A Little Introduction

My name is Courtney Carpenter.  I am in love with Batman, my husband and long car rides through the canyon.  Currently, I am working at a local treatment facility for adjudicated youth.  Although this job has provided numerous educational and eye-opening experiences, I very much look forward to the day that I am able to be a Language Arts teacher in a middle school or high school setting.  When I mention my desire to teach English to those who are not going into education themselves, I often get asked/told "How depressing.  Why are killing yourself getting through school, just to get back into school?" or "Ugh! I couldn't do that.  I hated English class."  As a result, I have asked myself very frequently, "Why do you want to do this?"  We all know that it's not for the pay, so why do you want to do it?  That's when I remember Mrs. Hunter's eleventh grade Language Arts class.  I was hooked by the very first day.  I loved coming into her class every 8th period! She introduced me to some of the greatest American novels and taught us to examine a text critically.  My eyes opened!  Reading was more than just simply reading the words! It was interpreting, evaluating information and analyzing circumstance.  And writing!   To be completely honest, I did not see myself as a strong writer.  Actually, to be completely, COMPLETELY honest, I hated writing.  I felt uncomfortable and unskilled putting words together.  A month into Mrs. Hunter's class, I was handed an AP writing prompt and assigned to write a critical essay in response.  Although doing this was aggravating at first, I was very grateful for the experience.  I gained confidence as a writer and I felt that I had begun to at least comprehend the craft.  This is just one glimpse of how central the concept of literacy is to my subject area.  Granted, literacy is being able to read the instructions on your medications or a recipe, but functional literacy is just the beginning!  Above all, the development of critical literacy creates something more than knowledge- something of analysis, synthesis and evaluation!  It insists the idea that "the facts" are not enough; that knowledge is not finite.