I am honored to take up the position of Acting Director of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at a moment when it feels important to step up our institutional commitments. Our commitment to the schools and teachers and children and families we work with, to the communities whom we know and love, and to educators and children everywhere. Our commitment to anti-oppressive education, to using our influence to say yes to ideas and movements that raise us up and bring us together, and to say no to those that separate us or hold some down. And always, our commitment to and belief in the power of literacy as a human right, the idea that teaching literacy is itself an act of social justice.
This is also a moment when TCRWP recommits to culturally responsive pedagogies, to fostering communities of care and belonging, and to working and learning in coalition with leaders and innovators in this work. We stand for and will strive for education that is anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic. We commit to fostering classrooms, schools, and adult learning environments that are inclusive and affirming. We stand alongside colleagues at Teachers College, Columbia University, who have much to teach us and the world about striving for equity.
As I consider TCRWP’s history, I find moments to celebrate—times when we have visibly helped children become more powerful readers and writers, times when we have not only embraced but innovated critical literacies, times when we have used our influence to be allies to authors and educators from groups that have historically been under-represented. I think of the tools that we have put in the world that help young people work with more agency and independence, that equip them with literacy toolkits. I think of the resources for teachers—the mentor texts, the collections of student exemplars, the curricular resources, and mostly, the opportunity to think and work in communities of practice. There is so much to be proud of. Anyone may study our data to see how well children do. Anyone may visit our schools to learn alongside responsive and innovative educators.
It’s impossible to reflect on TCRWP’s history without also considering things we should have altered—books we should have changed, language we should have shifted, assessments we should have weighted more or less. And that is the challenge and beauty of education, and being a university think tank—that our thinking is eternally growing, and that the books teachers and children read now, and the ways we talk about children, and how we strive to know our learners and our families with more depth and transactional responsiveness, can grow—radically and beautifully.
We are part of the world, and our interactions with the world shape our educational concerns. We want to think more about how to embrace and nurture students’ linguistic and cultural capital. We want to continue to learn from scholars around the world and children in our classrooms who are offering new insights about the many ways kids learn to read and write with confidence and power. We want to foster classrooms that welcome and learn alongside recent immigrants and multilingual learners. We want to include climate studies and climate justice in our curricula. We want to acknowledge systemic injustice and instill in children enduring beliefs in hope and possibility. We want to support teachers and children in reading, thinking, and talking about identity, about our linguistic, cultural, and racial heritages as well as the wide range of neurodiversity in our communities. We will work towards these aspirations with each of our interactions.
In future posts, I and others will be sharing our engagement with this work, ongoing plans, projects, and alliances, and how we will stay connected to the larger community throughout it all. I am humbled to take on this work alongside my colleagues at TCRWP, and alongside educators from around the world, who join us each day in working to uphold the power—and potential—of literacy as a human right and a force for good in this world.
Mary Ehrenworth