Moll & Gonzalez Response

Moll and Gonzalez' essay, "Lessons from Research with Language-Minority Children" was very informative, and thoroughly elaborated on Farr's idea of the "funds of knowledge". I believe that the idea of "funds of knowledge" is a really resourceful approach to enabling families and communities to share knowledge within social networks. The idea of teachers observing the "funds of knowledge" approach, within the household of students, was a very interesting and positive learning experiment. Rather than concentrate on certain educational restraints, these teachers developed alternate scenarios for the children to use literacy. By doing so the children were able to grasp concrete ideas of learning and develop in ways that were previously deemed out of their league. Moll and Gonzalez concentrated on how beneficial the strategic uses of cultural resources are to learning within a network. The studies focus on cultural resources that are present within the household. Moll and Gonzalez stated, "We have learned that in contrast to classrooms, households never function alone or in isolation; they are always connected to other households and institutions through diverse social networks" (159). Although I strongly agree with the fact that households are connected to other households, especially because my household is connected to several other households, I disagree with the statement that classrooms are not. At least in primary school, there is a strong social network within separate classrooms. My son's class constantly forms teams of students that join other classrooms teams. It is one of the highlights of his day when he gets to travel to another classroom and share his knowledge with other students.

The idea of teachers visiting their students homes, in order to help them understand and incorporate a broader set of cultural ideas within their classrooms, is incredibly awesome. The likelihood that many teachers will be able to do that is not very realistic. The restraints that many teachers are faced with in the classroom are the root of many of the problems within the education community. I am all for being an active teacher, and promoting teachers and students to think on a broader scale, but without allowing teachers a much broader arena of teaching tools, the problems in the classrooms are not going anywhere. Teachers need to be allowed to teach literacy and promote positive learning practices with new topics, activities, questions and ideas. One of the obvious ways is by allowing teachers and students to use literacy to connect with resources outside of the classroom. Moll and Gonzalez suggest using "real" and "imagined" worlds. "Real" meaning the funds of knowledge approach and "imagined" meaning, literature. If teachers are able to incorporate these two worlds into their curriculum, the future of literacy practices will be looking good, real good. I strongly agree with what Moll and Gonzalez are arguing and I think that they offer extremely useful ideas. Cultural resources need to be brought into the classroom, restraints that many teachers endure have to be let loose and student's need to be allowed to learn and grow in a constantly changing social world.