Literacy Now

As I overheard a heated Viber conversation between a 21-year-old female (we shared space in the same girls’ hostel in Kathmandu) and her boyfriend (who was studying abroad in the United States), I experienced a sinking feeling that made me question: Where are we heading as human beings?

In today’s age, we have more opportunities than ever before. Yet, as the conversation I heard suggested, we are not happier and we are more stressed and overwhelmed.

This young woman came to Kathmandu with high expectations to achieve her dreams. But life is not that easy. Kathmandu is expensive and remaining resilient every day in light of her family’s increasing expectations was frustrating for her. Unable to manage her emotions, she was venting to her boyfriend, who had his own share of struggles as an international student in the U.S. from a third world country.

If critical thinking is regarded as a fundamental aspect of 21st-century education, why aren’t we starting with thinking about our own lives—what we are feeling and why, how we can manage our emotions better, and what our values are so that we can cultivate relationships and pursue careers that give us fulfillment?

Always fond of asking questions, I started out as a journalist when I was 17 and later switched careers and served in rural Nepal through the Teach for Nepal fellowship. This was when I realized how emotional well-being plays a crucial role in the learning process.

Later, when I joined a faculty for undergrads, I realized students even in the city struggled with

emotional intelligence. A 2013 study by Travis Bradberry and his team at TalentSmart concluded that only 38 out of 100 Nepalese could explain what emotions they experienced a day prior.

Astonished, I conducted my master’s research on 200 students to measure the state of emotional intelligence in Nepal. This led me to understand that the skills of emotional intelligence were lacking in teachers, and because the teachers weren’t empowered to nurture such important skills in their students, those students would go on to lack crucial skills to deal with life’s challenges.

All these years, I have witnessed pain in a lot of confused youth who could do so much better if they learned the skills of emotional intelligence. But every time I talk to a crowd of 30, only two raise their hands when I ask if they know about emotional intelligence, and only one usually gets its definition right.

This has led me to my latest venture, My Emotions Matter, a social enterprise committed to developing emotional intelligence in students, teachers, and working professionals.

Through self-reflective experiences, we introduce emotional intelligence as a learnable life skill so that individuals are more aware, intentional, and purposeful in their personal and professional lives.

If people develop the capacity to understand and manage their emotions, they will be in a better position to interact positively and form meaningful relationships. They will be better focused on their goals and resilient in the face of setbacks. These skills can help people navigate fluctuations in their emotions that come from 24/7 connectedness, cultivate intentional face-to-face conversations, respect others for who they are, and pursue meaningful careers.

The World Economic Forum predicts emotional intelligence to be the sixth most important skill in the workplace by 2020. This crucial ability is what I believe can help human beings flourish.

Bhawana Shrestha, an ILA member since 2015, is from Nepal. She holds a master of philosophy degree in English, with her research concentration on the state of emotional intelligence in Nepal. She is the cofounder of My Emotions Matter, which helps improve school and organizational climate through emotional intelligence. Shrestha was an ILA 2015 30 Under 30 honoree.

This article originally appeared in the September/October 2019 issue of Literacy Today, ILA’s member magazine.

Educators are often asked, “How do we build a strong culture of literacy?” Within a secondary setting, this question is particularly complicated to answer. Middle and high school students are bombarded daily with a myriad of entertainment options, literally right in the palm of their hand. Literacy leaders and teachers often face disinterested, distracted, and dormant readers.

By the time students get to secondary school, the focus has shifted. Our culture is vastly and necessarily different from that of elementary schools, and we must build a culture of literacy differently—with an eye toward adult literacy demands. We know this: Secondary school administrators rarely spend hours on a roof in the cold waving to gleeful high school students or reluctantly kiss a pig because their middle-level students reach a reading goal.

A lasting culture of literacy isn’t created with contests and rewards and it isn’t measured in test scores. It’s about equity, access, relevance, and joyful interaction. It’s about an enthusiasm and a commitment by all staff—not just the English language arts (ELA) teachers—to ensure that all students have a text in their hands they are excited to read. Staff must embrace and value student choice as well as believe in the power of reading beyond the traditional, one-size-fits-all definition.

A culture of literacy means students see themselves as readers, which means students must do the following:

See themselves in texts

Culturally relevant and inclusive texts are essential—or nothing else matters. Students need to see themselves, and their own culture, reflected in the texts they are assigned across the curriculum. Time and space must be dedicated to students thinking of themselves as readers and writers of social studies, mathematics, science, health, and world languages. Students should have frequent opportunities to experience other perspectives, and they should be encouraged to build bridges between worlds. They should have a say in what has relevance in their classrooms.

