Becoming Literate

First of all I feel the need to acknowledge the above heading and the naming of this blog. The phrase ‘becoming literate’ is found within the quote of a writer and academic I greatly admire and wish I could have met! Her name is Maxine Greene (1917 – 2014 – wow!!!) and in the book ‘Releasing the Imagination’ she writes, “Imagination will always come into play when becoming literate suggests an opening of spaces, an end to submergence and a consciousness of the right to ask why” (1995, p. 25). I love this quote because it mentions the provocation of imagination through the process of becoming literate – and this process is aligned with expansion of thought and experience. I am also indebted to Michelle Obama in the curation of this title! Yesterday – January 1st – I symbolically finished reading her book ‘Becoming’. I say symbolically because January 1st is traditionally associated with enlightenment and a determination to ‘become’ more than we were the year before. I don’t actually subscribe to this – way too much pressure – but I love the word ‘becoming’ because it suggests a continual development rather than one that can be measured at any particular time.

And so to the word ‘literate’. I am a literacy intervention teacher and I have a doctorate in literacy – so the word and what it means is extremely important to me. I intend to use this space to document what ‘becoming literate’ actually means and to expand on narrow definitions of literacy through examining life as a lived literacy.