All Eau Claire Area School District staff must accept the challenge to offer an environment where programs are developed to encourage literacy and solve literacy problems. We must envision students who use literacy for personal, social, and productive reasons. More recent literacy surveys consistently include reading, writing, numeracy, and document processing. However, Venezky tells us they are not equal partners. Reading is clearly primary to any definition of literacy and, in some sense, the others are secondary.
Literacy is developmental.
Literacy is learned. Literacy is cultural. Literacy is complex. These beliefs presuppose the importance of early literacy programs which prepare students to speak, listen, read, write, and reason in a social context. They assume the need for students to have instruction just beyond their current acquired knowledge, regardless of the students' age.