Looking Back...In Retro-Spect!

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RSA Animate – Changing Education Paradigms

Changing Education Paradigms by Ken Robinson
Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson will ask how can we make change happen in education and how do we make it last?

Language Story 2

I can’t really recall when I fell in love with books and reading, but I do remember when I feel in love with stories. My mother is a great storyteller. I don’t know that she really knows the impact she has had on my life because of her great skill in storytelling. I remember getting into bed with her in the early hours of the morning, when I was just a little girl, after my father left for work. My mother was a stay-at-home mom and she and I had lots of together time, as I was her only child. I remember nestling into her arms and holding my warm milk bottle in one hand while caressing the silk nightgown she wore with the other and closing my eyes and envisioning the stories that my mother would tell.

I will always cherish the many times I asked her to retell the story of Hansel and Gretel. She didn’t call them that in Italian, but later I discovered that the story she told me about the children in the forest was indeed that of Hansel and Gretel. My mother told stories with such conviction that it was never too difficult to create images in my mind of the people and the places she described. I could listen to her for hours. I loved the sound of her voice and the sparkle in her eyes as she recounted the stories of her childhood. She brought everything to life and I was so excited to be around her, because she was able to transport me to new and interesting places, without even leaving the safety and the warmth of her bed.

As I got older, my mother read stories to me from her books and articles from her magazines, at any opportunity she could. She, too, treasured the time we spend in storytelling. When I was in university and too busy to sit and listen to her read, she would lament the fact that she and I didn’t have quality time anymore. To her, quality time meant story time.

When my children were born, she became re-energized. Her talent for telling stories was revived and she grew excited at the prospect of babysitting, so that she could put on her storytelling hat and become the magician that took my children to wonderful places and allowed them to image beautiful unicorns and princes and princesses. Her stories continue today…at the young age of 86, she is the ultimate storyteller and her stories will live on years after she is gone, because she has had the wisdom and the gift to be able to turn simple words into awesome stories that my children and I will forever cherish.

Language Story 1

Language Stories


Reading has always been a passion for me. I loved the bookmobile…it was the only library I could get to. My mom didn’t drive and the closest library was still only accessible by taking public transit and that cost money and we didn’t have much, so I didn’t go. The book mobile on the other had arrived promptly at 4:00 every Thursday afternoon at the Steinburg Plaza…just a few blocks from my house. Oh, how I waited patiently for those Thursday afternoons!

I can still smell the lovely musty scent of the old books that lined the shelves on the big bus that sat in the middle of the plaza parking lot. I remember lining up outside the door and waiting for the driver to open the door so I could climb the four steps that brought me to my haven. I recall the first time, or at least the first time that I remember, that I entered a bookmobile and how in awe I was at the amount of books inside a bus!!! Who would have guessed that that light blue bus that came every Thursday could offer me so much joy?

As I ascended the steps that led to my oasis, I was met by the friendly driver-librarian, who made me feel so important. He, although, at some point I recall the driver-librarian to be a she, was the one who held the key that opened the door to endless possibilities of escaping into worlds that were so different than my own.

One very fond memory I have involves me selecting a book about a little girl my age (about 8 at the time) entitled Mischievous Meg and running all the way home so that I could begin my adventure with this little girl who was so unlike me in behaviour and who I secretly wanted to befriend. She dared to do all the things I didn’t. I envied her mischievous ways, in some odd sort of way. She lived the life that sometimes I wish I had the courage to experience. But, she afforded me the experience without getting into trouble and that was safe… and that was good for me.

The bookmobile was my escape…my haven…the place where fantasy became reality and I was free of the limitations that existed in the world in which I really lived.
Thanks Mr./Mrs. Driver-Librarian…thanks for doing your job and letting me experience a world that I may never have been able to enter if it weren’t for the bookmobile!

