Literacies at Work

It was tough work that my family did. I would later come to understand the dynamics of occupational status and social class, but I could sense early on how difficult the work was and that without it we’d starve. I also saw that people know things through work. And they use what they learned. This experience was all very specific to me, not abstract, remembering from the lived moments of work I had witnessed from all sorts of objects and images, from sound and smell, from rhythms of the body. These sensory particulars stay with me, resonant.

Mike Rose. The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker. Viking Press, 2004. xiii-xiv.

AFTER LOOKING BEYOND THE SCHOOL at the various communities of practice in which you are already involved, I thought it would be useful to break these rhetorical spaces up into more specific categories—this time, by function: “work” and “play.” Our work oftentimes defines who we are and what we value. It certainly shapes our discourse, our “literacies.” As Rose asserts above, “people kn[o]w things through work. And they use what they learn.”

He continues:

The work that my uncle [a “railroad man”] and mother [a waitress] did affected their sense of who they were,    and, though limiting in so many ways, it provided a means of doing something in the world.

   Doing something in the world. I couldn’t have expressed it this way when I was growing up, but the work I saw connected in my mind with agency and competence—that’s what being an adult meant to me and it was intimately tied to physical work. And, as does any child, I craved competence. Special terminology caught my ear; the idiom of freight trains or food orders, because not everyone could speak it, especially in the right way and it made things happen. Particular movements of the body made things happen, too, in the restaurant and the stockyard. And there was knowledge of tools and services, wrenches and hacksaws and measures and the whirring blender. Tied to this knowledge were tricks of the trade. And what a kick it was when one of my uncles or a cook or a waitress showed me how to do something with a little more efficiently, with a little less effort and a little more finesse. Hold it this way. Move it in, like this. See? I became the work’s insider, if just for a moment. (xviii)

Unpack the above passage, considering especially what it might have to do with this issue of communities of practice and—eventually—writing for school. What do you know about restaurant work? the stockyard? What “special terminology” might be involved in these communities of practice (that of the waitress and the railroad worker)? What kinds of things might this “special terminology” make happen? Would that “special terminology” work the same way in different communities of practice? Why or why not? What “tools and services” do members of each communities of practice have “knowledge of”? Why do they need knowledge of these tools? These services? What tricks of the trade might members know that nonmembers might not?
 

 For WA4, I’m going to ask that you choose an occupation with which you have much familiarity and do this same sort of analysis of the communities of practice associated with that occupation.

Description:  Formal essay about the “rules” and expectations governing “literate” practices in specific occupations.

Resources: Mike Rose’s The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker (2004), the Group Presentations on the subject, previous essays WA1-WA2, and whatever else you need/can use! I think you should make extensive use of the activities offered on on the handout "Preparing to Write WA4," as well.

Purpose: To begin exploring and rethinking what it means (and what it can mean) to read and write in different places and for different purposes by examining and analyzing communities of practice that extend beyond the school.

Idea generators: Examine the expectations governing what may be considered “literate” practices in an occupational community of practice.  You may consider the following questions:
 
1. What do nonmembers have to learn, be able to recognize, find valuable, and/or embody before they may be considered a “literate” participant in this occupational community of practice (as a plumber, a waitress, a hair stylist, a computer programmer, etc)?

2. How is membership in this context expressed?

3. How is competency determined, by whom and according to what measure?

4. What strategies must one use to be heard, understood, and taken seriously within the rhetorical spaces of this community of practice?

5. What should be the long-term goals of literate members as determined by what this occupational community of practice finds valuable and possible? How does one know when they’ve reached these goals?
 
Additional Idea Generators: You may interview someone who works in this occupation and has for some time. What do they say literate users know that others may not?
 
CONSTRAINTS:

Page-length minimum for Peer Review: FOUR PAGES (double-spaced, Times New Roman, 12-point font)

Due Date: _____

Page-length minimum for Instructor Review: FIVE PAGES (double-spaced, Times New Roman, 12-point font)

Due Date: _____
 

Dr. Shannon Carter * English 100 * Fall 2006