A letter to my students

I am taking a course this semester in which one of the assignments is to write "a letter to your students."  This letter should explain to my future students why they need to know what I teach and why the subject is important -- even essential -- for them to learn.

I am grateful for this opportunity. When I first started teaching in Texas almost 20 years ago, I wrote an introductory letter to my 9th and 10th grade English students. In those early letters, I seem to recall focusing on what we were going to study and learn, kind of like a "friendly" syllabus. 

My orientation to teaching and learning has radically shifted in the last several years. I now spend more time thinking about how we teach and learn in the language arts, and I wanted this open letter to my future students to convey that message. 

For starters, I decided to publish my letter as a blog post and as a podcast (embedded below), with the hope of stretching readers' (my future students') conceptions of reading and writing in the 21st century.

(I was partly inspired by the work of Leigh A. Hall around reader/writer identities in a secondary school context.  Hall's commentary on this subject appears in the February 2012 edition of the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy.)

Dear Students,

I look forward to working with you this year, and I expect to learn a lot from you.

I also expect you to learn a lot.

My goal is to enable you along a path toward becoming "truly literate." What does this mean? Does it mean knowing how to read and how to write? Yes, and no. It's reading and writing, and much, much more. Being truly literate means being engaged with reading, comfortable with numerous ways and purposes of writing, and able to hold your own in an intelligent debate with your teacher and peers. 

I expect you to learn more than basic reading and writing skills. In our classroom, you will participate in practices of "high literacy": reading and responding to a variety of texts familiar and new, writing and publishing original texts, discussing in large and small groups, applying knowledge and skills to new situations, and demonstrating mastery of knowledge and skills through a variety of tasks. 

Perhaps most of all, I expect you to identify yourselves as readers and writers, and to recognize the many ways in which you are readers and writers both inside and outside of school. We will work together to define for ourselves what it means to read and to write.

For example, this letter is not printed on paper. It is located in a blog. You may access this letter online, and, if you choose, you may listen to it as a podcast or watch it as a multimedia presentation.  

Is any of this reading? 

To create this letter, I picked up neither pencil nor pen.  No paper was wasted in the production of this letter! Instead, I composed at a keyboard using word processing software to revise, edit, and format my words on a computer screen.  I used built-in tools such as a spelling and grammar checker as well as an online dictionary. 

Is this writing?

Then, I cut and pasted my words into my blog, where I performed additional formatting changes, added hyperlinks, and inserted pictures and graphics. Then, I clicked a button and published my letter. Now, anyone in the world with an Internet connection and browser may read this letter. Even more interesting, anyone in the world reading this letter on a personal computer or mobile device now has the ability to duplicate, disseminate, and share it with others.  The audience -- and that means you -- may react to this letter by publishing comments below. 

But is this really publishing?

There is an old expression: The medium is the message. It means how we communicate our words is as important as, or sometimes more important than, the words themselves. In the case of this letter, the medium is definitely part of my message. I am trying to make a point that the reading and writing processes are greatly improved when we allow them to occur as interactive, collaborative, and social activities. 

You don't need a computer to experience the social aspects of reading and writing, but mobile and digital technologies give us more opportunities to create, collaborate, and communicate quickly, easily, and cheaply. Some people will argue that you -- today's youth -- already use enough digital technologies, and you do so irresponsibly, unethically, and ineffectively.  Thus, we shouldn't have these technologies in school.  

But I can think of no better place than school to stretch the boundaries, while modeling and practicing safe, responsible, and ethical use.

Above all, my goal is for you to take up reading and writing as a set of tools for creating and imagining social spaces where everyone has a voice. When you find and unlock your voice, you can take your place among the ranks of literate citizens and enjoy lifelong engagement with language, words, and ideas.

So, let's get started! Now it's your turn to compose a letter to me and to your classmates.  Choose your favorite communication tool and tell us about what you are reading and writing at home and at school. What kind of reader and writer are you?  What kind of reader and writer do you want to become?

A letter to my students