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SYNTHESIS PAPER

It is hard to interest those who have everything
in those who have nothing.
~Helen Keller


I suppose this quote sums it up for me. The notion isn’t that help can’t be provided for those who need help, but rather the notion is that there is no interest in doing so. The education system has long been satisfied with the ‘status quo’, for status quo requires less effort spent on those deemed 'less deserving'. Wow, am I sounding bitter? Not really...I think I'm sounding optimistic because as our weekend classes have demonstrated, there are many of us who are uncomfortable and/or uncertain with what we are reading, discussing and learning about in this course and that for me signals a readiness for affecting change. Finn's book, Literacy with an Attitude has been a tremendously affective resource in starting the dialogue that makes us so uncomfortable. Our response to feeling uncomfortable is a burning need to take action. We, as leaders in education, need to keep the flame burning, for the danger is that if we don’t see a purpose in affecting change in the interest of our students, we’ll all just ‘go-along and get-along’ and fade into the complacent society that dares not disturb the universe.

We’ve all figured out through our own experiences as students that if we’re ‘good’ ‘complacent’ and give teachers what they ask for, we’ll succeed in school. Only, for some of us it wasn’t that easy. As a child of immigrant parents with little formal education and strong cultural ties, I found myself living two cultures simultaneously and sometimes these cultures clashed. It was during those turbulent times that I found myself asking the most important questions…Who am I? Where am I going? and How will I get there? In spite of the expectations put on me by both my family and the society in which I live, I needed to determine whether or not those expectations aligned with my own. Well, I haven’t yet figured it out and perhaps that’s a good thing. Reading Finn has helped me to position myself and reposition myself, after reading each chapter.

During my early school years, I developed what has been called “oppositional identity”. I didn’t want to betray my culture or my working-class community by adopting the values, beliefs and attitudes of the upper middle class school teachers who taught me. I struggled with wanting to overcome the barriers that I faced and yet, not become a ‘border-crosser’ and therefore betray my own community. However, in my later high school years I found it necessary, as most immigrant minorities do, to adopt the beliefs, attitudes, interests, values and behaviour of the mainstream world in which I lived, for my own benefit. I believed that without abandoning my own, I could make both work, and I was confident that I would be accepted. By doing so, I have been able to remain who I am, at any given time and still participate fully in the world. I had to work on not becoming complacent and simply meet the expectations set for me by others. I had to connect what I was learning in school to my life, so that I could create knowledge from my life and see myself not as an individual separate from society, but rather to see myself as a member of a common society.

While I was in elementary school, one of my teachers read the short story by Leo Tolstoy entitled The Three Questions. Years later, I found a picture book that tells the same story. It’s a story about a young boy, Nikolai, who asks his wise old turtle friend to answer 3 questions: When is the best time to do things? Who is the most important one? and What is the right thing to do? To these, the old turtle responds: There is only one important time and that time is now; The most important one is always the one you are with; and, the most important thing is to do good for the one who is standing at your side. As I continued to read Finn’s work, I found myself nodding, frowning, smiling and questioning, for the wisdom of the old turtle still resonates in my life. When we talk about educating working-class children in their own self-interest, we should all heed to the wise old turtle’s answers to the 3 questions. As Freire suggests, we should “educate working-class children like rich children-in their own self-interest”. This can be done if we remember to honour all students and promote literacy as thinking…being critical and asking questions. This type of literacy allows everyone to take action and seek collective solutions to common problems that we all share. We, as educators, need to ask, “Do our students benefit from the methods of education to which they are subjected?” If the answer is no, then is incumbent upon us to make the necessary changes so that no student is disadvantaged or marginalized because of the social class to which he/she belongs.

The discussion about implicit and explicit language is the one that reverberates the loudest for me, for it was this very style of language that was probably the most problematic for me when I was growing up, although, I certainly wasn’t able to articulate it! The fact that implicit and explicit language are related to values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours makes so much sense. Finn speaks of Bernstein’s beliefs that ‘the [British] working class habitually use implicit language and the [British] middle class habitually use explicit language…and because the language of school is typically explicit, …the working class has a great disadvantage.’ This was a ‘aha’ moment for me, for sure!! I grew up in an authoritarian style home and I did whatever my parents told me to do, because it was understood that if they (those who had a position and authority) told you to do something, you just did it. Children were seen as subordinates and parents and other authority figures, like teachers, made decision because they were in charge. This was often frowned upon by children, especially adolescents, but the dynamics were implicitly understood. Decisions were rarely discussed or challenged. For me this was problematic, as I grew up in a mixed-class neighbourhood in North York and some of my closest friends were middle or upper-middle class and they had very open, explicit conversations with their parents at home and so during discussion time at school, they were equipped with the language and the discourse to have conversation. On the other hand, those of us who were not accustomed to such openness often remained silent or waited for the teacher to ask us directly for our opinion and then we still only offered an opinion which we may or may not have believed, but that would be accepted by the mainstream. Oh, how hard I worked at fitting into the norms set by a middle-class education system!

