On March 28, Connor Valvo, a senior English major and pre-service Adolescence Education student, presented at the Literacy Essentials professional conference in Connecticut. Connor presented both a defense of harnessing non-academic literacies in the high school classroom and a worked example of mapping his ninth-grade students’ fluency in arguing about hunting onto arguing about Renaissance artists. Connor’s argument gains urgency from its application to York Central High School, where the poverty rate is twice the national average and many students have particular difficulty imagining the relevance of academic work. Connor gained his experience at York while participating in ENGL 488: The Practice of Writing, a SUNY Geneseo course taught by Prof. Gillian Paku and funded by a SUNY C-TEN grant with the goal of engaging Education students with their local communities.
SUNY Geneseo