Drafting1

The idea of sponsorship is important in one’s literacy narrative. Sponsors can have positive affect to the ones who are getting sponsored by. According to Brandt, sponsors are any agent who enable, support, teach. The concept of sponsorship is suggestive for explaining the outcome of one’s literacy success. “Sponsors” is a fitting term for the figures who affect a lot in people’s memories of literacy learnings such as teachers or supervisors. In Brandt’s passage, he gives an actual example of how the quality of a sponsor can affect people. A person named Raymond was supervised by some of the most powerful agents of the university, while Dora Lopez was being sponsored by her parents who worked part time jobs at a local university. The outcome of Raymond and Dora was completely different. Shamus was affected by two different sponsors. His mindset toward English was negative when he met his first teacher. The first teacher was ignorant sponsor who affected his students in a poor way. However the situation changes as Shamus enters new school and meets new teacher. The new teacher knew exactly what is needed for success and eventually lead him to change his mindset. The new teacher had a quality of positive sponsor in contrast to the first teacher. This is certain part from his narrative which explains the situation. “There are teachers who will ruin things for you, change you and make you want to quit. But all it takes it that one teacher, friend, and/or mentor to change your mindset.” This supports the example in Brandt’s passage that the characteristics of sponsors affect a lot on those who are getting sponsored by.

The literacy narrative is comprised of different types of narratives. The little narratives provide information that master narratives don’t. According to Alexander, little narratives show us that students contextualize their literacy experiences with specific and personal accounts. Little narratives contribute to a more comprehensive view of student’s literacy stories. Readers could find several pieces of stories through this. Little narratives also contribute to learning more about the student’s particular literacy histories. These characteristics of little narratives reinforce the master narrative, providing readers with various information. I found the example of this at Shaylee’s literacy narrative. She tried to make more points through little narratives. The reason why she had to ‘rebel’ against the teacher and her firm attitude were all explained through little narrative. Her main idea which was explained in her master narrative was “don’t get shot down for being different by their own choice. It shouldn’t matter what you like as long as your not hurting anyone.”. After reading her little narrative, her claim in the master narrative seemed more obvious to me. “She just kept telling me to put it away. I put it away, that time, and the next day I took the book to read again. That time I got the book taken away from me, I was mad.” This quote was a part of her little narrative which made me realize why she had to stand against her teacher. Shaylee’s example supports the statement that little narratives supplement master narrative.

The idea of sponsorship takes significant role in one’s literacy narrative. Sponsors can have positive or negative effect to the one’s who are getting sponsored by. According to Brandt, sponsors are any agent who enable, support, teach. The concept of sponsorship is suggestive for explaining the outcome of one’s literacy success. “Sponsors” is a fitting term for the figures who affect a lot in people’s memories of literacy learning such as teachers or supervisors. In Brandt’s passage he gives two examples of how two different sponsors can affect people differently. The characteristic of the sponsor determines the color of literacy narrative a person writes. According to Alexander, rebel narratives are written by the students who resist traditional literacy beliefs, conventions, and ideologies by rebelling against them. The students portray themselves as resisting the system rather than to dislike reading and writing. In Shaylee’s narrative, her teacher acted as a negative sponsor to her. Her teacher would always take her book away whenever she was reading the books. Shaylee quoted, “My story isn’t the only one like it, so many people are shot down for being different by their own choice. It shouldn’t matter what you like as long as you are not hurting anyone.” As shown in this example, Negative sponsor can lead one to write rebel narrative.

  There are various types of literacy narratives. The most popular type of narrative is success master narrative and the little narratives provide information that master narratives don’t’. According to Alexander, success narratives are often told abstractly, without reference to a specific time, place, or instance in the student’s life. It contains broad, abstract claims about literacy. Little narratives show the readers that students contextualize their literacy experiences with specific and personal accounts. Little narratives contribute to a more comprehensive view of student’s literacy stories. Readers could find several pieces of stories through this. Little narratives also contribute to learning more about the student’s particular literacy histories. In Shamus’s narrative, he wanted the readers realize how important it is to meet proper teacher or a mentor. His little narratives made the readers realize it. According to Shamus, “She was not only my teacher, she was my friend. She liked to act like a child and fool around, but get work done in a fun way so it wasn’t painful to do. She was the person I could count on to always help me.”. By describing what the teacher did, it helps the readers acknowledge about the situation and understand the master narrative better. Master narrative is rather more abstract than the little narrative. Little narrative shows specific details that master narrative don’t as shown in Shamus’s example.