Today, we need to be more attuned to what knowledge and experiences our students bring to the classroom and allow them to engage in their learning and become literate, not just functionally literate, but powerfully literate, so that they can feel confident and in control of themselves and their environment. As Stuckey states: To be literate is to be legitimate. That is the obligation of all school systems…to make everyone legitimate so that they are empowered to do collective good. How can students feel legitimate if the discourse at home is incongruent with the discourse at school? We need to address how we distribute knowledge and who gets access. More importantly, it’s about how we provide opportunity for students to learn literacy. It’s about how we teach, just as much as what we teach. In order to make change happen, we need to trip up the system…we need to disturb the universe, because social practices can be changed if we change the discourse.

And remember the answers given by the wise old turtle: There is only one important time and that time is now; The most important one is always the one you are with; and, the most important thing is to do good for the one who is standing at your side.

Literacy Mindsets

Written Response for Workshop #2

To be… literate or not to be… literate!

If literacy is tied to economics and class, it seems obvious that to be literate means belonging to the upper class and not to be literate means belonging to the underclass. If acquiring literacy were the only condition then why can’t the underclass get out? All they have to do is learn to read and write and everything will take care of itself. Not so, says Paolo Freire, who distinguishes between critical literacy and naïve literacy. His distinction helps me to see the vicious cycle that the marginalized members of our society are caught in. For example, it is no wonder that the underclass can’t get out of their social class when schools, as Freire suggests, impose naïve literate views on them. These are views that paint a gloomy picture, one that promises no escape and offers only hopelessness. What schools should be doing is promoting critical literacy, so that students can relate what’s happening in society to what’s happening within themselves. This view concurs with what Mills calls “sociological imagination”. When we can ask Why am I in this predicament? How did I get here? and What forces have not afforded me opportunities to get out? we can make sense of what’s happening and take control of our lives.

To be literate is more than having acquired the skill to read (decode words) and write (spell correctly). This alone doesn’t afford the most important element of literacy and that is the ability to read the world and make sense of it. But when practices and conceptions of reading and writing reflect only the interests of the upper class, the underclass become helpless and at best can only try to adapt and when they don’t they are blamed for not caring enough or for being lazy. Discussions about why some people fail to rise above the unfortunate conditions in which they find themselves almost always end up with some people who blame the victims and others who feel sorry for them. But, neither of these opinions help the problem. They just perpetuate it. When it comes to education, I think it’s important to discuss solutions rather than simply attempt to diagnose the problem. I see this happen all the time when teachers and administrators are trying to determine why Franco can’t seem to earn his high school credits. They inevitably list a whole slew of causes and sometimes symptoms, but hardly ever solutions. I don’t know all the possible solutions, but I do know that I’m frustrated with the school system taking the easy way out. I think the answer lies in making students, like Franco, part of the process of finding a solution. Helping him become critically literate, by promoting sociological imagination will allow Franco to understand the world and his place in it. He will make the necessary adjustments and adapt or assimilate on his own terms. But just like a painter who in the absence of a silk canvas, uses the sidewalk to paint his masterpiece, Franco, once he becomes critically literate, can ‘get into’ mainstream society, one way or another.

