sponsors of literacy essay #4

8/7/2019 Sponsors of Literacy Essay #4

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Jenna Rolf

Professor Jan Rieman

English 1103

April 24, 2011

For my fourth and final draft of my Sponsors of Literacy Essay I decided to completely re

do it and take it in a whole new direction. This draft of the essay is being told completely from

the sponsor¶s point of view on the way they decided to teach me to be literate in many different

ways. I wanted to do something different and unique for this draft to make it more interesting

and to experiment some with my creative writing. I tried to keep the information the same as it

was in my first three drafts so that it would not seem like a completely random essay. I was

pleased with how it turned out and a little surprised that it was not too hard for me to write

because I have never tried to write a whole essay while being this creative before. I am glad that

I came up with a new way to present this information and I hope it gets the point across just as

well as my other drafts.

Literacy: Sponsors Tell All

Literacy, though often taken for granted in most cultures in today¶s 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, ³any 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 Brandt¶s ³Sponsors of



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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. This essay explores the thoughts of Jenna¶s sponsors

throughout her life. Starting with her parents and ending with her music teacher, with many

sponsors in between they share their ideas of Jenna¶s success and failure to become more literate

in all aspects of her life.

Before our first daughter, Jenna, was even born we had books stacked up waiting for her to

read. As parents we knew it was one of our main goals to help our children become the most

educated people possible. When Jenna was born we began to read her books almost

immediately. Even though we knew she did not understand what was being said in the books at

the moment, eventually she would begin to recognize the sounds and words as she became older.

Just hearing us read to her at such a young age was a great way to stimulate her brain and make it

stronger for when she would begin to understand what was being read to her. When Jenna was a

toddler she really began to take an interest in books. She would collect huge piles of books and

just go sit in a corner of a room and read to herself for hours. It was by far her favorite past time

as she began to grow. Of course, she was not old enough to actually read the words yet but she

would look at the pictures and match them with what she remembered about the story from us

reading to her. She understood the books through memorization, which eventually led her to

understanding how to read the words when she was around five. We believe that giving Jenna

the gift of books at such a young age greatly helped her with her literacy reading and writing

skills throughout her life.

Not only did we stress reading and writing literacy to our children, but we also taught them

that they must become literate socially as well. This is an extremely important skill to have as a



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child, teenager, and adult. As a child there are many adults, such as teachers, coaches, and other

parents who the child will inevitably come into contact with. The child needs to know how to act

towards adults such as manners, eye contact while talking, speaking clearly and different

elements of the sort. As parents, we made it clear that Jenna would know how to do all of this at

a young age so that she would know the right way to respect her elders. When we were teaching

her to be respectful towards other adults it was not a huge importance for her to call us sir and

ma¶am. We demanded her respect but we did not make our relationship with her so formal

because we wanted her to feel comfortable enough for her to talk to us about any troubles that

she was having. However, she was always supposed to call other adults Mr., Mrs., sir, or

ma¶am. As Jenna grew from a child to a teenager and now an adult we began to stress the

importance of being socially literate when dealing with job interviews, professors, and other

professional individuals. One must have a good sense of social literacies when dealing with

people in the professional world so that they will be taken seriously. We obviously want Jenna

to be taken seriously, so we have talked to her about important interview and meeting skills and

strategies. Hopefully these social literacy skills will continue to help her in the future with jobs

as they have so far throughout her childhood and teenage years.

Speaking English is the basic means of the way Jenna¶s parents taught her to be literate in

life. However, when she began to babysit for me, Elena, and my two brothers, Mark and Paul,

we taught her how she could become literate in many more languages than one. In our family

we speak Spanish, Portuguese, as well as English and I am also learning how to speak French in

my elementary school. Ever since my brothers and I were babies we were taught all of these

languages. It is extremely important to our parents for us to be fluent in as many languages as

possible because that will give us chances of better jobs and better lives in the future. When



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Jenna started to babysit us my youngest brother Paul would always tell her what he wanted in

Spanish or Portuguese because he just assumed at two years old that she knew all the languages

that he did. This would sometimes frustrate Jenna because she wanted to give him what he

wanted but she had no idea what he was saying. Many times I would have to step in and be the

mediator between my brother and Jenna, so that she could understand what to get for him. It

seemed strange to me that I was teaching a girl who was much older than me what a word meant,

but I found myself doing it more and more often as time continued. I decided that I liked

teaching her new words because it gave her a chance to see things from a different perspective

that she otherwise would never know. And, I believe that she enjoyed me teaching her new

words as well because after a while she began to ask how to say words even when Paul was not

asking her for food, toys, or a drink. When she came over to babysit us it became a very

educational experience because she was learning new words, my brothers were listening as well

and being reinforced on what the words meant, and I was getting practice teaching people all the

different language literacies that I know. I guess this proves that you do not always have to learn

literacy from a person who is older than you. In fact a person who is much younger and

completely unexpected to be a sponsor of literacy can become one as well.

