Learning to Not Hate English 

By: Austin Scaglione

The author discusses how he was a victim but with curtain, teachers became more successful. A victim in literacy is someone who has has a negative experience in or out of school involving literacy. “In sum, the popularity of the victim cultural narrative is important because it allows us to understand that although students may view their literate futures in terms of success, they view their literate pasta in terms of victimhood” (Alexander 618). Overall looking bad you can see the impact curtain situations have has on you and how they are affecting you now. When looking at how his writing had changed between the different grades granted to him, he was able the better understand the positives that affected him and the negatives. “The ideology of just breezing through a class, not doing any work, was replaced with one of which planning, outlining, and revising took over every aspect of writing” (Scaglione 4). In the beginning, the student was a victim in literacy, the teacher he left did not care and that had a negative impact on him. When you look at him later he has a different teacher that has had a positive impact on him and that changes his outlook on literacy and how to approach it. The author was a victim but ended up turning into a success narrative in the end.

The Progress for Getting a Better Teacher for English

By: Hien Nguyen

Freshman year this student had a teacher who affected his literacy negatively then sophomore year he got a new teacher and everything changed. This student started out as a victim but grew into a success narrative. “In victim narratives, students wrote about negative school-based literacy experiences that stigmatized and marked them, including being misread by poor or insensitive teachers, having a “masterpiece” ruined by a teacher’s notorious red ink, or being forced to write research papers and read books for critique rather than pleasure” (Alexander 617). The first teacher this student had only graded on in-class participation and with little time in class sometimes he would receive a bad grade. This teacher was not conducting a positive literacy environment for this student and that caused him to not continue to go for forward with literacy. When the student moved forward in school he received a new English teacher. This teacher changed literacy for this student. “In addition, my writing was improving throughout the year. I received my first essay with tons of red ink. My face was bright red and I was filled with embarrassment. Seeing so many red marks on my paper I assumed that I was getting a bad grade. However, the marks were not all negative, there were also positive feedback” (Nguyen 3). The simple switch of engaging with the students and giving back so positive feedback  made a world of difference for this student and caused him to become a success narrative in the end.