It becomes incumbent upon us, as educators, to establish conditions that will include the subordinate group. This suggests that we promote critical literacy in schools, so that ALL students in our classes are given a voice and see themselves in the texts that they use. When we make knowledge relevant to them they become part of the equation, for when it is irrelevant to their lives it remains phony and awry. My annoyance is further exasperated by the counterfeit literates that walk the halls of many educational institutions proclaiming to educate young minds! These are the ones who are certain that they possess the absolute truth and are called to impart this upon the empty vessels who sit in the rows of desks before them everyday. By this, I mean those who O’Neil refers to as improperly literate. They are the ones who are reduced to career inspired, complacent, conformists, and graceful livers who believe they are in control of themselves and their environment, but are the furthest from being properly literate of all. In order to help our students become properly literate we must ensure that they are able to connect their knowledge and experience to the events of every new day. Language is the vehicle by which we become ‘free’ to engage in the world in which we live. Using language effectively is power. The power of language allows us to be able to recognize and articulate the connections we make with the world and it affords us the freedom to ‘be’ in the world. Being consciously in the world empowers us and motivates us to engage in social action. By using language, all students, the marginalized and the mainstream, have the power to act on and even change their reality.

Yet, I remain uncertain that saying it makes it so! As Freire reminds us, “…all teaching is intrinsically political” and as such cannot be void of bias and therefore is never neutral. Luke tell us that literacy teaching is “a form of modern cultural capital”. Therefore, the question remains, “WHICH literacies do we address? HOW do we distribute knowledge? WHO gets access? The answers to these questions remain ambiguous …about this I am certain!

Written Response for Workshop 1

Teaching…the never-ending journey

Reading the articles written by Andrew Manning and Walter MacGinitie has allowed me to reflect on teaching on a level that is so often clouded by the “demands of the job”. Relentlessly, as educators, we strive for perfection and certainty by ensuring that we cover the curriculum, prepare kids to successfully write the final exam, and report marks accurately. In so doing, we fail to see the real teaching quest, which is the quest for learning.

This quest for learning needs to be driven by the learner’s curiosity. When curriculum is created by anyone other than the students themselves, it is imposing upon them someone else’s truth. When we interact with curriculum as conversation, we remove the barriers that prevent learning from happening. This makes sense to me on many levels, in my role as coordinator of secondary programs. The conversations I have with my colleagues deal with many topics…we talk about curriculum expectations mandated by the ministry of education; we talk about assessing and evaluating the degree to which those expectations are achieved; we talk about how we will report the level of achievement; and we talk about what we will use to help us determine the accuracy of this reporting. These conversations almost always take place in the absence of the very subject we are talking about…our students. Although, their involvement in directing their own learning would seem to be the most natural approach, since as Manning says “no one learns by asking someone else’s inquiry question”, our students are rarely involved in the negotiation of their own learning..

What seems to drive the current school system to want to ‘ask someone else’s inquiry question’ for them is that those who have the authority are ‘certain’ that they have the ‘absolute knowledge’ and, as MacGinitie highlights in his article, “we inflict our certainties on students in many ways”. Most evident to me is that, as educators, we think that the grades we give students are absolutely accurate because of the electronic marks reporting system we use, the judgment we impose on their work and the approach we use to impart knowledge. This ‘certitude’ limits student learning because, and I agree with MacGinitie, in order for learning to occur there needs to be a degree of uncertainty, “for only an uncertain person can learn; only an uncertain person can show how learning is done. That is the power of uncertainty.”

Presently, our system level conversations at my board have converged on self-directed learning, as a possible approach for students to earn credits. This approach depends on conversation, conversation that is lead by students in regards to their learning. It requires students to be curious, ask ‘what if…’ questions, engage in problem solving and, most importantly, have a voice in co-constructing their curriculum. Affording students the opportunity to have a voice is giving students permission to learn. And since the process of learning involves action, reflection, and reflexivity, it seems only natural for us to provide students with opportunities to answer their own questions. In doing so, we truly believe that curriculum is conversation…and that the conversation needs to continue if we hope to make learning available to everyone!

I am from...

I am from…Mr. Whiskers and Treasure Box where worlds morphed into a myriad of different shapes and sizes.

I am from…bookmobiles and public libraries where Mischievous Meg came home with me for two weeks.

I am from… Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys where their secret adventures transported me to places I’d never been.

I am from…Funk and Wagnall encyclopedia that had me asking so many, many questions.

I am from… university bookstores and libraries where the lights never went out and people were always reading, searching, finding and then reading and searching some more!

I am from…Bridal Magazines, wedding planners and baby books which guided me in preparing for the future and making decisions.

I am from…reading Good Night Moon with my children, under the sheets in bed, with a flashlight.

