Creative literacy in young students, Yucatán, México

Abstract

This paper is part of the project “Creative and inclusive literacy for high school youth in the south of Yucatán: health education” carried out that was promoted during the months of November 2020 to March 2021 by Consejo Nacional de Humanidades, Ciencia y Tecnología (Conahcyt) and Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Cuajimalpa, México. We present the scope and findings of the research and social impact strategy that we have named Write to be read implanted in the municipality of Santa Elena, Yucatán, located in the south of the state and characterized by high rates of migration to the United States, a majority of Mayan-speaking population with high levels of poverty and educational lag.

Following Paulo Freire and Mario Kaplún we base a creative literacy proposal based on people’s needs to know and perform in public spaces. Freire structures his method in phases: obtaining the vocabulary universe, valuing the pragmatic dimension of words and creating everyday situations that, at the same time, generate awareness and teach literacy. Kaplún emphasizes the communicative function of language that allows the student to develop their autonomy when writing. The conceptual framework was developed from the horizontal methodologies proposed by Sarah Corona and Olaf Kaltmeier, which made it possible to work on the difference and, from there, dialogue with the participants involved in the proposal.

We propose a creative writing strategy with the purpose that young people and teachers express in writing and orally their daily lives that break individual coverage and the collective imagination of their own name appears, that is, they recognize themselves and others as authors as a form of social inclusion.