Summary and Thoughts on "Designing Tasks for Active Thinking and Learning" from Bean's Engaging Ideas (No, I couldn't come up with an original title.)

I actually wanted to do my post on chapter 6, but I was too slow to raise my hand, and I wound up with chapter 7. Glad I did. This has been the most helpful chapter to me thus far. It sparked a whole bunch of ideas that I am going to use in my lab class. I'll talk about those in a bit. First, a summary of chapter seven:

The goal of this chapter is to help teachers design activities and assignments for their classroom that encourage critical thinking. Classrooms are then "problem-centered" rather than "lecture-centered," and students are "active" in their learning instead of "passive" (121). How much do you really learn by just having knowledge "dumped" in your head via lecture and notes? I know I learn more, and understand what I have learned more when I discover the knowledge through my own discussions, writings, and explorations that require me to use my own problem -solving skills.

In a classroom that encourages active thinking and learning, the teacher is not an all-powerful authority figure. Instead the teacher acts as a "coach" and a "guide" (121). "In adopting this role, the teacher presents students with critical problems, gives students supervised practice at solving them, and coaches their performance through encouragement, modeling, helpful intervention and advice, and critiquing their performance" (121). So teachers no longer consume their time planning out their lecture; they instead spend their time planning critical thinking activities for their class.

Bean states that, "the goal in designing critical thinking problems is to convert students from passive to active learners who use course concepts to confront problems, gather and analyze data, prepare hypotheses, and formulate arguments" (122). Bean offers "ten strategies for designing critical Thinking Tasks:"

1) Develop tasks or assignments in which students have to link course concepts with personal experience. That way, students apply the knowledge that they learned in class instead of just trying to commit it to their memory.

2) Develop assignments/activities in which a student has to explain course concepts to someone who does not understand them. This could be useful in helping students who don't understand difficult concepts while also helping the students who do. Every time you teach something to someone, you understand it a little better yourself. That is why I love tutoring!

3) Give students a thesis that they either have to defend or attack. This will help students see that there is more than one side to an issue.

4) Give students a problem that they then have to find the solution for.

5) Give students supporting evidence and make them write the thesis/hypothesis/ or argument that this data supports.

6) Make frame sentences for paragraphs and have the students "flesh" them out by adding in the specifics. This also helps with organization.

7) Design activities centered around "what if's" and allow students to role-play. That way they can look at problems from different points of view.

8) Have students write summaries/abstracts or articles and/or lectures.

9) Have students write a dialogue between two people with two different points of views on a controversial topic.

10) Develop case studies.

Bean 121-132.

I think these are excellent activities because it makes students responsible for their learning. This way they won't be able to get away with, "My teacher's lectures are just so boring," etc. I also think students learn better from "hands on" activities.

ENG 100L

I am going to do the frame paragraphs with my students and maybe even a frame thesis for their critical reflections paper. A lot of them are struggling with what exactly a thesis statement is and how to write them, and they are even more confused about keeping one idea in a paragraph and having that idea support the thesis. I think this could help clarify things for them. I've tried lecturing, but I don't think that works as well. Thank you, Bean. I also changed up their dialogue journals after reading this chapter. Here's the plan:

Dialogue Journals: English 100 10L

These assignments will be the rest of your dialogue journal entries. You may type these assignments, though you are not required to; however, it may be easier to do a word count. In these assignments you don’t have to worry so much about grammar, organization, or structure. I do, however, want you to write in complete, coherent sentences. You will be graded on whether you meet the word count or not, and the quality of your thinking, not your writing. These assignments will help you greatly when it comes to writing your critical reflections paper. If you spend the time on these assignments, writing your critical reflections paper should be a breeze. These assignments will make up a significant portion of your grade, and I will not accept late work. NO EXCEPTIONS. If you’re not in class the day that it is due, find a way to get it to me before 8 a.m. that day.

