Starting a new conversation

I've started by summer class, Literacy Learning as Social Practice, and am inspired again about possibilities. I've been teaching some version of this class, improved over time, for 12 years. Each time I get excited to move people from autonomous definitions of literacy to critical social practice views. As the students get younger (read I get older!) and even though they are millenials, I am struck by how hegemonic the autonomous definition is. They are active users, in both producer and consumers roles, of "new" literacies, yet it doesn't feel like "real" literacy to them. It reminds me of Harry in Barton and Hamilton's "Local Literacies". He had rich and varied literacy practices in his everyday life, but didn't feel like they were real or important because they weren't like school. (My apologies to Barton and Hamilton for oversimplifying their points). I love watching as they start to see things differently and that light goes off in their eyes.