1.
Key traits of success narrative is that it is written by students of both genders, all races and socioeconomic class. It is often told abstractly, without specific details. It emphasizes on one’s future outcomes based on the process he went through. One of the reasons students choose this narrative is because they know this type of story is valued in our society. The upward mobility literacy myth has long been settled into our culture. No matter what one’s background is he can gain self esteem and material success in this narrative. Also the mindset students have in class is another reason why this narrative is so popular. They get the tools they need to academically succeed from the teachers and act as consumer. With the expectations that those tools will be available to satisfy their needs to success, the students keep consumer minds. I think this makes the most sense to me and one of the samples in Rising Cairn confirms to this. At “How English got turned around” by Shamus Gorman, he met a teacher who would never put an extra effort for the students. This lead him grow negative mindset toward English. Rather than rebelling against the situation and giving up, he decided to use the tools from the new teacher and ultimately changed his mindset. Under the new teacher’s guide, Shamus could gain confidence which resulted in better English grade and school life. His consumer mind to effectively use the tools from the teacher could make this possible.
2.
The key traits of victim literacy narrative is that it is the most common “little” narrative story. It is usually written by socioeconomically and educationally privileged students and is about the negative school based literacy experiences. The narrative shows an evidence that shows negative aspects of school. These features are contrast to the success narrative and it challenges the success story by emphasizing the negative consequences of the literacy. Many people would think students from underprivileged class will write victim literacy narrative but its not. Students who are in privileged class are the majority of the writers. Those students tend to have higher standard for their education and will likely complain if it doesn’t’ satisfy their needs. I think this is the reason for this tendency.
3.
The key traits of rebel literacy narratives is it writes about resisting traditional literacy beliefs. The writer is not against reading and writing but portray themselves as resisting the school system. These negative aspects shows that emotions such as anguish and loss of hopelessness can also be parts of the literacy. It enables readers to learn more about student’s specific histories rather than broad story. This is also the least often performed narratives which takes up only five percent. I think the reason why this narrative is so rare is because it is not really the valued type of literacy in our culture. Also this narrative requires the writers detailed explanation. This could be another reason for why many students choose to write other narratives.
