Guest Speaker Reflections

This past week, we had two speakers come to class to speak about two vastly different topics: teaching reading and writing to students and women's agency through microfinance in Zimbabwe. These lectures marked a shift from the conceptual framework we were exploring during the first section of the class to more contextualized information in the second half. The connections between the two speakers were not necessary explicit which encouraged me to really expand my thinking and see how the many different concepts and material we have explored have been related.

                A big connection I saw between the two lectures was the theme of empowerment and what it means to be educated. Reading gave power and agency to the children in Anna’s class while the women selling their products in Zimbabwe gave them power and agency. I appreciated that Mary’s presentation portrayed literacy and empowerment outside of an educational context since most of what we have been focusing on is literacy in an academic setting.

I am wondering how the rest of the semester is going to look for our class since we have presentations up until spring break. I am curious to see how we will be connecting our trip to Ghana to the different placements to new materials and speakers in class.