn’t interested in the narratives she was forced to read.  Perhaps she didn’t find the environment of having to read to improve conducive to growth.  So, I switched it up.  What did I know she was interested in?  In what settings?  What were her literacy skills that she was already naturally growing outside of school?

This led us to a wealth of options where she could develop her reading and writing and not even realize that’s what she was doing because it was just such a natural and enjoyable process.  That was a monumental success for me, and I hope she thinks so too when she looks back.  But all of this is to say that literacy is personal.  It’s about creating “ownership” and “empathy,” as well as “formulating our own sense of self” which changes in various contexts.

The innate desiring to tell a story is shared by all I think, and there’s such a need to give everyone the resources to do that.  Even if they have the means of telling, there are methods to help them heighten those skills too.  That’s what should be focused on in education.  Creating an environment where students can explore their own practices and give them a platform to write narratives allowing them to take ownership of their own practices, skills, identity, and contexts.