Community of Practice as a Motivating Componant to Literacy

Victoria Purcell-Gates makes numerous fascinating observations in her book, Other People's Words: The Cycle of Low Literacy.  It is a comprehensive case study of one young Appalachian family living on the fringe of an urban Midwestern community. Through interviews and regular one on one instructional sessions, Purceell-Gates manages to piece together a thoroughly comprehensive biography of the cultural & literacy development of parents, Jenny and Big Donny, and their boys little Donny and Timmy. In addition to revealing the unique struggle Jenny's family faced in gaining literacy while living in a literacy-abivalent community, Purcell-Gates also introduces urban Appalachian communities to her fellow educators and policy-makers. She begins an important discussion, acting as unnoffical representative of this widely-dismissed minority group who in her words, is largely "invisible" to the rest of the nation. With a cultural propensity towards low literacy, these Appalachian people are the product fo their Community of Practice. Communities of Practice are communities centered around a common activity and usually have established linquistic and cognitive expectations. These communities of practice influence individuals in all areas, especially in expectations of literacy. As Purcell-Gates recounts in her book about Jenny's life experiences and quest for literacy, in the end it all comes down to Community of Practice.

As a girl, Jenny lived in a tight-knit, urban Appalachian "ghetto". Her parents struggled with alcoholism, poverty and illness; and neither of them knew how to read. Although they were living in the city, they were surrounded by friends and family who had also moved there from "back home" in rural Kentucky. They went to the city to find jobs, not to assimilate to city life. So even though the kids went to the local public schools, their home-life remained traditionally Appalachian. Print material was rare to find in the Appalachian homes and only about half of their friends and family members were able to read and write. In the public school system, Jenny and Big Donny faced harsh discrimination because of their "countryfied" speech. And once the two got to high school, it was not long before they both dropped-out. The continued stress of being othered by their peers and mis-understood by their teachers made school an inhospitable community for Jenny and Donny. She blaimed her difficulty on the way she speaks, saying "I couldn't learn to read . . . 'cause I talk different" (26). With a home community of close friends and family who had little use for literacy skills and a strange, ivory-tower, school community were literacy is assumed and remedial instruction is out of reach, Jenny and Big Donny had little to no chance of attaining literacy during their youth. Their Community of Practice did not expect them to read, so they had no relavant motivation to seek a literate life.

It is not until Jenny's Community of Practice takes a minor shift, that she starts feeling pressure to acquire literacy skills for herself and her children. Donny was in school and Jenny was very attentive to his education. She saw his progress plateau and then drop-off sharply. He was not keeping up with the rest of the class and his teachers responded in an aloof manner to Jenny's pleas for extra help. This new community of practice, although seemingly unresponsive to Jenny and her family, had a huge impact on her. It is through Donny's school community that Jenny first recognizes her own low literacy as setting a damaging precidence for her child. When she tries to advocate for her son at the school and fails, Jenny becomes acutely aware of the powerful hold low literacy has over her and her family's lives. It is not until she makes this realization that Jenny takes bold measures to extricate her family from these communities of low-literacy and literacy supremacy to find a more hospitable community of practice: Victoria Purcell-Gates reading center.