Multiliterate lives: Childhood to adult, lessons learned

Abstract

This retrospective is a group effort between my children and me to make sense of their literacies over the past 26 years. Sharing in the authoring of this retrospective, we take a look back at the ways those literacies unfolded across their childhood. Emily, Tristan, and Simon used different literacies to define who they were and to construct a literate ethos. They each engaged with literacies in powerful and life transforming ways. They used multiple literacies together to help them learn, understand and create meaning more fully. Their stories demonstrate the need for young children to engage with multiple literacies to fully develop as literate adults. This retrospective supports the idea that literacies are complex, motivated, multimodal, semiotic, social, discourse dependent, and imbedded in specific practices.