Tid Lit Talkers - Tanya Grambower and "Literacy for Boys"
After reading her bio on the Literacy for Boys website I was a little nervous for my very first Tid Lit Talkers interview with Tanya Grambower, little did I know we’d leave the e-meet as two individuals who could have been mistaken for old friends. Our chat about literacy, equitable access to educational opportunities, and the power of humble upbringings went for over an hour but a short snippet is presented for you below.
Tanya speaks passionately about the need for differentiation in classrooms, especially when it comes to the learning styles of girls and boys. Having been an educator for over 20 years in both Australian and international spaces, Tanya’s focus has been on giving boys a step up into literature, and a real go at literacy. Her empirical evidence about boys being disengaged by certain topics and teaching styles hits close to home as she speaks honestly in relation to her experiences with her own two son’s changing reading patterns over their adolescent years. I can empathise with her observations about the hardships of getting books into the hands of boys as I recall my own experiences with tutoring students, family friends, and even my own husband.
Tanya reiterates the importance of ‘the hook’ and accentuates the need to discover what it is that boys are genuinely interested in, in order to open the doors to texts they would otherwise ignore; in turn fueling their innate desire to keep building their literacy skills and improving their academic performance. She’s used this method successfully with her own students and even her own sons, sharing an anecdote of a zombie series she tag-team read with her son that gave them ample topics for conversations. It reminded me about the depth of connection created between myself and my brother when we share links to songs of our teens, between myself and my friends when we recall a particular episode of a series on Netflix, and between myself and my students when natural debate ensues about the protagonist of the text we’re studying. What’s the common link there? A genuine and intrinsic interest in the subject matter. A powerful foundation for both relationship building and skill building - and Tanya’s golden snitch for boys literacy improvement.
After the video above, we went on to discuss the pressures that literacy development puts on parents especially, and their anxiety and feelings of overwhelm when it comes to selecting materials or strategies to assist their children. This is a topic we’ll come back to in a future blog, offering some practical tips and ready to use resources - so stay tuned!
In the meantime check out the links below for more information on “Literacy for Boys”.
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