Class Summaries: Each week you will write a 250 word summary of your lectures/activities in your ENG 100 lecture class. Make sure to include in your summary the most valuable thing you learned that week. Your week ends on Thursday, so you must turn the summary into me the following Tuesday. Your summaries will begin with Week 5.

Writing Center Visit Reflection: After every writing center visit, write a 250 word report answering the following questions:
- In this visit, what was most helpful to you?
- In this visit, what was least helpful to you?
- Did you agree with your tutor’s advice or disagree?
- After the session, what is your plan for revision? In other words, how will you make use of the tutor’s advice?
These reflections will be due the same day as your writing center visit. You will begin this assignment with your 3rd writing center visit.

Writing Experience: Write a 250 word account of your experience writing every writing assignment. Touch on the following issues:
- What was the easiest part of writing this assignment?
- What did you struggle with most writing this assignment?
- What advice do you hope to get from your teacher, peer reviewer, or writing center tutor?
- You can also talk about your experiences peer reviewing.
This will be due one week after you turn in your writing assignment to your instructor.

Instructor Feedback: After you get an essay back from your instructor, write a 250 word report summarizing the following:
- Your expectations. Did you expect to do better on this paper, or were you pleasantly surprised?
- What did you make of your teacher’s comments? Did you agree with them? Were any of them hard to understand?
- After reading your instructor’s comments, what is your plan for revision?
You will begin this starting with WA 2. These won’t have specific due dates, but I will be making sure you are getting them done.

It might sound like a lot, but they need guidance. If I just give them a prompt in class, they don't take it seriously. That is why I put a word count down. Also, the book hasn't been at the bookstore, so they haven't been having to do any reading or homework for this class thus far. I've been lecturing (off the book), and we've been working on peer review. They also aren't doing their WC visits, so if there is a little paper/reflection involved as well, it might motivate them to go. I got these ideas from reading this chapter.

"I Hate Writing"-No, really, I don't, but it's the name of this week's clip

Our very own Sylwester made this wonderful video. Didn't he do an excellent job? I will first summarize a little bit about what the film and its participants said, and then I will talk about how we could use this film as a resource for our students who are writing WA 3. Note: I will almost be directly quoting some of the participants from the film.

The film starts out asking different people why they think students hate writing. Here are some of the responses:
-Students see writing as a set of rules
-Students have in their mind that they can't write
-They are not interested in the assignments
-Time-consuming without a definite outcome
-Not used to it
-Can't be mastered- even the best writers can get better
-Sometimes it requires talent
-Assignments bleed with ink, and no one shows them how to "fix it"

What I gather from this is that students have in their minds that they can't write because of bad academic experiences with writing. They get their papers back, and they are bleeding red, and often times teachers don't explain to them how to improve their papers. This gives students the impression that writing is a set of rules that can't be mastered, and just requires talent. I mean, if they aren't being taught how to "fix" their "errors," then other students must not be taught it either, so it must just be talent. I also loved when Melinda said that you can spend all this time writing a paper, put in all this effort, and you still don't know what the outcome will be. This is true, and I think that frustrates students. In math, you get the right answer, you get the right the answer. Not so in writing. You never know how good or bad your stuff is until you give it to your audience, and often times, it is subjective. I also think students really hate writing because it is so time consuming. Every paper is a draft. There is no such thing as a finished product. For perfectionists, especially, this is frustrating.


The participants are then asked, "When do you hate writing?"
Here are some of the responses:
-They hate writing when they are forced
-When they have to write about something they have no interest in
-When subjects don't matter to them
-When they don't understand the assignment
-When they have other things to do

Students/people in general often hate the "haftas" in life. "You hafta write this paper." "You hafta do the laundry, etc." Writing is often a "hafta," and students hate that. They also hate when they are forced to write about something they have no interest in. I personally love to write, but even I hate writing when I am forced to write about subjects I don't care about. Also, a lot of times writing assignments are ambiguous. I found that with WA2. I really thought I could justify that I wrote WA2, and I still think I did. We can all read an assignment and interepret it differently, and sometimes that gets students in trouble. Sadly, students often don't care about learning, especially when it isn't their core subject; they care about grades. So, naturally, writing causes a lot of stress.