I am from…elementary schools and high schools; from anxious faces and beating hearts.

I am from…children and adolescents; from “I can’t find it, Miss!” and “I didn’t know it was due today!”

I am from…reading student essays, journals, poems and other English assignments.


I am from…years ago and years to come; from learning to read and teaching to learn!

About Me...

Caterpillar: Who are YOU?

Alice: This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. I -- I hardly know, sir, just at present -- at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.

The Duchess:
I quite agree with you. And the moral of that is: Be what you would seem to be, or if you'd like it put more simply: Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.

~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland


Like Alice, sometimes I feel that the person I am when I wake up in the morning is not necessarily the same person I am when I retire at night. The people I encounter, the conversations I have, the stories I hear, the things I see, all alter my reality and who I become. I continue to reconstruct myself every day. What I can offer in an autobiography is to share some of the constants in my life. I was born Loretta Miceli, the only child of Eduardo and Concetta Miceli, who immigrated to Canada in 1953 and, although, they became Canadian citizens within 5 years, never forgot their Italian heritage. This, they shared with me. It afforded me the opportunity to live two cultures simultaneously. I continue to live in the best of both worlds.

I am a student, a teacher, an educational leader. I am a wife, and a mother of two. However I may morphs from day to day, my husband, Rob, my children, Erica(20) and Robert (16) and my parents (86 & 85) frame who I am at any given time. I have been married for 22 years. We met when we were 13 years old. He studied numbers and became an accountant and I studied literature and became an English teacher. Our children have their dreams. Erica is a 3rd year fine arts student at York University and in the concurrent program in the faculty of education. She dreams of being a dance teacher in a regional arts school. Robert is a grade 11 student. He plays AAA Hockey with the Toronto Red Wings and dreams of being an NHL hockey player. Whatever path they choose to follow, the only advice my husband and I have for them is that they do their best and that they protect their dignity and the dignity of those around them.

Over the course of my life, I have been blessed with friends and family who have loved me and supported me unconditionally. They have helped me celebrate the good times in my life and they’ve been with me during the lowest times in my life. Ten years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I am a survivor and I thank God for having given me a new lease on life. Facing my own mortality certainly gave me a new appreciation for the meaning of life. Each year, for the last 10 years, I have given back by participating in the breast cancer walk. My daughter joins me and we walk for all women and men, past, present and future!

I have been blessed in my professional life, as well. Sometimes I stop and ask myself, How did I get so lucky! I started my teaching career at the age of 23. I was hired to teach a split grade 3/4 class at St. Joseph Catholic Elementary School in Richmond Hill, Ontario for the York Catholic District School Board. I loved it so much, I couldn’t believe I was getting paid for doing what I used to dream about and what I pretended to do every summer when I ran a neighbourhood summer school in my parents’ garage. I stayed in elementary for four years, teaching a grade 4/5 class the following year and then teaching in the intermediate division for 2 years before moving to the secondary panel to teach high school English. I taught English and then became the department head of Library, until 14 years later I was encouraged to apply for a leadership position at the board office, in the capacity of Literacy program resource teacher. I felt like I had died and gone to heaven…imagine, being able to do all the research and reading about literacy that I always wished I could have done and never had the time to do! Three years into that position I was approached and encouraged to move into another leadership role. I am now in my third year as the coordinator of secondary programs and have taught for the York Catholic District School Board for the last 23 years. I love my job…I truly do!

I am a life long learner…I loved school from the first day of kindergarten and I knew then that I never wanted school to end…so my story continues and this Masters program will continue to help me shape who I will be tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, each new day a new experience, a new beginning, a new me!

