Literacy and Engagement

Written for EDR 210 (Trends in Reading Instruction), 2nd Sem SY 2017-2018 under Professor Maria Hazelle Preclaro.

            If there is one thing I learned over our past few sessions (though I can assure you that I’ve learned more than one thing), it’s that literacy is a process and not an end goal. The previous activity on engagement just drove that point even deeper for me.

            Honestly, The Giving Tree is not one of my favorite stories. I don’t recall reading it as a child but I remember encountering it some time around college and I didn’t like the message of the story. I felt very strongly for the tree and I was quite miffed at the boy. I wondered if I had missed the right age for reading the book because I could not see the appeal and why so many people loved it.

            The engagement activities we conducted in class did change my view of The Giving Tree from dislike to interest. This made me want to reread another book I didn’t like, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and see if I could apply similar engagement activities to change my attitude toward the book.

            The book being read aloud in class played a large part in this change of perspective. I have attended story telling sessions recently but it was been a while since I have been an active part of the audience wherein the storyteller is telling the story directly to me as a part of a group. Usually, the storyteller is focused on a  group of children in front of me. So hearing the story was different from reading it. I somehow felt like I could concentrate more on the storyline and I was actually transfixed by the story in a way that I never encountered reading it to myself. The listening was the beginning of the engagement. The questions in between the pages of the books made me think about aspects of the story as we went along reading.

            The engagement activities on paper walked me through the different relationships in the book by taking a look at the actions, words, and reactions of the characters. The activity then asked me to relate my feelings and actions to my life and so making me think of how my relationships may be similar or different from those of the characters in the book.

            Engagement activities are meant to give a reader a relationship to the text. I feel that it is important that the reader find a connection to the text because it promotes better understanding and it makes reading more enjoyable. It also allows readers to build empathy for different characters. The questions about my own relationships turned reading the story into more of a reflection of my life.

These activities lead me to conclude that literacy goes beyond reading. It is the process of understanding not only a text but also the context in which you are reacting to the text. I was able to discover why I didn’t like the text when I originally read it and understand a little more about myself too. This is quite a feat for a book often aimed at children. But I think that’s the beauty of literature, most of it does not age and can be read again and again. As we age, our reaction to the books and stories change as well. We relate to different characters and understand some reactions that we might not have thought about or reflected on before.

I am looking forward to reading The Little Prince with a different lense and these engagement activities. I might not like it even after all this but I might see something that I missed the last time I read it.