Participants are then asked, "What stage do you hate the most and why?"
Here are some the responses:
-Editing, because once you spent a whole day writing, and you go back and read through it, it is painful
-Revising, you think you are finished, then you see all these glarring problems
-The middle, the place where you get stuck

Most of the participants answered revising or editing. It is frustrating when you spend a few days/weeks/whatever writing a paper, and you finally write that last sentence, and you read through it again and think, "Oh my gosh, this is crap!" I've done that a million times. For me, I have a love/hate relationship with revising. I hate doing it becuase it is so time consuming, but I love it because my finished drafts barely resemble my final product. For me, once I get down my first draft, I am only probably 10% done with the assignment, and it still takes me forever to get out that first draft.

Participants next answered the question, "How can we prevent students from hating writing?"
Their responses are as follows:
-Help them conquer their fears of writing
-Find what they are interested in writing about

I think it is important to also let students dabble in several different kinds of writing. I think all students should have the opportunity to write creatively. Okay, Tabetha, you convinced me, all writing is creative, so let me rephrase: all students should have the opportunity to write fiction. I think writing fiction can teach us a lot about writing non-fiction and vice-versa. It will also kind of break down that barrier between "academic" writing and "personal" writing.

There is also a small section on blogging that talks about the difference between public and private writing, and how some students prefer one or the other.

Sylwester also including some statistics from Guy Allen's survey of students who chose to take a writing course. Here they are:

85% dread school writing
95% negative view of their own writing ability
70% enroll in a writing course to reduce the number of mistakes they make GUY ALLEN students who choose to take a writing course

Wow, shocking numbers!

At the end of the film, Sylwester suggests that reading and going to a writing center are ways that students can improve their writing. Often it seems that improving one's writing is a hopeless endevour, but this video offers some hope.

So how do we use this video in the classroom, particularly for WA3?

Well, I think this video could be a resource for several different reasons:

1) Students who hate writing will know that they are not alone, and they will know that their class is a place where they can talk openly and honestly about not liking writing and why without being penalized for it.

2) This video is a great tool for brainstorming. I'm sure many students will watch it and go, "Yeah, that is why I hate writing." "Yeah, I do hate to revise." "Oh, I remember when I got back a bleeding paper, and no one showed me how to "fix" it." By the end of the film, they will probably have all the material they need to start drafting WA3.

3) Students will also see that their teachers are trying to understand why their students hate writing. It shows that we are concerned, and that we are trying to make a difference. That might be a real change for them from how they viewed academic writing in high school.

What other ways do you see this video being helpful?

My Story

Mandy Deffendall
Dr. Carter and Dr. Adkins
English 697
September 16, 2009
Writing Assignment 2

My Story

Stories are all around us waiting to be told. They’re in the trees, at the train station, in the class room, at the shopping mall, waiting to be discovered. Characters are sitting next to you, standing in line in front of you at the supermarket. New settings are being painted in the sky with each sunrise and sunset. Dialogues unfold at coffee shops, bars, dinner tables. My eyes see the world through a writer’s perspective, and I live my life searching out these stories.

I became fascinated with stories when I was a small child. I’d perch myself of mother’s lap, and she’d take me on adventures to the jungle, to the woods, rivers, mountains, cities, places I had never been. I’d meet people in those stories who I would have otherwise never met. The words she read painted pictures in my mind that I could get lost in for hours.

By age five, I was already writing my own adventures. I wanted to find the stories, and I wanted to tell them. I no longer only wanted to go on expeditions; I wanted to lead them. I wanted to paint with words.

In the first grade, I got my chance. I was recognized by my school as the “Young Author” of the year, and I got to read my story in front of my entire elementary school, and later to members of the community. My story made them smile; it made them laugh. I saw that my words had the power to elicit emotions; they had the power to impact. I fell in love with words.