See relevance and authenticity

When embracing and celebrating a culture of literacy, students read and write these relevant texts for authentic reasons. Students witness literacy as necessary and valuable in the lives of adults. Staff must embrace and value student choice as well as believe in the transformative power of reading.

In a school with a strong commitment to literacy, teachers rarely spend time telling students the key points in a text through a lecture. Instead, students read the text themselves, perhaps multiple times. Excerpts of crucial passages are analyzed and discussed across every discipline, and teachers use strategies and effective practices appropriate for their content. When a culture of literacy within a school is strong, students’ responses to text are deep and thoughtful. Their answers aren’t forced, and students don’t furtively look around for possible answers from which to choose. Teachers in every classroom ensure students engage meaningfully with text every day.

See joy in literacy

When a school system is committed to literacy, it is clear as early as within the hiring process. Potential staff members are asked, “What are you reading?” and “What would you recommend to our students?” Everyone is a reader. Administrators, custodians, cooks, the school nurse—they are all able to talk about and celebrate something they read lately. Staff members model what active literacy looks like in the adult world, from mundane to practical to joyous escape. Teachers themselves read with the hope of connecting a book to a student. Students need to see all staff members as readers, not just the ELA teachers. A real culture of literacy requires a commitment by a group of passionate people whose reach extends far beyond the library.

How do you know if your building has a culture of literacy? If you have to ask, there’s work to be done—but there’s a plethora of personal and professional resources to help you get there.

Julie Scullen, an ILA member since 1990, is a teaching and learning specialist for secondary reading in Anoka-Hennepin School District in Minnesota, working with teachers of all content areas to foster literacy achievement. She teaches graduate courses at Hamline University in St. Paul in literacy leadership and coaching, disciplinary literacy, critical literacy, and reading assessment and evaluation.

This article originally appeared in the open access July/August issue of Literacy Today, ILA’s member magazine.

In today’s K–12 classrooms, students are learning to code using a variety of apps, software, and technologies. My 4-year-old daughter even has her own robot, which she codes by selecting emojis on the Coji app to control the robot’s movement. As a teacher educator, I believe it is my responsibility to provide future educators with hands-on technology and literacy experiences to prepare them to teach tomorrow’s students.

Because of this stance, I designed and implemented an activity that integrates robotics into literature circles. My fourth graders would have been overjoyed to complete this activity, and my current students (future educators) agree that this activity should be included in their future classrooms.

Capturing interest begins with book choice

For valid pedagogical reasons, we often waver between forming heterogeneous or homogeneous student groups in the classroom. I implement literature circles with the goal of creating enjoyable reading experiences. One way I do this is by allowing students to choose their own books, within mature and sensible guidelines (e.g., recommended reading and maturity levels).

My students express gratitude for this strategy because “by being able to choose our own book, we were more interested and more excited to participate in this project.” Most confess this is the only time in their college career when they are encouraged to read a book of their choice. By allowing my students to choose their own reading material, my hope is that they will model a positive attitude toward reading for their future students.

A classroom example

After my students spend about three weeks reading and discussing their literature circle books, the excitement builds as they construct a 3-D diorama to represent their favorite scene from the book. During construction, students carefully consider which parts they want to make move or illuminate. We use everyday materials such as cardboard, paper, paint, scissors, tape, markers, and string.

Once the dioramas are complete, the next step is to prepare your classroom to teach coding. For the initial setup, I recommend getting support from your librarian or technology specialist. You will need a laptop, power cord, and robotics kit. We used Hummingbird Robotics because the kits are affordable and the compatible coding software is free and user friendly.

With the software installed, you are ready to teach students how to code. An important step is to distribute the robotics kits so you can pause and answer students’ questions while allowing them to explore the technology. There are many tutorials available, but I recommend identifying one that aligns to your compatible robotics kit. For this reason, I guide my students with the Hummingbird Robotics and Scratch 2.0 tutorial, available here. During this lesson, allow your students to explore how they can use the laptop to drag, drop, and create a coding sequence. Options include the ability to guide directional movement (e.g., turn 360 degrees), adjust speed, play audio features (e.g., a cat’s meow), and activate LED lights of varying brightness.

Now that students have learned the basics of coding, they are ready to connect the robotics kit to their dioramas. Refer to the video tutorial to remind students how to connect their laptops to their bit controller (i.e., circuit board) and have students attach the servos and/or LED lights to their dioramas. This reminder will help students bring their dioramas to life as they connect the motors and LED lights to their 3-D model according to the code they generated.