There are many different people available in the world to teach language literacies and I, a

teacher, am probably one of the largest teachers of reading and writing literacy. When it came to

Jenna though, us teachers became a great influence in her life when we introduced her to

computers. Although language literacies are a huge component of school and teaching, there are

many people in Jenna¶s life who have helped her with those literacies. However, teachers were

the ones who taught her how to use computers so well. If it had not been for teachers at all of

her schools from elementary through high school computers would most likely still be a foreign



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concept for Jenna. When Jenna was a child she had a computer in her home but neither her mom

nor her dad could use it very well. This meant that Jenna also had a hard time learning how to

manage computers efficiently. As the years of computer usage in school began to become more

and more, Jenna learned many skills that she had never even known existed. Teachers taught her

how to make power points, type papers in word documents, and she even learned how to make

her own website. It came to the point where Jenna was actually going home and teaching her

parents how to better use their computer. Technological literacy was one that Jenna had to learn

from other sources besides her parents because they were not raised in a time when personal

technology was prominent in everyday life. Going to school and learning about technology from

her teachers made Jenna become literate in a whole new way. Technological literacy is probably

the largest example of the way literacy changes throughout the years in a society.

Besides learning literacies in the classroom-type setting so that Jenna could become a

successful person in the world, there are also literacies that she has learned just for fun. Learning

the literacy of sports, in particular soccer was a challenge for Jenna that she overcame as she

grew to love the game. When Jenna first started playing soccer on my team it was clear that she

was a beginner and had no clue what to do. As her coach, I wanted to help her achieve an

understanding of how to play the game effectively without putting her under too much pressure

to the point where it was no longer an enjoyable experience. I began by teaching her all the

different positions and what each position did on the field during the game. Once she picked her

favorite position and began to practice with it we moved on to all the different rules of the game

and what all the lines meant on the field. At first becoming literate in soccer was a huge struggle

for Jenna because it was so new to her. After a few weeks though she began to have a greater

understanding of what was happening and what she should be doing in response. She overcame



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her struggles of being soccer illiterate and became a good little soccer player who was always

eager to learn more and to practice harder. Soccer went from being a completely foreign concept

for her to becoming one of her most passionate hobbies. Literacy must not always have a fully

educational purpose; it can also be a way to express the way someone learns a new way to have

fun such as a hobby or a sport.

Material literacies that can actually be seen and held are not the only types of literacies that

Jenna has grown accustomed to learning. The largest and most important literacy in Jenna¶s life

is her spiritual literacy. Her belief in me, God, is the greatest literacy that she has obtained

throughout her nineteen years of life. Through her church, parents, Sunday school teachers, and

the Bible she has a very strong and deep rooted spiritual literacy that she has built from her faith

in me. I have placed many great people in Jenna¶s life with the hope that they will give her the

great message of all that I have to offer her and all the love I have for her. That message has

been received throughout the years and her faith in me has continued to grow and deepen,

especially in her first year of college. She has met so many great friends this year who are all

extremely devoted to me and they have made her see just how much love and promise I have to

give. I am so proud of all the spiritual growth that has taken place during the course of Jenna¶s

life and I cannot wait to see how well she will continue to grow and receive me into her life. I

know that she will continue to do my will because she knows that it is the most important and

everlasting literacy that she will ever receive and have the chance to teach to other people. Not

only can Jenna be a receiver of this literacy, but it is one that I greatly hope she becomes a

sponsor of also.

Although most of Jenna¶s sponsors throughout her life have been in support of her literacies,

there have been a few areas where her sponsors have not been so helpful. As a band instructor I



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try my best to encourage and teach all my students to find an instrument that suites them well

and to stick to learning how to play it even when it becomes extremely challenging. When Jenna

came to my band camp the summer she was in fifth grade I could tell right away that she felt

very out of place among all the other children. Most of the other children at the camp had

brought their own instruments that they had been playing for quite a while. Jenna, however, had

never played an instrument in her life and was very nervous. I decided to give her the flute to

play and proceeded to place her in the class with the rest of the students. This was the first

mistake on my part because I knew she would not be able to keep up, not knowing what she was

doing, and that would make her even more self conscious than she already was. Not

understanding what to do, Jenna got very discouraged and I could tell so I took her into a private

room later that day and tried to give her a one on one lesson with her flute. She was skeptical

about playing it and the one on one session did not go as well as I planned. Jenna only came to

one more day of band camp after that and then she dropped out. If I would have gone about

teaching her in a different way from the beginning that would have made the whole experience

seem much less scary and I believe I would have been able to convince her to continue playing

the flute even though it can be challenging. She could have become literate in the flute if she

would have continued to apply herself, but the fact is that the situations I put her in scared her

away before she had the chance to realize how wonderful playing an instrument can be.

Jenna has had many wonderful sponsors of literacy throughout her life and she has also had

some experiences where her sponsors did not help her literacy as well as was expected. Her

experiences with becoming more literate in many ways and not as literate in other ways have

made her into the person she is today. Hopefully as she continues to grow as a person and

become more experienced in different situations she will become literate in many more new



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ways. And not only will she continue to grow in her own literacies but begin to teach others new

literacies as she becomes a sponsor to them in their situations. Becoming literate is a process

that can continue forever in a person¶s life and hopefully that will be the trend with Jenna.

sponsors of literacy essay #4

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