I spent the rest of my elementary career searching out new ways to tell stories. I’d read book after book, looking at how different authors used words, looking at the different kinds of stories they told, figuring out what made the difference between books I liked and books I didn’t. By fourth grade, I started writing my first novel, a ghost story called Full Moon at Midnight, finishing it the same time I finished the sixth grade.

Then I started junior high school and suddenly I was surrounded by 1,000 new characters. I listened to their stories across the lunch table, at their lockers, on the basketball and volleyball courts. I found stories written on the bathroom walls and notes passed back and forth in math class. At night I wrote dialogues with my friends on AIM. I kept a journal, writing it all down.

In junior high I was also introduced to other kinds of writing: research papers, academic and argumentative essays, reports. I discovered that my words had even more power. They had power to change minds, to change the stories of history and society on things such as race, gender, class, and ecology, and to keep alive the stories of the Holocaust, slavery, inequalities.

I also began reading more non-fiction, not just for research and to gain facts and information, but also to look at how other authors formulated their essays. I looked at how they constructed their arguments, how they proved their points, how they reached their audiences. I read as a reader and also as a writer.

Non-fiction wasn’t the only new thing I was reading in junior high. After listening and falling in love with the Dave Matthews Band, I discovered that music was full of stories. I could read a song just like I could read a poem. Dave Matthews’s lyrics painted pictures in my mind much in the same way the stories my mother read to me as a child did, and drew out emotions deep within me that I didn’t even know I had. I started looking at art the same way, as a story. I read the colors, the brush stroke, the shapes. I read many other things, movies, people, situations. I was discovering more and more that I could find a story in anything.

My literacy practices continued through high school and even up through today. I still see the world in the same way I did as a child: as a writer. Every morning I wake up and go for a run. As I run, I constantly scan the trees, the houses, the people, the neighborhood for a story. I also use this time to think about whatever stories I am currently writing. I plan out the plots, develop my characters, think of places they could go and conversations they could have. This planning continues through my shower and my one hour drive to Commerce each morning. I do this so when I sit down to write, I already know where I’m going. Of course I still do many other kinds of writing. I write for class. I write essays, notes, blogs, etc., and I also still write for fun. I still read, a lot more since I started graduate school, but I still read for fun also. I read for knowledge. I read for fun. I read to write.

The biggest change in my literacy practices from a child until now, is that I now not only write, but I teach others to write as well. I teach an English 100 lab, and I am also a tutor at the writing center. So all morning I think about writing, and all day at work, I talk about writing, and I get to read what other people are writing. I also get to help people find an audience for their writing as the assistant editor of The Mayo Review, Texas A&M University-Commerce’s literary review.

Of course I read and write many other things as well; we all do: stop signs, shirt sizes, facebook pages, text messages, speedometers, directions, clocks, ingredients, nutrition information, backs of medicine bottles, labels at the grocery store, warning, notices, e-mails, newspapers, job postings, twitter, blogs, movies, T.V. shows, billboards, magazines, advertisements, Myspace, t-shirts, hats, pictures, people, transcripts, class schedules, subtitles, etc. The list goes on. But no matter what I am reading or writing, or why I am reading or writing it, be it to gain or pass on knowledge or information, or be it to communicate, I always read and write to tell a story. I don’t “do” literacy; I live it. It is my world. I see through a writer’s perspective. Each day, no matter what I do, I gather material for my next story, whatever that may be.

Thoughts on Writing Assignment 2

Here is my draft for writing assignment two. Note: THIS IS A DRAFT! That's what the assignment called for, right? I can't revise it until I get some feedback. :) I think I would maybe include some pictures in this essay, but I'm not really sure. I think it might disrupt the flow. I don't know. See what you think.

