Portfolio 1: Draft #2

Claudine Seriani

English 107

Dr. Clifton Justice

19 September 2015

Challenges Faced by Literacy

Alarm clock rings and it is currently 6 am on a Saturday morning and my sister and I wake up from a long night of staying up late from playing Mario Kart on the super Nintendo. We walk into my Grandmother’s room where we change the channel and turn on our favorite show, “Mamas Family”. This was the show I have waited all week for. The time when I would look out my window and see the sun barely shining through my blinds directly onto my bed. That is when I knew to wake my sister up to watch that show. Being in our silk matching set pajamas, Saturdays were days where my family and I had movie marathon days where all we did was sit in front of the television, and watch at least five movies rented from Blockbuster down the street.

Watching movies in English were very interesting to me because I didn’t speak the language. I would sit by the fireplace adjacent to the black Mitsubishi TV, in my all white painted living room and watch my favorite movie, “The Fifth Element”. I would gaze my eyes onto the screen with my Mom sleeping on the leather recliner, and my sister next to me chewing popcorn as loud as she could. Being very young, I never knew what the movie was about or what was said back and forth between each actor. I was somehow infatuated by a movie I could not understand. From beginning to end, I would laugh at the events that took place in the film, where I would look around the living room and see my Dad with his glasses off slouched on the couch in his plaid shirt and sweat pants laughing along with me. It was this very movie that interested me into films but in order to understand them, I had to learn how to read and write. Thus began the journey to literacy.

I grew up in a household where reading and writing was a high priority. My Father would always read the Sundays local newspapers and I remember holding it and looking at it without any knowledge of what was written. My Mom was heavily interested in cookbooks where she had one open all the time in the kitchen with flour dusted on the page when she was cooking lemon sponge cake. She would baking, and he was reading immensely while I sat there in my Grandma’s lap observing. In my bedroom, my Father assembled a vintage book shelf that had a rustic look to it where it had shelves full of different kinds of books. With the books arranged, there was also a variety of movies placed underneath them. I would go upstairs in my room and randomly pick up a book and look at the pictures and try to make a story from what I was seeing. On one of my random rummages, I came across a book that sparked my interest in literacy, “The Fifth Element”. I immediately noticed Bruce Willis on the cover of the paperback book, and I opened it but was upset that I couldn’t read it.

This was a start of a struggle because my parents would work from early in the morning all the way into 11 o clock at night. My Grandmother was the one who took care of my sister and I, and the only times I saw my parents were during the weekend. How was I supposed to learn literacy if the people who were teaching me were gone all the time? Not being able to read in English also made it that much harder for me to learn literacy. My parents would spend time with me on the weekends to teach me as much English as they could but it clearly wasn’t good enough for me to be speaking fluently. That is when they took different colored Post-its and placed it around the house with English words written on them. This meant that if I wanted to learn how to read and write, I had to stick to what I knew which was watching television. I had a very specific schedule that consisted of watching the “Teletubbies” and “Good Morning America” before school, and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” after school.

With the shows that I were watching, I was very interested by them but during the commercials I took the remote and tried changing the channel. This led to me accidentally hitting the captions options where letters appeared on the screen and I started to look at them. I then noticed that this looked similar to what was in the books and from that moment forward, I stared at nothing but the letters that were directly in front of me. My once red flower drawings that resembled my backyard were now covered by what I was writing on the television screen. Every time I saw my parents they taught me what each word meant and what letters made up words in English. They would first write it in Babylonian, then I would copy it in English with the help of my Father. This was finally helping me understand a little bit of what was happening in my television programs. By the end of each day, I had pages worth of words written down on my art pad where I then started to pronounce it out loud. Each time I would learned new words, I would go back to watching the Fifth Element and see if I understood it any better. With the help of constantly watching movies in my household, more films were making sense to me to the point where I could finally make up some words inside the books on the shelves. Of course this was months of progress being made, but I finally understood why my parents kept pushing reading and writing on me. It was because I needed it not only for school, but to communicate to those around me.

