Samantha Martineau

Professor Cripps

English 110 I

25 October 2018

Reading Responses

In the reading “Sponsors of Literacy” written by Deborah Brandt she touches on the topic of literacy sponsors. Brandt defines literacy sponsors as “any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy – and gain advantage by it in some way” (556). I connect this text with my literacy narrative and the literacy event I chose to write about. I wrote about my experience in elementary school when we had to do online testing for reading. I had a negative experience during these test and I feel it has affected we till this day. I think I suppressed those feelings and I ended up withholding my literacy ability because I was scared about being wrong or not being good enough compared to my classmates. I feel that if I had pushed myself out of my comfort zone and didn’t suppress the way I had felt I would be a completely different person in the Discourse of literacy.

Sense literacy is so valued, many of us have complicated relationships with reading and writing this is because we are introduced to literacy at such a young age that as we grow we carry that tool with us through the bad and the good. We can connect “Literacy, like land, is a valued commodity in this economy, a key resource in gaining profit and edge” (Brandt 558) with Alexander when she says “literacy can lead to possibility, hope, and power, it can also marginalize and disempower people” (610). Through Alexanders text you can see that literacy can cause someone to become less confident in their literacy Discourse. I can connect with this because throughout my time in the education system I have had many ups and downs with literacy. Overall I would not consider myself to be confident in the literacy Discourse because of past experiences, for instance in middle school we were forced to read every night for homework. Now from that experience in middle school I have a negative outlook on reading because I was forced to participate in that Discourse when I did not want to.

In the text “Sponsors of Literacy” written by Deborah Brandt, she discusses what a literacy sponsor is “the figures who turned up the most typically in people’s memories of literacy learning: older relatives, teachers, parents, supervisors, military officers, editors, influential authors” (557). So when you are writing a literacy narrative many people are suspected to write about a curtain literacy sponsor. For me I could write about my english teacher senior year of high school and how he helped me improve in the literacy Discourse. While looking up to someone like a literacy sponsor as a role model you can begin to take on some of their identities. In “Heroes, rebels, and victims: Students identities in literacy narratives” written by Bronwyn T. Williams this author says “intriguing to consider the identities students construct for teachers” (344). We can see in this text that not only do students gain elements from teacher identities but they also take on a different identity when they are around a teacher. I’m sure everyone can relate to this because we would not talk to a teacher they way we would talk to our peers or even our parents. The identities we take on can vary considering the setting.