Monday, July 2, 2007

Writing is Thinking, BPR Ch. 13

"Writing is not about memorizing a series of facts and reiterating that information... Writing lets us think of things we didn't know we knew until we began writing." (Rief, 191)

I don't know why, but this paragraph from the book reminds me of a girl I tutored a couple years ago. This girl, about 16 years old, was from Mexico and as a volunteer to the Every1 Reads program who spoke Spanish, I was assigned to her. She didn't speak much English although she'd been in the United States for a while. In addition to that, her Spanish was very conversational. I soon realized that this young girl could not read or write in her native language, let alone in English. She had stayed at home with her mother growing up, doing household duties instead of going to school. This girl was very shy and intimidated and frustrated with her literacy level (or at least how much we focused and promoted the advancement of this). At the very beginning our sessions, which were once a week for an hour, the young girl would refuse to read. She would simply say "No puedo," in English "I can't." Instead of reading, I resorted to writing - starting with the alphabet. To my surprise, she could write! We capitalized on this aspect of her literacy. I asked her to write a word for each letter of the alphabet and we progressed to working on her portfolio pieces. I believe this quote epitomizes this student with whom I had the privilege to work.

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