Dear Dr. Newkirk,
I was present during your Keynote Address at Rhode Island
College on March 8th 2014. Your ideas of literacy ease my mind. I’ve
always been afraid to read out loud. I’m a slow reader and after hearing you
speak I felt a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. Hearing from you that we
should be more concerned with comprehension rather than fluency is wonderful.
I’d much rather take my time and understand what I’m reading, it shouldn’t be a
race.
The importance of narratives is what you
touched upon the most. You said a narrative is a way to express our world, that
it is at the center of everything and is a basis to all writing. We tell
stories in order to understand, but telling stories seems to be of less
importance in education. There is an emphasis on facts. I really liked a quote
you used by Stalin, “One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic”. This
was the quote that stood out the most to me. One death is personal, a story can
be told and a person can be appreciated. One million deaths are sad, but it
isn’t as touching as an individual death. I can see it as a learning experience;
it is more profound to know an individual story than a factual statistic
report. Narratives stay with us.
There
was one part of the speech where I lost the connection. It was the video of the
Asian kid making fun of an Asian parent stereotype. Not that I don’t have a
sense of humor, but that is just feeding into the stereotype. I just didn’t see
how it fit into the speech. Maybe I missed something. I’d like for you to help
me out with that.
Lastly,
the greatest part of your whole speech was the Right to Speak Paper. This is a
great way to get to understand your students. You simply said it is about the
experiences you have lived through and the right to speak about it because
you’ve seen it. I think it is a fantastic way to express one’s self without having
to prove anything to anyone through research. I believe we should provide more
opportunities for students to express their personal experience and I plan on
using this in my classroom. I will keep in mind the last thing you said about
narratives never leaving us, because when they do we seize to be who we
are.
Sincerely,
Adrián Vargas
Can anyone tell me the point of the video with the Asian kid? I honestly didn't see a point to it.
I'm not sure if its because of Bogad's class, but I definitely felt a weird awkward vibe when Newkirk played that video. Yes we talked about narratives and perhaps that is the humorous narrative of that person's parental experience, but I agree Adrian, there was something that felt off. The video seemed like something that a friend would post on Facebook, not something that a group of educators would display at a conference.
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