Literacy As Freedom

I’m not certain that I can find any definition, in any text form, which quite captures all the facets of literacy. I see literacy as ever-changing and redefining itself depending on the context in which it is being analyzed. In its simplest form, I suppose the definition provided by UNESCO is as close to capturing today’s definition of literacy as any:

Literacy is about more than reading and writing – it is about how we communicate in society. It is about social practices and relationships, about knowledge, language and culture. Literacy…finds its place in our lives alongside other ways of communicating. Indeed, literacy itself takes many forms: on paper, on the computer screen, on TV, on posters and signs. Those who use literacy take it for granted – but those who cannot use it are excluded from much communication in today’s world. Indeed, it is the excluded who can best appreciate the notion of “literacy as freedom”.(UNESCO, Statement of the United Nations Literacy Decade, 2003-2012)

However, every time I read this statement I recognize that there are gaps, things that are missing, things that need to be noted or adjusted. Depending on when I read it and why I’m reading it, those gaps change. I deem it necessary to position myself before I offer my views on literacy, for then you may better understand my stance. I am a child of immigrant parents who have less than 5 years of formal education, which in some countries would qualify them as illiterate. I went to an inner city school and graduated at the top of my class. I went to a relatively young and progressive university. I married one year into my teaching career. I became a mother at 26 years of age. I am a hockey mom and a dance mom. I am an aunt to 13 nephews and nieces. I have taught elementary students and high school students. I have been the dean of library in a high school. I have been a literacy program resource teacher. I am the coordinator of all secondary programs in my board. All of my experiences have influenced my ideas on literacy and my ideas continue to morph with every new experience in my life.

As a child of immigrant parents, I agree that Literacy is about more than reading and writing – it is about how we communicate in society. My parents are a perfect example of this. For them, more important than reading and writing in the national language (English) was how they communicated in their new society. Quickly, they discovered that in order to succeed in their new country, they had to make friends and engage in societal rituals. This meant that they needed to be able to interpret and understand their surroundings. They needed to be able to convey their ideas to others so that others understood them. Much of this was done without reading or writing in its traditional sense, but rather by speaking and listening and reading body language, signs and posters. They were forever questioning and problem solving, in whatever way they knew best. Like my parents, we are all challenged with the task of connecting with the society in which we live. How well we do may depend on our degree of literacy.

This poses another dilemma, because I don’t see that literacy can be measured by whether we speak the language or not, whether we share the same culture or not, whether we participate in the same social practices or not. So if It is about social practices and relationships, about knowledge, language and culture then it is important that we qualify what that means. I see this to mean that literacy is about being able to understand and respond competently to others. It’s about the relationships we establish. It’s about how we create them and how we nurture them and how we behave in social situations. It’s about whether or not we engage in positive or negative social practices. Literacy requires that we are knowledgeable and that we can use language effectively, both to understand and to be understood. It draws our attention to culture and the importance of recognizing, embracing, respecting and responding to all cultures…familiar and unfamiliar. It is important to know how to learn about individual and organizational culture and interact in the various cultural environments in which we find ourselves. Hence, it is negligent to leave out the conversation that needs to be had in this arena of social practice, to which this particular definition refers.

Literacy…finds its place in our lives alongside other ways of communicating. Again, communication is highlighted. How can it not be emphasized, when nothing else really matters if we can’t communicate it? I find it difficult to believe that anything can be exalted if it can’t be communicated. If a gem cannot be seen, it does not shine; if music cannot be heard, it has no sound; and if we cannot communicate, we do not grow. Therefore, we need to emphasize that we must strive to communicate, in whatever way we can.

Indeed, literacy itself takes many forms: on paper, on the computer screen, on TV, on posters and signs. Evident in this statement is the fact that since UNESCO wrote this, other forms of communication have surfaced. We cannot limit our definition of literacy to a finite number of forms that it can take. There is critical literacy, media literacy, information literacy, financial literacy, visual literacy, global literacy, …just to name a few. Today we have blogs, wikis, podcasts, facebook, video games and other forms of interactive information sharing. There is a shift in how people communicate. We are charged with the responsibility to be current and remain actively literate…for responding to change is part of being literate. But, we must remember that simply decoding information, without making sense of it, analyzing it and being able to communicate it, is an example of ‘fake literacy’. We need to look at the world through a critical lens. This will help us to see things from different perspectives and then we can bring various interpretations of the world to others and to ourselves.

Ultimately, Those who use literacy take it for granted – but those who cannot use it are excluded from much communication in today’s world. Indeed, it is the excluded who can best appreciate the notion of “literacy as freedom”. Literacy as freedom allows us to live life to its fullest. As a mother, a daughter, a wife, an aunt, a teacher…I am responsible for continuing to grow in my capacity as a literate learner, so that I may help others to grow, as well.