My Current Thinking on Literacy

Welcome to Literacy

True Story: I was at a conference at U Arkansas Little Rock sweltering in the heat and humidity of a walk around a campus pond. My walking companion, a literacy specialist, pointed out that literacy only exists as a field of study because of the needs of other content areas. She made the point that if every student could learn to read and write and was always at, or above, grade level, there would be no need for the study of how we learn to read and write. 

This was an "aha!" moment for me. I began to understand that literacy is not a heavy wet blanket to be laid across the top of the already burdensome teaching loads of my high school colleagues, but instead, as the foundation upon which the learning of every content area happens. Literacy is a tool to help teachers, myself included, guide students into becoming more independent readers, thinkers, and writers.