sponsors of literacy essay #3

8/7/2019 Sponsors of Literacy Essay #3

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Jenna Rolf

Professor Jan Rieman

English 1103

March 9, 2011

As I revised this essay again I decided to leave all my examples of sponsors in that paper

because I think that they are all important to the essay. However, I went through and tried to

focus more on other types of literacy rather than just reading and writing as you suggested. This

I hope is noticeable in the paragraph about God and the Paragraph about culture. They still

have some focus on reading but not as much as before. I also included my own definition of

sponsors in the opening paragraph. I think this essay sounds pretty good now and I will

probably use it for my electronic portfolio.

Literate Life and its Sponsors

Literacy, though often taken for granted in most cultures in todays society, is one of the

greatest accomplishments that a person could ever achieve in their lifetime. Becoming literate

seems so simple to most because people are being taught at earlier ages to understand and

interpret ideas and information given. However, 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, according to Deborah Brandts Sponsors of

Literacy, are all sponsors that help or possibly inhibit every person from becoming literate.

Basically, sponsors of literacy are people or sources that help a person or deter them from

learning more about a certain subject. These sponsors can help with anything from reading and


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writing literacy to becoming more knowledgeable about a sport. So, in fact, literacy and the act

of becoming literate or not is determined by an extremely large number of places, people, and

events that most do not even realize. Parents, teachers, myself, and even children younger than

me have all taught me or taken away from me different types of literacy in many different places

while using many different resources. I never noticed how wide the variety is of all the people,

places, and resources that have helped me achieve literacy throughout the years. And although

there are not as many suppressors of my literacy, I have come to recognize a few times when I

could have learned more and failed to do so.

The two people who I look up to more than anything, my parents, are the greatest

sponsors of my literacy. Ever since I was a baby there were plenty of books around my house

for me to read. Books may not seem important for children to have who cannot yet read, but just

looking at the words repeatedly without knowing what they mean still helps to generate the

beginning stages of literacy in a small childs mind. Ever since I was a little girl, I loved books.

One of my favorite activities was to go sit alone in my house with a pile of books, and just go

through them for hours. If my parents had not made these books accessible to me at such a

young age my passion for books then and now would most likely not be the same. As I continued

to grow and began to learn how to read in kindergarten and first grade, my parents would sit

down with me every night and help me read the books that I had brought home from school.

They were extremely patient with me and never made me feel bad or as though I was a burden

when I needed help with my reading. A strong support system is very important when a person

is trying to become literate in a new way; it makes the process much easier. Not only did they

help me with my reading, but also with my writing. I remember sitting on the living room floor

with my parents as they were teaching me to write my name. The overwhelming delight and


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satisfaction we all had when I wrote my name completely by myself was one of the best feelings

I have ever experienced, we were all so proud.

Not only did my parents help me with educational literacys, but they also helped me

with social literacys; which I am still continuing to learn today. Manners and being polite were

always expected in my household growing up. I would very much consider this literacy because

it affects the way we communicate with other people. These social literacys started with the

simple phrases such as yes sir and no maam, please and thank you and became more

advanced, such as speaking up and talking loud enough when giving a response to a question

someone had asked me. My parents are still reminding me of social literacy now as it pertains to

my changing and growing world. For instance, they will sometimes coach me on how to speak

during a job interview or remind me how important it is to talk with my professors if there is an

issue. These are great thoughts for me to keep in mind as I become more socially interactive

with older people of a higher status than myself. These skills that my parents have taught me

prove that literacy does not have to be only written, but it also has the ability to be verbal.

Teachers in my community have also helped me a great deal with my literacy. Of course

there were always an abundance of books in every school that I attended, but what I have learned

about computers throughout my years of schooling has been extreme. Even though I have had a

computer at my house since I was a small child it was not until I learned in school from my

teachers how to use computers effectively that I really had an appreciation and an understanding

for the machine. In fact, I usually have to help my parents when it comes to computers because

it is not a technology that they grew up becoming literate towards. From elementary school all

the way through high school I was forced to take computer classes. I actually disliked these

classes very much because I am not too computer savvy. However, I now realize that if I was


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not made to take those computer classes, then I would have no idea how to do anything at all on

computers; and that would be detrimental to my being able to function adequately in college

right now because almost everything in college revolves around computers. Also, once I make it

to the workforce computers will still be extremely prominent in my everyday activities. My

teachers were preparing me for one of the greatest literacys in my life, recognizing how to use a

computer, before I even realized what they were doing.

Church has also been an important part of my life from the time I was born. The teachers

at my church, who helped me to understand my religion and faith at Sunday school every week,

have helped a great deal to make God so special to me throughout my life. Without their

willingness to help me understand the Bible, my literacy of it would not be as great as it is today.

