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Literacy History
Developmental
Literacy:
Literacy was important to me from an
early age. My stepfather,
who helped raise me since childhood, and his bibliophilia (bordering on bibliomania, the entire lower
level of his house is now a library) was infectious.
He also read and wrote poetry, and is one of the
foremost collectors of Winston Churchill's works (you
need only check out
his
website to see this collection for yourself).
I read early and often right up until middle school.
I have my wife to thank
for sparking my adult love of books once more. I
went through a period of virtual aliteracy through my
earlier high school career, but my wife
gave me a few books (mostly sci-fi) for my birthday one
year and I haven't stopped reading since.
Thanks, Jen!
Academic Literacy:
While literacy was always
important to me, it wasn't until I started going to the
University of Iowa that my true love of literature
blossomed. I discovered I had a talent and a
passion within myself for critical analysis of literature
and poetry.
I also encountered a wealth of world literature, most
notably African women's writing, Japanese literature
(classical and modern) and Medieval (British and
Continental) literature.
Once I began taking classes in the
Department of Education, however, I was inspired to
expand my concept of what literacy was and who had
access to it. I began to think about what
my students enjoyed reading and why. I now find
the study of new literacies very interesting and
rewarding.
Here are some examples of work that I have done for
my English classes. It is
possible to trace my development from the earlier work
to the later, if you read carefully. You can
choose to view any of these files as an Adobe Acrobat or
Microsoft Word file, or as a webpage (HTML).
Extra-academic Literacy:
I have been designing and building websites for over
ten years now, mostly as a hobby. I enjoy website
design because it combines my visual arts background (I
am a working artist, currently in stained and
fused glass) with my love of writing. I believe
there are many connections that should be made more
clearly between the arts and literature, and this has
been a driving factor of my teaching philosophy.
Here a couple of websites that I have
designed. I
have made several others besides, but these are the only
two that are extant:
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Emergent Literacy:
This website was based on a fairly simplistic
template, and as such there was a little less
freedom involved in the design. The
highlights are a blog and a
profile on a social networking site that I created to explain
their respective media to the reader.
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Tibbetts Glassworks: This was created for the
business that my wife and I operate (mostly my wife,
I should note). We create stained glass and
fused glass artwork to sell at local art shows.
It's showing its age now, because I haven't done
much with it since I started getting busy with
my classes. |
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Literacy
Philosophy