I had an interesting time writing this assignment. I must admit, I was nervous. I wasn't sure if I was staying on topic. I wanted to take a more creative approach and look at the assignment from kind of a different perspective instead of a report on literacy in my everyday life. I think it kind of became a blend of WA 1 and WA 2. Since I am not being graded on this as a 101 student, I took the chance, but I think I would have played it more safely if I were actually in 101. I'm one of those students who are terrified of grades. I want to do whatever I think will get me that "A," and I'll play it safe instead of taking chances. Of course that makes for boring, generic essays. There are so many questions in the writing prompt, that that "A" student in my head was saying, "make sure you clearly address all of these in a nice little essay," so it was a struggle for me to go out on a limb a little more, even though I am not getting graded on it.

I must admit that I was also worried about grammar. I have issues with commas, people. It's embarrassing. I'm in graduate school. I feel like I should always know where to put a comma and where not to, but I don't. I've read grammar book after grammar book, but when I write, I still find myself "hmm"ing. That's why I appreciate it when teachers correct my mistakes. It is the only way I am going to learn at this point. I was so nervous about my grammar that it inhibited my writing.

I did find it refreshing to write about myself. At least it is something I know about. It didn't take hours of research in the library, and it didn't require me to create totally new characters and fictional plot lines. That made writing it easier.

Let me know what you think. I will post it in the next blog.

The Great Debate: What the *&#% Do I Teach My Students?

We’ve all been in classrooms, as a teacher or a student, and heard:
“I hate this writing assignment.”
“What’s the point?”
“What’s a thesis? Oh, I can’t do that.”
“TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT, AND I WILL DO IT!”
“How do I get an “A”?”
“Can’t we write something else?”
Most students in first year composition classes hate writing, or at least think they do. So how do we engage students in their writing? How do we motivate them to write? How do we give them assignments that they don’t “hate” while teaching them what we think they need to know? John C. Bean, author of Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom, suggests in his book that we assign students a variety of different assignments that range from what he calls “personal” writing to “professional” writing.
Personal writing is often left out of FYC classes. It can range from journal entries and free-writes (what Britton calls “expressive writing”), to personal narratives and short stories. Often teachers don’t see the merit in this type of writing. Free writes and journal entries are often a chaotic form of writing. Teachers who are looking for structure, logical arguments, and organization often cringe at encouraging this type of writing in a classroom. These teachers would rather teach students professional writing, academic prose, writing that will get their students published in academic journals, and prepare them for grad school. The problem with academic prose is that it often hinders student writing with its limited word choice, rigid structure and organization, and rule-governed expectations. Their voices get lost in the jargon (48).
Which type of writing, then, personal or professional, is most beneficial to our students? Bean argues that both are important and serve different functions. Personal writing often helps students discover their voices, engage in their writing, and have a personal investment in their papers (52). These are things academic prose does not often offer; however, when writing academic prose, or “thesis-governed” texts, students work on focus, clarity, structure, and the formation of logical arguments in not only their writing, but also in their thinking (46). So how does a teacher decide which to teach? Bean suggests that the teachers ask themselves two questions: “(1) what kinds of assignments will most benefit my students, and (2) what kinds of assignments will best fit [my] own values, teaching style, and available time?” (38) To do this, the instructor must take an inventory of his students and of himself.
So how do we take inventory of our students? As Bean states, we have the most diverse classrooms in the history of education. We have different ages, races, culture, classes, levels of intelligence, personality type, etc. It is impossible to tailor every assignment to fit the needs of every student in every class, so as teachers, we must be aware of the differences in our students, and assign a variety of assignments to meet the different needs in the classroom. Bean uses an interesting example. He talks about how different personality types, according to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, tend to prefer different types of assignments. For example, I am an ENFP according to Myers-Briggs. According to Bean’s discussion on pages 39-41, because I am Extroverted, I would prefer assignments that allow me to work in small groups and talk about my writing in class discussion; because I am Intuitive, I would prefer to work on assignments that are open-ended rather that rigidly structured; because I am a Feeler, I would prefer assignments that allow me to use emotions, voice, and personal experience; and because I am a perceiver, I like to have time to play with many ideas when working on assignments. I found this to be an accurate description of the type of writing assignments that I prefer. I found it interesting, however, that most students are Sensors rather than feelers (unlike their professors), and would rather have structured assignments. So, as we see, what students want and what teachers want often times do not match up. This becomes a problem when we as teachers try to motivate our students. The best way that I see to motivate students and meet their diverse needs is to be aware of how different personality types respond to different assignments, different cultures respond to different assignments, etc. Since we can’t all give our students the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator test and learn everything about our students’s cultures, races, backgrounds, etc. we should just vary our assignments to accommodate the diversity. I think it would be better to have every student invested in at least one assignment throughout the semester rather than having a small group invested in every assignment throughout the semester. I think we would reach more students that way. Of course we have to figure out where we stand, and what we think is and is not important to teach our students because if we aren’t motivated to teach, students will not be motivated to learn.
Bean argues that we can get the “mixture of professional and personal writing” that we need in our classrooms by using “three different categories of assignments:
(1) Nongraded exploratory writing
(2) Thesis-governed academic writing
(3) Essays written in other styles ad forms that stand against conventional academic writing and create different ways of ‘seeing.’” (52)
In what percentages we do each is up to the teacher. A teacher must examine the class, the objectives and goals of the class, and his own personal goals to decide this. It’s all about balance.

