The big question is, “What does critical literacy mean to me?” When I think of critical literacy, the one word that comes to mind is authentic. What I mean by authentic is work created by students that gives them a purpose and meaning for learning. This work that they create gives them ownership of an assignment because of the uniqueness the student brings to the task at hand.
Whether we as literate humans know it, but critical literacy surrounds us and appears everyday. It can be the simplest task such as waking up to the alarm clock and hitting the snooze button to reading a schedule in the airport to find out that you have missed your flight. Critical literacy skills are modeled and learned by students who are then capable of applying these skills in order to function in any situation in life. It’s the real life application (which we discussed as a whole class) that makes critical literacy so crucial and necessary in life.
But mastering critical literacy skills does not limit ones ability to just knowing how to read (phonemes/words), write (phonemes put together to create words), speak (using ones vocal chords), and listen in the typical conventional ways. Students who have significant disabilities have the capability to communicate and learn just as those without disabilities. The difference, however, is that students with significant disabilities utilize other devises in order to communicate in life and what they have learned through multi-modal technologies, simple pictures, enlarged writing/pictures, etc. By adapting and accommodating to those students needs, we are making them able to be “normal” rather than classifying them as disabled.
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