Posts

Showing posts from October 24, 2021

blogbook -- Considering the Nature of Our Models of Good Writing

Image
Entry 33 A big part of using any set of literacy standards or learning outcomes in a classroom are the models used to demonstrate such things to students. Sometimes the models are dictated by required curricula and sometimes they’re chosen by teachers. An antiracist orientation would help a teacher to consider the nature and histories of their models of “good writing” in ways that implicate the models and teachers in white supremacist and racist systems, even as many of us are required to use those models in our classrooms as teaching devices. The kind of antiracist orientation I’m speaking of in effect asks: Who does the model represent in society and our classroom? How is that representation, and the habits of language it assumes, connected to the history of racism and WLS in society? Who is that ideal embodied languageling that the model invokes or conjures and what are its effects when circulated in our classroom? How do we (teachers and students) make sure that we do not reproduce