Lauren's Literacy Narrative

       The double-edged sword of my dad’s influence and the nurturing nature of my mom’s sponsorship lead me to today. I still love to read fantasy novels and write whatever my imagination conjures up. My writing prowess also manifests in the essays I have to write for college, which are unfortunately more draining due to the lack of creative freedom. At least with the blog genre, I have less constraints on the writing choices I can make. Being able to include pictures in this format helps give life to the points I made in my literacy narrative.      At Professor Conner's suggestion, I submitted my personal narrative essay to the College for a first year writing competition. I've never been confident in my writing (despite Mom's belief that everything I write deserves to be published), so I don't expect to win. It would be a nice conclusion to my first year here if I did, though.

      Let me introduce you to my mother Stacey, who I cited in a previous post as the positive influence on my literacy journey.       She's been an elementary school teacher for thirty years now, so she has a good grasp of what's appropriate for children to read. She would take me to the county library to check out the Magic Treehouse books or the Junie B. Jones series, or whatever else caught my eye. Every time the scholastic book fair came to my school, she would let me buy as many books as I wanted. I was pushed to get as many A.R.  — accelerated reading  — test points as possible.     I would get mad at her when she forbade me to read something I was interested in, especially if it was something Dad was okay with. Looking back now, I understand she was doing what was best for me. Mom knew that even though I could comprehend certain books meant for older audiences, I wasn't mentally mature enough to handle them. Keep this stored in ...

      Besides a few select geniuses, most people had to be taught how to read. Although I was arrogant enough to call myself a genius when I was a child, I too needed to be taught. It became clear early on that my reading comprehension was at a higher level than my peers. By first grade I could read books meant for middle schoolers. My parents nourished my love of reading, but in two drastically different ways. Because they encouraged me to develop my literacy skills, Deborah Brandt would call them my literacy sponsors. Brandt defines a literacy sponsor as “a delivery system for the economies of literacy, the means by which these forces present themselves to – and through – individual learners” ("Sponsors of Literacy", p. 167). She refers to a metaphorical delivery system, but my parents were literally delivering the materials necessary to sponsor my literacy since I was a kid with no money to buy books.     Each parent will get an individual post, but the gist ...

The traditional meaning of literacy is the ability to read and write. This simple definition of literacy is no longer reflective of the complex understanding required to engage with modern technology and social media. New literacy, for example, is the ability to discern that the email in the image below is sent by a robot with the intent to scam the receiver. An obviously fake advertisement meant to phish the recipient's data.     As for the writing aspect, an example of new media literacy is the ability to compose a blog post (which is what I'm doing right now). The most elegant prose in the world means nothing if it's illegable because of formatting errors and a bad font. Although the narrative I'm remediating is about my journey with the traditional meaning of literacy, I wouldn't be able to use this genre without basic knowledge of the mechanics of a blog website.