Every person has certain memorable moments in their learning
lives, some more damaging or encouraging than others. Throughout my entire
schooling life it has been my experience that with literacy and numeracy
learning once you fell behind anyone in your class you continued to fall behind
in following weeks, months, years, life. I was always under the impression that
you’re supposed to know certain levels of literacy by the time you’re in high
school, ‘that is the primary school teacher’s job’. You’re definitely supposed
to be literate in all areas by the time you get to university. I was always the
student in the middle, not excelling and not failing; these students are often
forgotten in the world of schooling. When considering literacy; I remember one
literary moment in my schooling life like standing on a piece of glass hidden
in the sand at the beach.
I handed in my first university academic English paper. The
question for the essay went along the lines of: “Society, class and gender have
changed over time”, explore and discuss this in relation to “Howards End”. I worked so hard and for so long to try and reach what I thought were university standards. I was then ready to hand over a little piece of myself, I wish that I had of been able to attach a post-it note that said “handle with care”.
After 3 long weeks I finally received it back. Much to my dismay my beautiful little piece of critical writing had THOUSANDS of red circles, crosses and lines through every sentence. Oh My Gosh! What had this woman done to my expressive essay? The comments I received read along the lines of something like this: BLA BLA BLA, Grammar, Grammar, and Grammar.
Her comments focused entirely on functional literacy with no regard whatsoever for literacy as a whole. Through acknowledging Luke and Freebody’s “Four Resource Model” and as it happens, the marking criteria for that assignment, then we learn that functional literacy is not the only thing that matters when writing an academic essay. A student should use the four practices; code breaking, text participant, text user and text analyst: “All of these practices are needed over time to engage successfully with texts. The resources to support and facilitate each of these practices are therefore necessary for effective literacy learning” (Freebody & Luke, 1992, p. n/a) She didn’t take into account my level of critical, cultural or personal literacy when marking my paper and perhaps if she had I would not have been so utterly disturbed at my ruined essay. It was not the mark so much that affected me as I still passed but it was that big huge RED pen!
To my amusement there has been articles and research
surrounding this matter; the affects that red pen can have on a student and their
future learning, some schools have even banned them as a result, marking must
now be done in another colour. I at first believed this to be a little
excessive and protective of Australia’s children but after having the traumatic
experience myself I have a deeper understanding.
See links for Articles:http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/the-terror-of-the-red-pen/26120
This entire experience has had a significant influence on my own life and that of a future teacher. I constantly remind myself that I will mark using “The Four Resources Model” and “The Literacy Learning Triptych” as a guide and not focus purely on one literacy (unless, in some unlikely circumstance, the criteria demands it) and engage fully with my students to understand their own level of literacy and meaning. After all as teachers it is our job to create informed fully functional citizens and this cannot be achieved without incorporating all areas and levels of literacy. I will always continually assess my student’s level of understanding so that I can ensure everyone has the opportunity to learn and excel, not just ‘going with the flow’ in the middle.
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