Welcoming Their Worlds: Rethinking Literacy Instruction through Community Mapping

Abstract

In this article we look at how a community of practice in one midsize urban K–12 school district engaged in a community mapping process to discover, gather, and analyze a rich array of community and home resources in order to create classroom practices and curriculum that integrated the literacies of home and school and led to transformed student learning. We look at the tools used by this diverse group of K-12 educators and examine some of the groups collective learning. Then we focus on the case of one teacher whose inquiry into the literacies already present in his students out of school lives, led him to rethink classroom instruction and better support their voices, experiences, and knowledge to build competencies in the literacy practices associated with the ELA standards. Through examining the reflections, learning, and written artifacts of focal students, we examine the way that engagement, performance, and meaning making were mediated by the creation of a learning context that valued and connected student words and worlds. The creation of learning spaces in which student, family, and community worlds was integrated increased student motivation and engagement and improved performance as measured on district rubrics. We present evidence of how teachers’ efforts their understanding of school-based literacy led to them to recognize the multiple and complex literacies that they had typically ignored that could serve as a resource for school-based literacy performance.