Once connected, students might see a hand waving 90 degrees on repeat, a character spinning in a circle, or an object moving back and forth. You will know the exact moment the dioramas come to life when you hear students shouting in awe at their designs (refer to our robotics diorama example videos and images).  

Robotics diorama examples

Following are the dioramas students created:

• “The Boxcar Children”
• “Five Feet Apart”
• “Wicked”
• “Among the Hidden”
• “Frankenstein”

Envisioning literacy and robotics in your classroom

Although nearly all my students had no prior experience coding with robotics, they admit this process “is not too complex” and “gives students the opportunity to explore different career fields as well as encourages hands-on learning.”

After students have some experience coding with robotics, you might consider how this technology can advance other aspects of literacy within your classroom. You can browse available lesson plans at here. Additional lesson ideas might include researching countries and creating related dioramas or having students create digital stories using scratch coding. The most exciting aspect about using robotics within literacy is the ability for students to expand their imagination—how will your students use coding and robotics to bring literacy alive?

Lauren Eutsler, an ILA member since 2010, was an elementary teacher in Arizona and Florida for six years before her current role as an assistant professor of literacy and technology in the department of teacher education and administration at the University of North Texas.

Several years ago, I transitioned from being a teacher educator who prepares literacy professionals to a professional developer who designs, facilitates, and coordinates training for college faculty. While I worked with instructors from all disciplines in higher education, I am constantly being reminded that I myself need to continuously participate in ongoing professional learning. However, with an extremely busy work schedule, this year I decided to forgo conferences and instead embrace Standard 6 of ILA’s

Standards for the Preparation of Literacy Professionals 2017—Professional Learning and Leadership—via a 14-week online graduate course.

In a 2017 Literacy Daily post, education writer, editor, and literary host Willona Sloan writes about personalizing one’s professional development. She specifically mentions using digital tools and platforms that help literacy educators acquire skills and knowledge to tailor to their own and their school’s needs.

Not only did this course fulfill my state teaching certification requirement, but also it exposed me to more online tools and strategies for preparing learners for present and future. The online graduate course used the D2L learning management system. The instructor hosted and recorded weekly, synchronous videoconference meetings with Zoom.

The course was centered on the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework, which focuses on effective teaching with technology. This may involve application of specific technologies for subject matter learning. The use of digital tools and resources to support student learning was constantly highlighted throughout the course following International Society for Technology in Education standards. Throughout this course, the instructor, Professor Whitman, allowed us to provide kindergarten through adult technology tools through her SLAM (Sharing, Learning and Mentoring) table as noted below.

However, rubrics were the main form of assessment for the assignments in this course.

The instructor also required demonstration of content knowledge. As a specialized literacy professional, I used both ILA and the National Council of Teachers of English to showcase my literacy and language knowledge. For example, the Group Change Story assignment, “Suzy Sloth Makes a Breakthrough,” allowed me to collaborate with an elementary teacher to write a seven-slide story about a person’s change process while trying to integrate innovation. We selected Edpuzzle, an interactive video lesson site, as the innovation. The instructor provided the story template via Google Docs. As a result, I reconnected with digital storytelling tools such as LittleBirdTales for creating original art and voice recordings, Pixton for Schools for creating digital comics, and VoiceThread, an interactive audio narration that can be embedded in a site or blog.

I experienced pedagogical knowledge trends by reviewing 16 Habits of Mind and nine elements of digital citizenship. With a growth mind-set, I created two projects that incorporated these two trends. My learning management system project, a self-paced module entitled “Diversity Practices in Online Courses,” is an example where college instructors identify and discuss issues related to inclusive teaching in higher education. The module consisted of creating a word cloud around the term diversity, completing a 3-2-1 self-reflection and an online quiz. I also created and facilitated an iMovie professional development session for K–12 teachers. Participants learn to incorporate the iMovie tool into lessons to plan, create, and assess short student videos. These pedagogical knowledge trends helped me to be a more reflective practitioner–scholar as I aligned learning objectives with educational outcomes to enhance critical and responsible ways in which instructors can work with learners in traditional and digital learning environments.