In Sunday school my teachers taught me new prayers and we talked about different people and

places in the Bible. Sometimes we would even act out scenes so that we could still have an

enjoyable time learning. Learning about the literacy of God does not mean just reading the Bible

all the time. It refers more to the idea of understanding what God stands for and how to live a

life that will satisfy him. The literacy of God is more about learning how to do Gods will.

Becoming literate about the word of God and everything that he stands for has truly been a

blessing to me, and I am so thankful to all the parent volunteer teachers at my church who spent

that one hour a week teaching me about the most important part of who I am. Although I have

learned about the Bible and God for most of my life, I still feel as though my faith is something

that can never discontinue evolving and becoming stronger. Becoming more literate towards my

faith, I believe, is something that I will continue for the rest of my life. I feel secure in my faith

and with what I know about it, but when it comes to something so great, there is always more to


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be learned and understood. I will rely on my sponsors of faith forever to become more literate in

the word of God.

People who have been my sponsors in acquiring new literacys have not always been

older than me. In fact, three children who are considerably younger than me have taught me a

great deal about being literate. Elena, Mark, and Paul are their names and they are six, five, and

three years old now. I began babysitting for these children about three years ago and realized

that not only do they speak English, but they can also speak Portuguese and Spanish. And Elena,

the six year old is in a school that is teaching her to learn French. It was amazing to me that

these children could learn so many languages at such a young age. I know that languages are

easier to learn when people are younger, but I had never seen that theory being used to such a

great degree. I realized that these children had amazing people in their lives who were teaching

them to become extremely literate in many different cultures, so they would have more

opportunities in the future. I now know that their family members and teachers who are giving

them such a huge opportunity are their sponsors, and these children actually became my

sponsors. Not only were these children being taught the languages but they were also being

taught about all the different cultures. When I would babysit them they would teach me new

words in all the languages that they knew and I found it to be a very educational experience. I

learned a considerable amount from listening to them talk about the cultural events and music of

the Portuguese, Spanish, and French speaking nations. That experience, looking back on it now,

makes me see how one sponsor teaching a person can lead to a new sponsor teaching someone

else and then the chain continues and many people become educated in all different ways.

As well as people and places, different events and activities can also lead a person to new

found literacy. When I began playing soccer in fourth grade I learned so many new phrases and


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terms that I had never heard of before in my life. There were goal kicks and corner kicks and

midfield and forwards and defenders. At first it seemed very overwhelming because I really had

no idea what my coaches were trying to say to me when they used all of that terminology.

Jumping into new situations and roles, completely different from anything you have formerly

experienced can be exhausting and daunting. Even though my experience was just with soccer, I

can relate and somewhat understand how Dwayne Lowery felt in Sponsors ofLiteracy when

he had to learn all new business tactics and procedures that he had never been accustomed to

before. However, unlikeLowery; who was forced to retire because he could not keep up with all

the literacy changes, I continued with soccer and it did not take long before I knew what all the

names meant and really began to enjoy playing the game. There have been many events in my

life that have taken place and caused me to become literate in ways that I never would have

imagined.

Although most of my sponsors have taught me how to be more literate than I ever even

noticed, there have been a few times in my life when literacy has been withheld from me. The

first time was learning how to speak a foreign language fluently. The first time I took a foreign

language class was in sixth grade and it was for only one semester. Then I continued to take

Spanish classes from seventh grade through eleventh grade. However, I was never able to grasp

all the information as well as I wanted to, especially when it came to the upper level classes in

high school. If I would have been exposed to Spanish in elementary school, or possibly even

before that, I would have had a much easier time learning the language. More schools and

parents need to start teaching their children how to read, write, and speak in another language

before they enter elementary school. This would be extremely useful in todays world where it is

much easier to be successful if you are bilingual. While I did eventually get a foreign language


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education, I feel as though it was not adequate because I was not given the education soon

enough.

Learning how to play and read music is another literacy that was suppressed in my life.

However, I have no one to blame for that except myself. I believe that a person is the greatest

suppressor of literacy to themselves if they are not willing to learn. And that is exactly what

happened to me. My parents paid for me to go to band camp for a week over the summer when I

was in elementary school and after one day of being at the camp I refused to go back. Playing

the flute was a great deal harder than I thought it was going to be, so I got frustrated the first day

and quit. After that I never tried to play another instrument again, even when my parents asked

me if I wanted to try. Now that I am older, I wish that I could play an instrument because it

seems like such an uplifting experience. I was an extremely foolish sponsor to myself that time;

I missed out on learning a literacy that could have been very beneficial to me now and in the

future.

Literacy is something that I will no longer take for granted as I progress and continue to

learn even more. Now that I have come to recognize all the sponsors who have played a major

role in shaping my literate life, I am greatly looking forward to meeting new sponsors and

hopefully becoming a sponsor myself for people some day. The people, places, resources, and

events that have happened during my life are much greater than what can be seen from just the

surface. All these connections have given me the understanding and intelligence that I have

today.

sponsors of literacy essay #3

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