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Part 1: Is Literacy the Ultimate Human Super Power in the Twenty-First Century?
I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. — Neo | The Matrix I recently read a provocative article, “The digital age’s reversion to pre-literate communication,” that concludes human intellectualism will be displaced by artificial general intelligence (AGI). The author, Andrey Mir, proposes that with each new literacy medium, from orality to writing, the Internet, social media, and now generative AI, we gain “new
Tabar Smith
Dec 10, 20252 min read


Part 2: Can technology be critically literate?
A growing body of research on automated technologies has begun to consider the implications they have for… activities often understood as deeply, irrevocably, and centrally human, activities like writing. — Bradley Robinson | "Speculative Propositions for Digital Writing under the New Autonomous Model of Literacy," p. 127 Literacy is recognized broadly as an essential human activity. Through literacy, we grow as humans in search of personal and social meanings, and through t
Tabar Smith
Dec 10, 20255 min read


Part 3: Is the power of literacy worth the effort?
...what fiction—and by this I mean not only the novel but also the epic and myth—makes possible is to approach the world in a subjunctive mode, to conceive of it as if it were other than it is: in short, the great, irreplaceable possibilities. And to imagine other forms of human existence is exactly the challenge that is posed by the climate crisis... to envision what it [the future] might be. — Amitav Ghosh | The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable , 128-
Tabar Smith
Dec 10, 20255 min read


Part 4: How do we make socially just futures?
The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom. — bell hooks | Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom , 207 In a recent post, “
Tabar Smith
Dec 10, 20256 min read


A Letter to bell hooks: Seeking Community Through Critical Literacy
"Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, revelling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community." — bell hooks, Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Routledge, 2003. bell hooks, When I was thirteen, I traveled with my family to Mesa, AZ, to cel
Tabar Smith
Nov 9, 20259 min read


Building Writing Literacy Learning Journeys
For this post, I’m sharing a framework that I rely on as a content strategist to help me identify customer learning needs. I’ve shared this framework in a previous class, and I’m sharing it again to demonstrate how adaptive it can be to whatever the context is. The learning journey framework that I’m walking through today is focused on how we can build writing literacy learning journeys to meet our student needs. I applied various writing strategies from experts, such as Don
Tabar Smith
Oct 21, 20251 min read


This excruciating and beautiful experience we call life, and where literacy fits in
I lost my dad on September 18, a day after his 82nd birthday. I was fortunate to spend the last month of his life with him. My sister and I traveled from our homes in California and Montana, respectively, to support my parents through my dad’s final journey. This journey started well before this last month of his life, over eight years ago, with a diagnosis of stage three esophageal cancer. He had several years of remission in between that first diagnosis and his last month.
Tabar Smith
Sep 29, 20256 min read


A Conversation About the History and Future of English Education
One of my goals for this blog is to offer perspectives, other than my own, to inspire open dialogue and reflection. Through this exercise, I believe we can build cooperation, collaboration, and community. To that end, I am using this post to have a conversation about the past, present, and future of English Language Arts (ELA). I offer discussions on the foundation of ELA as an academic discipline, including its prevalent philosophies and challenges. The perspectives I pres
Tabar Smith
Sep 9, 202513 min read


The Role of Language Arts in 2025
Our world is inundated with political division, social injustice, cultural appropriation, environmental degradation, and technological disruption. As global citizens, we are facing a multitude of crises, but these crises are also presenting us with an opportunity to resist, rethink, and renew how we move forward as a society and as educators. Especially as educators. Although I do not work in the field of education, I am well-versed in the discipline of Language Arts. I gradu
Tabar Smith
Aug 25, 20252 min read
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