With the progress being made, it was approaching Christmas time. I finally was starting to understand English and with my writing slowly developing, it was time to make a list for Santa. I was sitting there in my fuzzy green reindeer pajamas while sitting in my Mom’s lap where we were right next to the Douglas fir tree that gave off that fresh pine scent. The illuminating white lights hugged the tree with a white angel sitting on the top of it. We were sitting in the living room where I was surrounded by the unwrapped gifts for other family members around me. She then asked me, “What do you want from Santa?” I hesitated but then I looked at the television and I then started writing down what I wanted. It was the first time I could understand what I was writing and what it meant. Looking back at it now, it is the simple task of being able to write, that make a huge influence on children’s life. Flash forwarding 20 years later, I cannot imagine where I would be without my parents pushing me to learn how to read and write. Of course their absence created a difficult road to literacy, but it was them who I considered what is called a “sponsor”.

Deborah Brandt, a social researcher of mass literacy and learning literacy defines sponsorship as” Figures who appear in people’s memories of literacy who can be older relatives, teachers, or anyone who serves as a powerful leader that initiates the process of reading and writing (167). This can be interpreted in many different ways whether it be in a positive or negative connotation. When first reading through the article “Sponsors of Literacy”, I was convinced that a sponsor was someone I looked up to that taught me how to read. I concluded that a sponsor was similar to a mentor that teaches one how to be literate. However when analyzing the stories told within the article, I determined that even though a sponsor is present, that doesn’t necessarily mean it leads to the path of literacy. A sponsor serves as both the angel and devil sitting on one’s shoulder. A sponsor dictates whether one has the motivation to learn how to read and write, but also paves the path which is the struggle for one to become literate. I believe that literacy is mostly self-taught, but it is the one’s we look up to and the resources given that begin the process of literacy.

Without reading and writing, life is very limited. According to Katherine Hansen from quintcareers.com, says” More than 58 percent of jobs include hours of reading and writing” (Hansen, 1). In today’s society it is critical to have the ability to read and write, because if you want a job to make money, literacy is a requirement. Reading and writing go hand in hand but it all starts with determining who and what your sponsor is. Going back to when I was child, reading and writing was a constant struggle because I did not know how to do either. It shaped who I am today and determined what kind of work ethic I have as a person.

Even though my sponsors are my parents who constantly told me that without reading or writing I would never be successful, no one took the time out of their day to teach me what I needed to know. I had the support and resources to learn how to read and write, but no mentor to sit down with me and really teach me. It was them who created such a delay in with my learning of reading and writing. Due to my personal experience with reading specifically, I disagree with Brandt because I was privileged as a child, who was middle-class and went to a private school but it took me many years to master reading and writing. In fact, I was significantly behind than those whose were economically poor, to a point where I almost got held back. I was a child with no one taking the time to teach me what I needed to know which put me in a situation where teachers had to speak with me separately because I could not grasp any content, especially when it came to the topic of reading.

According to Dictionary.com, “Reading is the action or skill of reading written or printed matter silently or aloud” (Dictionary.com, N/A). When thinking about one’s daily routine, reading is involved in about every single task one completes throughout the day. For example, reading signs, logos, watching television ads, looking for songs on an IPod, restaurants, reading labels, and buying certain products for one’s personal use all involves reading. Imagine living a life where one couldn’t read and being unable to buy what brand they want because he or she cannot read. Imagine not being able to use a key board, because you don’t know what letters mean what and you don’t know what letters make up what words.

With the many movies I have watched constantly, there was one in particular from my childhood that really related back to the importance of literacy. This movie was called “Holes”. There was a character named “Zero”, was in the juvenile detention camp where he didn’t have the ability to read. Due to him being illiterate, he ended up getting arrested because without reading one is limited to what they can do with their lives. However “Caveman” played by Shia Labeouf, taught Zero how to read where long story short, they both ended up leaving the juvenile detention and turned their life around. In this case, “Caveman” was Zero’s sponsor because he was the one who influenced him how to read and began the interest in Zero wanting to learn how to read and write. This is a prime example of a sponsor because Caveman influenced Zero to read, but also created internal conflict within himself because Caveman made it difficult for Zero to learn.  As Brandt states, “Social economic status effects how one becomes literate” (169-170). If Zero had been literate, he could have made better choices and not have ended up in juvenile detention where all he was used for was digging holes. With him being literate, he was able to get himself and Caveman out of juvenile detention where he continued his journey of literacy.

