Literacy and Stuff- Casey V.

Russell says a lot about writing and literacy in this piece. Some of the points he made and claims he stated tie into what we have already been learning in our class. One thing I really like was “Literacy is not learned in and of itself and then applied to contexts (activity systems)” (8). This applies to what we’ve been talking about in “Situated Learning”. You don’t just take a class on literacy and then boom understand it and everything about it. You don’t even necessarily have to take a class about literacy to learn it and things about it. I took the Literacy class here at Chico and I can tell you I was originally more confused about literacy. Then it just sort of clicked. Like Russell says “Literacy is always and everywhere bound up with the activity systems that is changes through its mediation of behavior – and which change it, for writing is an immensely protean took that activity systems are always and everywhere changing to meet their needs” (8). This goes into the discussion we had in class about writing for teachers. Literacy changes depending on the mode it is being used in. For example my posts on Facebook are different than my posts on instagram just like my writing for this class is different than the writing I’ve done for other teachers. This ties into Russell’s metaphor about balls. I wasn’t taught my different ways of writing through school and there isn’t one way I write all the time. I write text messages to my friends differently than I write emails to my professors. I feel like in school we are taught writing is this one thing you do in school to talk about what you’ve learning but the concept of literacy is so much more than that which is my prefer that term. Another one of my favorite things Russell said was “Adolescents and adults do not ‘learn to write’, period” (7). This again reiterates what we have been talking about in class. How if you want someone to learn how to write then let them write don’t make them learn and do all these things before they can even try it out.