Introduction to The Elements of Literacy by Julie Lindquist and David Seitz

The following is a summary and analysis of the introductory chapter of The Elements of Literacy. I will also be including my own examples into the summary, and I will discuss in further detail some of the implications of the material presented in this chapter.

This chapter opens explaining the United State's current fascination with standardized testing and the No Child Left Behind Act. The authors use standardized testing and NCLB as a running example throughout the chapter to show how society views and defines literacy today, and the limitations and complications of using that limited definition.

So what does standardized testing and the NCLB act show us about how we as a society view literacy? The authors claim that it shows us that society believes literacy has a "fixed and stable" definition, and it is easily defined. It also reveals society's belief that literacy is a cognitive skill that can be easily measured, and everyone has an equal opportunity to acquire this skill. As we know, this is not the case. Children, for example, who attend underprivileged schools do not have access to the same resources as children who grow up in more affluent communities. As we can see, the definition of literacy that society uses, the definition that drives our policies, is often an out-dated, incomplete definition, and does not define how literacy is currently being used in society.

The chapter proceeds to discuss the NCLB act in further detail:

NCLB is big on holding schools accountable for the success of their students on standardized testing, which, again, is an insufficient way to measure literacy in the first place because it ignores many aspects of literacy such as class, technology, race, culture, religion, etc. In a perfect world, this policy might make sense, but we all know this is not a perfect world. All schools are not created equally. Poorer schools cannot offer their students access to as many resources as more affluent schools. Poor schools often work with out-dated textbooks, if they have textbooks at all, less qualified teachers, etc. Forget about computers. Many students in poorer communities miss out on that literacy all together. The biggest problem, then, with accountability is that NCLB punishes schools who do not perform as well by withholding money from them, further limiting their ability to help out their students, and it financially rewards schools that meet performance expectations. The rich schools get richer, and the poor schools get poorer. The gap widens.

One of the other major problems that I see, is that the program funds teaching methods that have shown through scientific research, effective results. This assumes that literacy can be measured through scientific research. That, however, is not what I see as the most glaring issue. We all know research, especially the publishing of its findings, takes time. Something that might have worked in schools twenty years ago when the research was done, will probably not work as well today with all of our technological advances and the changing definitions of literacy. NCLB, then, does not allow for innovative methods of teaching. We're teaching 19th and 20th century literacy in a 21st century classroom. As the authors point out, when society defines literacy one way, though the term itself is abstract, it has very real and concrete implications in the real world.

The chapter moves on to talk about ways to define or think about literacy. The authors talk about how the term is hard to define, and I found it particularly interesting when they stated that it is an "abstract noun" with no verb form. Verb forms of words often clue us in to the actions surrounded the noun form, allowing us to have a better understanding of the term. We don't have that luxury with literacy.

