Bailey Steed

March 15th 2016

UWRT 1103-012

Ms. Rothwell

The Individuality of Learning

One thing that we all have in common as humans is that we all have the innate ability to

learn. Though we have this in common, the ways in which we learn are very different. These

ways may be through parents, friends, are even teachers. Learning may also come through

teaching or even simply life experiences. The people who caused, or had an effect on these

learning experiences, are known as our sponsors. Sponsors can have positive or even negative

effects on you, but are seen in the same way in the fact that they both teach you something. To

take an in depth look at these sponsors and to truly pick them apart, Brandt breaks them down in

her Sponsors of Literacy. In this book Brandt elaborates on three main concepts that make up or

sponsors of literacy. These concepts include sponsorship, access, and rise of standards. Out of

these concepts, the two that have been most prevalent in my life include sponsorship and access.

Brandt defines sponsors as “the figures who turned up most typically in people’s

memories of literacy learning”(3). To me, sponsors are the friends, family, teachers, or any other

influential person in someone’s life who helps them to learn something. These sponsors can be

good or bad. People who you look up to but end up having a negative effect on you are seen as

sponsors due to the fact that you are learning something, even though it may be something the

you do not want to learn. In the positive way, sponsors can lay out a path for you or lead you in

the right direction of a goal you are trying to reach. Sponsors can also help you to reach this goal

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by assisting in any way needed, whether that be financially or otherwise. In my personal

experience, I had two main sponsors who helped me to achieve my goal of learning to

snowboard. These sponsors include my parents and a few of my friends. The reason my parents

are sponsors are due to the fact that without them I would never have the chance to snowboard.

My parents supported me financially in acquiring the correct gear to snowboard and in allowing

me to go the the mountain to learn. The way in which my friends are sponsors is how they

supported me as I was trying to learn the basics of snowboarding. Without them pushing me on it

would have been easy to give up, but thanks to their support, I didn’t. Another example of

sponsors is seen through parents and a boyfriend in one of my group members learning

experience. In Olivia’s experience, she is trying her best to make a long distance relationship

work. Without the financial support of her parents, to pay for her cell phone bills, or the

emotional support from her boyfriend, she would never have been able to make the relationship

work. This support system generated by the ones close to Olivia, make them her sponsors.

The second concept that was prevalent in my life is access. Access is the availability of

the objects, materials, or environment needed to learn a certain task. Many different factors can

effect access, including social class and family background. When pertaining to access, Brandt

says “affluent people from high-caste racial groups have multiple and redundant contacts with

powerful literacy sponsors as a routine part of their economic and political privileges. Poor

people and those from low-caste racial groups have less consistent, less politically secured access

to literacy sponsors” (6). In my personal learning experience, I would have never learned to

snowboard without the access of many different things, including access to the mountain,

snowboard gear, and mainly access to any of the technology helped me learn the basics of

snowboarding. Another example of access in a learning experience is the access that was needed

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for a member of my group, Naja, to learn to play soccer. Without access to a field, proper soccer

equipment, transportation, or even money to pay for all of this, the sport would most likely never

be learned.

As we go on through life, we will have many different learning experiences which will all

bring on new sponsors. Though I stated earlier that some of these sponsors will be positive and

others will be negative, it is our job as humans take in all of these experiences and use them to

further our own knowledge and understanding. Becoming more knowledgeable will not only

benefit us as individuals, but it will also better society and the lives of others.

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Works Cited

"From Spons." IFLA Journal 22.3 (1996): 256. The Sponsors of Literacy.

National Research Center on English Learning & Achievement. Web.

Green, Olivia. “The Distance Effect.” 2016.

Augustus, Naja. “Sponsors of Literacy.” 2016.

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