… which has been

shaped, honed and

reconstructed
through the early
elementary years, by
the different genre of
books I read…

Starting with:
Bedtime stories in
the early years…
Nancy Drew & Hardy
Boys in the junior
years.
And from there…
…moving on to
‘Harlequin Romance and
Mills & Boons in the
intermediate years, and
into high school.

Those early exposure

and “enculturation
experiences with written
material helped set
patterns of behavior (for
me) as preparation for
the kinds of learning and
displays of knowledge (I
would be) expected to
(exhibit) in school.

-
Heath 1998
In High school my literate being grew and blossomed; through exposure to
literary texts like:

which helped developed my “capacity to take language apart…

(an essential) prerequisite to critical
literacies.”
- (Freebody, Luke, Gilbert 1991)
In university my writing was further shaped through critical
analysis and writing of papers on such works as those of;
Joseph Conrad’s, Heart of Darkness; Richard Wright’s,
Native Son; W.E.B Dubois’s, The Souls Of Black Folk and
Olive Senior’s, Summer Lightning.
These literate practices set the
framework whereby I was able to
“be (an) active information -
giver, talking from (early exposure
to) books and linking that
knowledge to other aspects of (my)
environment.”
- Heath
1998
But then my p-i-p-e-l-i-n-e
of old literacies obtained
“through (my) participation
in a variety of institutional
systems, (which I have)
come to accept as natural
and thus naturalize through
(my) own practices;
particular versions of the
literary canon, of ‘standard
English’ of ‘writing’ of
‘response to literature’ and,
indeed, of ‘reading’.”

hit upon a great divide

a ravine /classrooms

… filled with the new

powerful literacies of my
students era.

- Freebody, Luke,
Gilbert 1997
 e ra cie s s u ch as;
Lit

Recognizing that a key strategy I will have to employ to

bridge the great divide- to get the p-i-p-e-l-i-n-e across-
and to construct literate students as well as to stimulate
“discourse critique is (that of ), engaging in lessons that
actively juxtapose more than a single text, to provide
multiple texts (print, audio, visuals, computer, popular,
literary, scholarly) for comparison and analysis”, in my
classroom.
The ultimate aim;
that of helping
students to develop
the “capacity to take
language apart – the
unmasking of texts,”
(in its myriad forms)
- Freebody, Luke, Gilbert
1997
For what
purpose?

Because “the
position is that
reading, no matter
how rudimentary, is
a socially and
culturally
constructed activity;
that beginning
reading, remedial
reading, content –
area reading, and
other kinds of
institutional reading,
as well as the
reading of literary
texts in secondary
schools, are all
interactively built in
the classroom.”

And students need

to display successful
Other influences on literacy?
The influence of formal institutions such as schools, churches,
publishers, universities, the mass media and other modern culture
industries in the production of reading and taste, whether through direct
didactic sanction or through more subtle hegemonic forms, is
undeniable.
-
Bourdieu,1986
My role defined:
No single one of these institutions or
any single (instructional literacy
program) “will of itself, fully enable
students to use texts effectively, in
their own individual and collective
interests, across a range of
discourse, texts and tasks”.
This is why as a classroom teacher, I
have to serve as the p-i-p-e-l-i-n-e –
the conduit and the bridge
encompassing as many of ‘the new
literacies’ used by my students; in
my classroom instructional
approaches.
At the same time recognizing that I
need to give students sufficient
exposure and opportunities to
manipulate and acquire ‘the old