So how is literacy defined in today's society? The authors point out three common definitions:

• "Literacy is a quantifiable workplace skill"
• Literacy refers to practiced engagement with printed text"
• Literacy has to do with higher-order information processing and reasoning skills" (7).

These are all still pretty abstract definitions, and that is the problem. Literacy is a word a lot of people throw around, but they cannot actually define it. That complicates conversations on literacy because often one person's definition of literacy varies drastically from another person's. This makes room for a lot of confusion and misunderstanding.

To give their readers a better understanding of literacy, the authors quote Scribner's Three Metaphors for Literacy. They quote Scribner saying, "each of these three metaphors is rooted in certain assumptions about the social motivations for literacy in this country, the nature of existing literacy practices, and judgments about which practices are critical for individual and social enhancement" (9). The three metaphors are as follows:

• Literacy as adaption: This is the idea that in order to survive socially and economically in society, one needs literacy. Literacy is a way of "getting by." For example, people need literacy to read road signs, leases, file taxes, fill out job applications, buy groceries, etc. As we grow and mature, literacy is a way for us to adapt to our new roles in society.
• Literacy as power: This explores the the relationship between literacy and socioeconomic status. For example, literacy has often been used to oppress certain groups of people. For example, by not allowing African Americans to learn to read, they remained in a disadvantaged position in society. This concept, basically, stresses that the most literate have the most power, and literacy is what allows for social mobility.
• Literacy as a state of grace: The authors define this as the belief that "you're smarter, more civilized, more ethical, more humane" if you are literate (10). Literacy gives you an elite status culturally and allows for intellectual freedom.

As you can see, many of these metaphors overlap. If literacy is adaptation, a way of getting by, of course the most literate are going to have the most power because they are the most financially well-off, etc.

Though these definitions are a great way to think about literacy, literacy does not have a "fixed" or "stable" definition, as the authors make clear. The definitions of literacy are constantly changing. Literacy does not exist in a vacuum. Its definitions are products of the world: the political climate, the economic climate, history, current events, etc. The authors cite Deborah Brandt's research on the changing definitions of literacy, and they use her example of how literacy changed during WWII. Prior to WWII literacy "shifted from an emphasis on morality (Scribner's state of grace) to an emphasis on production" (11). Literacy became a way of getting by, and it became a necessity for the survival of a nation as demands on production increased. Similarly, literacy today is linked to our position as a dominant world power and the maintenance of that position. Basically literacy is defined by past and current events, and its definition is very much impacted by the real world just as its definition impacts the real world. It's a two way street.

I think the problem is that we are constantly re-defining literacy in the real world before we acknowledge the shift and incorporate in the definition we use in society to drive our policies. Basically our definitions of literacy lag behind its practical uses in the world. This is a problem. We're still using an "old" definition of literacy to drive our policies in the classroom, but in the real world, we are falling behind to countries like Japan that are focusing on how technological advances affect literacy. We're also focusing on measuring literacy in the classroom instead of trying to teach it. Schools are social institutions set in place to uphold social values. Schools aren't meant to be agents of change so much, so that is why it is necessary that we get the conversation on writing, reading, literacy in the 21st century going, so we can change social values and definitions and apply them to our classrooms before it is too late.

The last section of the chapter focuses on how the rest of the book is organized. It is organized in an attempt to give its readers a broader definition of the term and make that definition more concrete by applying it to the real world, or different "sites" where literacy is happening today. They are as follows:

• Mind-cognitive skill
• Culture-cultural practices and values
• Class-power
• Work Place- buying power
• Technology-advancments

The chapter ends with a number of activities to get people to think about literacy in their daily lives and study how the world views literacy. These activities are helpful because they force participants to take an abstract term and apply it to the real world, making that definition more understandable and concrete.

Overall, this chapter is focused on peeling back the different layers of literacy, its definitions, what influences it, and its power in society. It attempts to take an abstract word, one that is often misunderstood, and make it understood. Once we have a complete, working definition of the term, we can begin the much needed conversations on literacy and its place in the 21st century.