The Literacy Community

“With words at your disposal, you can see more clearly. Finding the words is another step in learning to see.”
― Robin Kimmerer

Robin Kimmerer is a Potawatomi botanist, author, and environmental scientist in New York. As you can see, she has an exceptional talent for explaining.

It will come as no surprise that a website called ‘theliteracycommunity.com’ should start its first blog with a fancy quote. I could have chosen any number of them – that beautiful Frederick Douglass line: ‘Once you learn to read, you will forever be free’, or the veritable banger from Kofi Anan: ‘Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope.’ I’ve even been known to whip out a bit of Eminem to demonstrate the powerful, almost dangerous potential of words: ‘Damn. How much damage can you do with a pen?’

But I’ve chosen Kimmerer. What she has done is capture something beyond the power of words themselves. She talks about how the process of working with them, finding them, choosing them, crafting them, is a form of seeing. By using language, we describe and define the world around us. It is by speaking and writing that we come to create our sense of what things are; of who we are.

The Literacy Community is an organisation in its infancy. As I write this on Saturday 15th June 2024, we have 905 people signed up to our mailing list, and a handful of small-scale plans.

But it’s more than that. It represents a willingness and a drive in our profession to push beyond the walls of individual schools and work in a different way. What might be possible if we shared our expertise and worked without thought of competition? What could be achieved if we served the ecosystem as a whole, helped where we could and trusted that we could be helped in return?

That’s what this is for. We are right at the start: ‘finding the words’ and writing as we go. Our plan for the next 12 months is to:

• Curate great blogs about literacy in real schools
• Create banks of information about effective literacy provision recommended by teachers, for teachers
• Share great resources freely
• Organise in-person and online networking events
• Organise free webinars to share expertise
• …and maybe, just maybe, there will be a conference…

If you’d like to be involved, sign up to our mailing list – there will be lots of opportunities over the coming months.

Jenny Webb, Founder of The Literacy Community

15th June 2024