Academic Literacy Across Fields
Female; White; Middle Class; 1984 (2011-04-14)
>>MICHELLE GOLDEN: My name is Michelle Golden and this is my literacy narrative. I want to talk about what I guess I would refer to as "academic literacy." As an undergraduate I was at a small community college but it was kind of a liberal arts community college, kind of a weird combination. We had an amazing astronomy professor my first semester. Second semester, he moved to another school and we had an interim astronomy professor who had been retired for 12 years, and in reality knew very little about astronomy. I was able to read our astronomy textbook and glean the information from it for the class but most of my friends who were in the class with me were theatre majors and they just didn't have the strong academic background that I have. They were unable to read the text and understand it, especially because of the scientific concepts; it was like how stars are made, things that are very complicated. Without the support of a teacher, just reading the text was not enough for them. 
>>MICHELLE GOLDEN: I am not really sure what was maybe lacking from their background that did not enable them to do that, but I found myself in the position to teach my peers. I would read the book and get the information out and then we would have little meetings and I would teach them what was in the book. For some reason, just that human translation from the textbook to the person really enable them to become more literate; it enable them a key to the subject. So I think that in academics, I am a little concerned all of the movement towards everything being online and not necessarily having a face to face teacher or a face to face contact because I think that literacy needs support of people and teachers. Through my experiences with this I found that I feel like academic literacy is something that is not necessarily easy for everyone to get to. It is something that I think those who have natural propensity towards it need to share their gift, in some ways, with others. 

>>INTERVIEWER:  Do you think it was a natural propensity or did you have more experience?

>>MICHELLE GOLDEN: Well, I think it came from just being very widely read in general. I think the more literate you are -- I grew up reading constantly. I probably read at least three or four times as much as most of my friends. So I think that having that literacy and strengthening it in the developmental stage enables you to apply it to different areas even if it is not necessarily something you have ever read before or an area that you have experience in. 

>>INTERVIEWER: So what do you do now? 

>>MICHELLE GOLDEN: Now I teach Composition classes.

>>INTERVIEWER: And that is at?

>>MICHELLE GOLDEN: I actually am a PhD. student at Georgia State University but I teach Composition at George Perimeter, which is a community college.

>>INTERVIEWER: Oh, great. So you try to translate this kind of lesson in your teaching?

>>MICHELLE GOLDEN: I do. Right now I am teaching an 1102 class, which is literature based composition and I choose some texts which I think students are going to be able to read and immediately understand and appreciate, but I also choose texts that I think might be a little bit more of a stretch for them. For example, we just read Oedipus which, for the students in my class, is a little more difficult. They weren't familiar with the culture; they weren't familiar with the story. Even if they have sort of heard of Oedipus they didn't know the story. They weren't even necessarily familiar with the themes that are in it. So I felt like in some way I was there to sort of translate that for them and to challenge them, but at the same time offer a sort of bridge to their understanding. In the end they actually all really liked it. 

>>INTERVIEWER: What are some more ways, maybe, you see yourself as making that bridge? Because that is really hard. 

>>MICHELLE GOLDEN: It is hard. I think one of the things is that most of my students are eager to learn so they are looking for help. I think that is what a big difference is. I think it is easier to become more literate and more able to have conversations about topics that may be outside of their normal scope if you are simply willing to. I think that, as a teacher, one of our jobs is to help them find a way to access a text that they may not have been able to do on their own. I mean, I think that everyone is literate. I think that you just may have to find different ways for them to be able to access their natural literacy.