The first assignment was to describe what literacy is, what it looks like in the digital age, and how literacy would be used in our classrooms in the future. The next assignment asked that we determined our educational philosophical orientation, identify two theorists associated with it, and how it would influence our practice.
For my analysis of the SMC Education Department mission statement, I picked the section titled “reflective and contemplative.” The first section of this pillar states that graduates must have a “solid theoretical base,” and this was the entire purpose of the curriculum orientation project. Through reflection about our own beliefs as educators, we determined our philosophical foundation for our practices, and from there, we were pointed toward strong theoretical concepts that in turn will guide our instruction and leadership decisions for the future. Regarding the second half of this pillar, I think it most closely relates to our literacy assignment, where through reflection about the definition of literacy we were able to create a new one individually, as well as apply it to our future curriculum and assessment. This will make the use of literacy purposeful in our classroom environments, whether it be cultural, visual, or digital.
I personally felt the most growth in discovering ways in which these two projects were related. Like many of my peers, I found my definition of literacy changed drastically as we discovered the many ways in which literacy is needed in the classroom. Something we were not explicitly taught was how these forms of literacy could be applied to our curriculum orientation, but I found that I discovered this myself. As a humanist and progressivist, my focus is always on the individual student and their growth, and I believe that my thoughts on literacy reflect this. In my discussion of visual literacy, I gave students many opportunities to grow in their abilities to dissect images, scaffolding the entire activity to ease them into visual literacy. Specifically the third question in each example would give them plenty of room to explore their own perspectives and ideas about our topics. I also feel that my thoughts around equity and literacy reflect my perspectives; in my class, our content will carry over into discussions about current events, in the world and in the lives of my students. Through such discussions, we will confront very real problems, some of which are likely to be faced by my students.
For the future, I want to branch out and explore other areas of literacy that would be particularly relevant for my classroom. In terms of my curriculum orientation, I would like to look for specific instances of humanism/progressivism at my placement so that I can deepen my understanding of what it looks like in practice.
