Portfolio of Class Activities
Portfolio of Class Activities
Embedded Files
This is a class-by-class display of the activities we engaged in
This is a class-by-class display of the activities we engaged in
Class 1 - January 8
These are the three photos which represent the first class. One of them you may recognize as being a picture of my niece grabbing my pinky which I also used for the homepage of this website. This moment was very special since it is the twenty-first day of this baby's life, and also the first day when my fiancée and I met her. My fiancée is holding the baby, the baby is holding me, and I am holding the camera.
These are the three photos which represent the first class. One of them you may recognize as being a picture of my niece grabbing my pinky which I also used for the homepage of this website. This moment was very special since it is the twenty-first day of this baby's life, and also the first day when my fiancée and I met her. My fiancée is holding the baby, the baby is holding me, and I am holding the camera.
One of them is the view from Mont Mégantic, also the background for a Canva slide I made to introduce myself to the class. This was a chance for me to practice photography techniques I had never needed before since I never had such a wonderful landscape as a subject. Obviously this is not the full picture, that is for me, not for Sam Altman to steal.
One of them is the view from Mont Mégantic, also the background for a Canva slide I made to introduce myself to the class. This was a chance for me to practice photography techniques I had never needed before since I never had such a wonderful landscape as a subject. Obviously this is not the full picture, that is for me, not for Sam Altman to steal.
The third is two copies of the book Melissa by Alex Gino. This is the book my group and I chose for our novel project and also a book so queer that it has its own deadname. I already had one copy, now I have three, and depending on how the final groups pan out I may end up with a fourth. There is also a chance that I simply give these books to my teammates to ensure that they end up in more elementary classrooms. Representation is important, and people often underestimate it.
The third is two copies of the book Melissa by Alex Gino. This is the book my group and I chose for our novel project and also a book so queer that it has its own deadname. I already had one copy, now I have three, and depending on how the final groups pan out I may end up with a fourth. There is also a chance that I simply give these books to my teammates to ensure that they end up in more elementary classrooms. Representation is important, and people often underestimate it.
Reflection: My Understanding of What Literacy Is
Reflection: My Understanding of What Literacy Is
In the simplest terms possible, to me literacy is the ability to understand not only the words on the page in front of you, but also the explicit and implicit meaning of those words. If I can flesh out that understanding further using my chosen artifact of The Bear that Wasn't by Frank Tashlin, being able to read is understanding that the word "bear" does not rhyme with the word "fear," being literate involves being able to read the story in full, to understand the events which occurred, and then to also understand that this is not a story about a bear, but rather about the absurdity of attempting to force people to be things they are not. Full literacy is understanding why I as a trans woman needed to put the book down the first time I read it and then finish it at a different time.
In the simplest terms possible, to me literacy is the ability to understand not only the words on the page in front of you, but also the explicit and implicit meaning of those words. If I can flesh out that understanding further using my chosen artifact of The Bear that Wasn't by Frank Tashlin, being able to read is understanding that the word "bear" does not rhyme with the word "fear," being literate involves being able to read the story in full, to understand the events which occurred, and then to also understand that this is not a story about a bear, but rather about the absurdity of attempting to force people to be things they are not. Full literacy is understanding why I as a trans woman needed to put the book down the first time I read it and then finish it at a different time.
According to The Conference Board of Canada, more than half of adults in Quebec "lack adequate literacy skills." In other words, they are functionally illiterate. This is a problem for everybody, not just that half of the population. Functional illiteracy means that people cannot read and understand a contract properly. They are going around accepting terms for work which they objectively should not and reducing the quality of labour standards across the board for everyone. Want to know why your last boss acted the way they did? Because your coworkers were letting them. But they probably wouldn't have if they could understand what they were reading.
According to this source illiteracy of this sort has very real far-reaching consequences for individuals. These effects range from reduced health outcomes from misunderstanding instructions to challenges managing personal finances. Worse still, these facts are very carefully curated and presented with the specific objective of selling a product - the entire page is a sales pitch - but to recognize that requires a certain level of literacy. Otherwise, you might just believe that these helpful people are offering you a resource to help you, and they might be able to scare you into giving them your money. The statistics and realities surrounding them are scary, but that shouldn't mean you give your money away to charlatans.
Literacy is about more than just the ability to take in information, it is also definitely the ability to process it properly for meaning. This gives rise to a number of expressions such as financial literacy or media literacy which have nothing directly to do with understanding individual words, but rather with the understanding of systems and relationships and how they affect you and the world around you.
Ultimately, literacy determines the extent to which an individual can engage with others and with society at large. Possessing literacy means that the world is now open to you in entirely new ways which are impossible and out of reach without it. It means being less susceptible to the unscrupulous, being fully empowered to make and to understand your own decisions, being properly free in a way that is only possible to achieve through literacy.
Written January 11th, 2026
The cover of the book The Bear That Wasn't
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