My personalized TPACK journey concluded with relinking to innovation in education technology, to exploring digital tools and to strengthening my ability to coordinate digital professional learning experiences. Going on this path enabled me to contribute and advocate for interrelationship to content knowledge, teaching and learning practices, and professional learning communities. Through this journey, I enhanced my ability to create opportunities for teachers to collaborate, discuss, and apply what they learn in a variety of learning spaces. Why not try your own personalized professional development and see where it leads you in addressing the needs of your learners and colleagues?           
 
I am grateful to Professor Melissa Whitman, Technology Integration Specialist, in the Nazareth Area (Pennsylvania) School District, for expanding my online teaching tool kit through her course.

Charline Barnes Rowland is a teaching and learning consultant for the University Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Pittsburgh. She is a former university faculty member, public school classroom teacher, and reading specialist, and member of the Board of Directors of ILA (formerly International Reading Association). She received her EdD in curriculum and instruction from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), a master’s degree in reading education from George Washington University, and a bachelor’s degree in English education and psychology from Syracuse University.

Last fall, Liz, a preservice teacher, approached me about possibly working together to complete some of the required contract hours at her professional development school (PDS). Contract hours consisted of developing a unique plan of learning opportunities that also benefited the PDS where she spent three consecutive years.

Of course, when she came and asked me to be a part of this project I was more than happy to oblige—now we just needed to figure out the project! 

After a few conversations we started to consider how ILA’s
Standards for the Preparation of Literacy Professionals 2017, specifically Standards 2 and 5—Curriculum and Instruction and Learners and the Literacy Environment, respectively—would impact our work. This focus stemmed from past conversations between us about effective elementary literacy practices. For Liz to better understand the standards, she first reviewed the standards for pre-K and primary-level classroom teachers. Then, she explored this work at her PDS to learn how practicing teachers were enacting these standards.

Liz spoke with individual teachers and grade-level teams to gain a better sense of what these two standards looked like in the classrooms of a rural elementary school. While she found a variety of examples for the two standards, Standard 5 kept rising to the top of the conversations. More specifically, Liz found herself talking about and looking for evidence of Component 3: “Candidates incorporate safe, appropriate, and effective ways to use digital technologies in literacy and language learning experiences.”

As Liz spoke with teachers about the digital technologies and the literacy learning practices they used in their schools, teachers began to discuss the need for incorporating basic technology skills into their daily instruction. For example, the media specialist discussed how she noticed that students were unaware of simple computer skills, such as restarting a computer to update the applications. She discussed with Liz how she now has students practice turning their computers off at the end of each class so that they get into the habit of doing this with the technology they use independently. There are many technological maintenance methods that we do on a normal basis and may spend little time thinking about, therefore, we may forget to explicitly direct students on how to complete these tasks. In fact, we might be missing out on teaching some of the most basic technology information because we make assumptions that students know what to do and why.

As Liz thought more about basic digital skills, she considered what else might be assumed by teachers about students’ understanding of safe digital literacy practices. She recognized that students need opportunities to engage with digital tools to better understand how these tools function. After speaking with practicing teachers and thinking through these assumptions, Liz articulated three ways to include safe digital practices in elementary classrooms and schools.

• Computer mechanics: This activity allows early-grade students to sleuth through basic tools and functions of a computer. Students are given the opportunity to learn about the tools of a computer and how to properly maintain technology through a scavenger hunt approach. For example, they can be asked to copy, cut, and paste part of a document as part of the technology scavenger hunt.
• Cyber detectives: As we all know, we must move students beyond the “Sign here for safety” contract/ideas of cyber safety and toward a deeper understanding of safe digital practices. Students in the upper elementary grades can participate in Cybersmart Detectives, a teacher-led interactive class activity that reinforces messages about personal safety and protective measures for dealing with strangers online.
• Real-world activists: Teachers can use real-world scenarios that involve different types of technology and social media to discuss online safety. Student debates can be structured to position students to take on and defend different perspectives within these real situations so that they can then better understand the variables at play and how to avoid undesirable situations online. Students can then organize a schoolwide event to advocate for safe digital practices across the school community.

As you can see, our intention is to provide ways to teach students about safe digital practices from early elementary school through high school. These suggestions align well with Standard 5, Component 3. Of course, these skills and activities should be implemented using a developmentally appropriate lens to ensure relevance and understanding. This will support student learning and will help to keep our students safe as they engage with different technology and platforms both in and out of school.

Aimee Morewood is an associate professor at West Virginia University. She is the outreach coordinator for the fully online Master of Arts Literacy Education/Reading Specialist Certification program. 

Liz Huff is a recent graduate of West Virginia University's Five-Year Teacher Education program. She is currently a third-grade teacher in Virginia.