Reading engagement with cultural sensitivity and graphic novels in literacy instruction

¶ … Literacy Short Assgts

READING. Fadi Awwad

My Reading Engagement Journal for Chapter 3

I already knew about the need for sensitivity to cultural differences in the classroom because I was raised in a devout Muslim home (that was also an American home), and the years corresponding to my own secondary education were years in American life where a kind of noxious Islamophobia very frequently poisoned public discourse. I am grateful to the extent that I had teachers who were able to rise above the level of Fox News idiocy.

I want to know more about the use of graphic novels in teaching content area literacy, as described by Vacca and Mraz on pages 79-80, because I happen to be a fan of a particular graphic novel, Palestine by Joe Sacco, which describes the artist's experiences staying on the Gaza Strip in 1991-1992. If graphic novels are an easier way to teach literacy, this particular example would help to teach cultural sensitivity in an area that still requires work for many Americans. My favorite visual from the reading is the botanical graphic organizer from pages 86-7, because it illustrates perfectly how visual learning can be used to assist those who aren't necessarily fluent with complicated vocabulary. I had trouble with nothing in this chapter, really, because

Vacca Vacca and Mraz write with a clarity that is, to use a favorite vocabulary word of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, pellucid.

My favorite sentence/phrase from the reading is "When teachers attempt to help students understand diverse ethnic and cultural perspectives by providing them with ongoing opportunities to read about concepts and events, make judgments about them, think critically, and generate their own conclusions and opinions, they are using a transformative approach" on page number 64 because I myself understand personally what it would mean to transform society in a positive way, by encouraging young people to think critically and intelligently about the received racism and hostility that often attends upon cultural diferences. I plan on sharing the information about multicultural reading lists on pages 66-68 to enhance my own reading, and for anything that I might assign, because I am aware that my own experience as a Muslim American (and familiarity with literature regarding this) can actually be better contextualized by looking at some of the works described here, with their engagement with the experience of Japanese-Americans during domestic internment programs in World War 2 or with the struggles of immigrants to America from around the world. If I could speak with the authors of this textbook, I would ask them the following question: In the list of recommended reading for English classes regarding multicultural issues, why did you not include a text that deals with specifically Muslim issues? It seems like this is a particularly large insensitivity in American life today, and the reading list offered would be improved with attention to it. I predict that the information I read in this textbook will come in handy if I have to draw up a reading list in a large public high school with a multi-ethnic student population.

The following visual from the National Endowment for the Humanities http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2014/mayjune/feature/the-odyssey-ulysses-s-grant reminds me of the information in this chapter because it demonstrates a form of cross-cultural understanding from the opposite direction -- here, a Japanese artist of the 19th century uses traditional Japanese woodblock art to depict the arrival of the American President and war hero Ulysses S. Grant on an official visit to the Emperor of Japan. We can see that cross-cultural understanding works in both directions. I made the following connection of thinking about a foreign cultures depiction of Americans as strange and unusual with information from John Guare's play A Few Stout Individuals, which dramatizes Grant's visit to Japan, and which features some of this unique Japanese woodblock art as the cover of the published text.

Based on the required reading Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Please note: As it was impossible to shrink these relevant images down to the size where they could be added in an additional column next to the list from the textbook, I have instead decided to present the images as a series in a slideshow.

I trust this does not violate the spirit of the assignment. But if there is some reason why the images presented in series -- rather than in a column -- does indeed violate the spirit of the assignment, I look forward to learning why precisely this is the case.

DISCOVERY

Exploring and generating ideas

Finding a topic

Making plans (Audience? Form? Voice?)

Getting started

DRAFTING

Getting ideas down on paper

Sticking to the task

Developing fluency and coherence

REVISING

Revising for meaning

Responding to the writing

Organizing for clarity

Editing and proofreading for the conventions of writing, word choice, syntax

Polishing

PUBLISHING

Sharing and displaying finished products

Evaluating and grading