Literacy with an Attitude

When reading the article "Literacy with an Attitude" by Patrick Finn, the first thing that I connected it to was to the movie we are watching in class Freedom Writers. The article touches upon topics such as inequality in the classroom and how many people do not pay attention to all of these inequalities and brush them under the rug. Those children in the movie, just like in the reading knew of the injustices that they faced every day but they said nothing about it and keep living in the way that they do. We as people, do what we do best and pretend the problems cease to exist.

This reading stated that working class students have the expectation that they do not want to succeed in life and will skate by doing the bare minimum in school. This article touched upon the facts that teachers in fact dump lower learning students off on teachers that work with special education students, and students with learning disabilities. I have heard this first hand with the children that I babysit, both of them have learning disabilities and their mother tells me that the teachers do not give the children the attention that they deserve because they simply cannot keep up and just dump them on the resource teacher. Finn states that, "The reality was that as the year wore on there were spaces available in "lower" classes to dump troublesome students from "higher" classes. And so by Christmas there were likely to be more than twenty in the 8-14s and 8-15s (lower levels)" (Finn 3).

Finn spoke about how he had made such a difference in the children's lives that he taught, just like in Freedom Writers how Ms. Gruwell changed the lives of her students every day she stood at the front of the classroom. She made them feel like THEY mattered. When the entire world was telling them that they were worthless, they had a sense of being in that room. She taught them things they never would have learned outside of that classroom because many other teachers had expectations that were in place for how those types of children would act.

I could also argue that this article relates to the White Privilege article that we read previously. The teachers did not want to deal with any students that are not like them, whether it be by race, gender, education level, etc. I see this every Friday at my Elementary School that I am at. The teacher will ALWAYS work with the students that grasp the material and are attentive. I however, always work with the students who are considered lower level, and not as behaved. I do not mind, because i know that every student in that classroom is capable of greatness. It just takes the right person to take it out of them. Whether it be Patrick Finn, Erin Gruwell, Dr. Stevos, or even me for that matter. It starts with one person. It is important to break the mold as children and students.