When I was
reading some of the other blogs in our class I was glad to see that I wasn’t
the only person who struggled with this article a little more than usual. Like Dennis, I also thought that it was
lengthy and dry and hard to get through.
I am looking forward to talking about it in class to get a better
understanding of what exactly the main ideas of “Literacy With an Attitude” by
Patrick J Finn were.
Although I
had a lot of trouble with it, I did find some connections, not only to authors
that we have talked about, but my service learning, just like a few others in
our class. Finn talks about his teaching
styles and how he was very no-nonsense and was very strict and down to business
and that’s how my teacher is for my service learning. The classroom I am in is a third grade one
and my teacher keeps it in very strict order, just like Finn said he did. She follows her rules and tells her students
exactly what she is looking for from them so there is no confusion, or room for
misunderstanding.
“I didn't say to an errant student, "What are
you doing?" I said, "Stop that and get to work." No discussion.
No openings for an argument.“ (7) In
this quote I noticed that he had ideas similar to Delpit. She has this same discussion in “The Silenced
Dialogue” where she said that students were more likely to understand and
respond to a direct order, rather than an instruction formed as a
question. Although it was a challenge, I
can see connections to other readings in our class and I understand how
“Literacy with an Attitude” is relevant to class discussion.
Though it was hard to understand, you had a great connection to your service learning experience and picked out a great quote. I too used this quote in my blog because in those lines he says exactly what we have been learning throughout the semester.
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