Redefining Text, Redefined Me
By: Belinda Foster
Date: January 27, 2010
Summary: Belinda Foster, a teacher-consultant with the Area 3 Writing Project (CA), connects her experience as a person living with ADHD to a teaching style that recognizes the strengths of every student and encourages varied ways of building on those strengths.
Excerpt
And then I pushed them. I pushed them with photographs, advertisements, and songs with and without lyrics. I pushed them with recipes, music videos, and each other's clothing. I pushed them with art, sports plays, and diagrams for engines and random machines. I pushed them with graphic novels, comic strips and the occasional cartoon. I pushed them with non-fiction and fiction of all shapes and sizes. I pushed them, and the truth is I pushed me too. But, every time students discovered they were experts in a certain kind of text—students who often are not regularly seen as experts—I promised them that their ability to deconstruct that text could be applied to any other kind of text. I promised them that their ability to create that kind of text could be applied to any other kind they need to create."
Copyright © 2009 California English. Reprinted with permission.
Foster, Belinda. 2009. "Redefining Text, Redefined Me." California English 15 (2): 23–24.
Read more California English articles on the California Writing Project.
About the Author Belinda Foster, a teacher-consultant with the Area 3 Writing Project (CA) since 1999, has taught English language arts at Grant High School in Sacramento and is currently employed as the secondary edtech coordinator with Twin Rivers Unified School District.
Download the Article
Download "Redefining Text, Redefined Me"
Related Resource Topics