Unlike Zero however, my journey was a bit different as I was getting older. Aside from reading, writing was an immense struggle for me. I would avoid writing in school because I wrote very poorly where nothing was coherent, it was just random words that I had no idea their meaning on paper. This was a struggle that carried all throughout my high school career. Even writing a five paragraph essay was very difficult, until I started writing for fun. When I was in high school I started writing about the events that I experienced throughout each day. I would step by step write about how I was feeling about a certain situation, followed by a prediction of what the next day might be like. The first journal entry was not grammatically correct and never made any sense. Donald Murray, a prize winning journalist and author of several books about the art of writing wrote an article, ” All Writing is Autobiography” where he demonstrates, “I would write constantly about my personal experiences to further advance my reading and writing skills” (Murray, 73). Like him, I began documenting as much as could from my personal life.

As time went on, I bought a book that was called “English for Dummies”. The more research I conducted about writing, the better I was becoming. Being that English was never my favorite class, I never bothered to learn about it. This took me back to what my parents said about literacy, and I wanted to change the way I was reading and writing. I dreaded reading but started to find a passion for it when my writing started to change. Heading into college, I made it an assignment to go back and edit all my journal entries I wrote in high school. At this point I was an efficient writer because of all the papers I needed to write were constant practice. I was now in love with writing and couldn’t go a day without either reading or writing. My knowledge of vocabulary grew and I was writing ten page papers easily without any difficulties.

Referring back to what said about reading and writing going hand in hand, the more I was reading, the better my writing was becoming. In the article, “The Joy of Reading and Writing” written by Alexie Sherman who is a poet and filmmaker said,” Superman comics is what had me interested in reading and it was a way I learned how to read” (11). He explained his journey of literacy which was similar to mine. Since television served as a teacher for me, I had to build upon that which wasn’t much to work with. That is why I started reading books about writing and started writing about my personal experiences. My entire life was being recorded where certain events became my main topic of writing. I was acquiring knowledge of my personal life and conducting it into my writing.

A sponsor I believe is a double-ended sword, where it can progress one’s ability to read and write, but also slows them down. The American Muslim minister and human rights activist Malcolm X, was not the same person he was when he was assassinated. In fact, he was brought up on charges of burglary which landed him 10 years in prison. Malcolm was illiterate when starting his sentence, but was a changed man when he was out of prison. His method of learning how to read and write was discussed in his autobiography “Learning to Read” where he deliberated, “I sat down and would copy every word in the dictionary until I learned what they all meant” (Malcolm X, 2). One could argue that prison was his sponsor, however it still is jail where criminals are convicted of crimes. Nobody wants their freedom to be taken away, yet that is what happened to Malcolm to become literate. It took being locked up with nothing better to do to learn how to read and write. There are many different methods of learning how to read and write and in this case, it was prison which is the worst place someone can be in to educate him on reading and writing.

I understood why my parents told me what they did. If they didn’t discuss how important literacy is, I wouldn’t have the motivation to learn. Even though they said many statements about literacy, I still don’t understand why neither took the time to teach me when they taught my sister. They made me struggle throughout elementary school and always was behind because they never taught me. Sparking an interest and teaching are two complete opposite tasks. However, because I had resources to self-teach, it still was very difficult to learn literacy. It was because of them that I loved movies which led me to reading but it was them who also made me struggle because I taught myself.

My literacy skills were built upon television as Alexie’s was built on Superman comics. I believe that it is the little things in life that spark a personal interest, which drives one to become better in a certain area. That area for me was reading and writing. Something that I hated and was never proficient at, became something I couldn’t live without. Literacy is not something we are born with, yet in today’s society we use reading and writing in our everyday life, that we forget who and what taught us to become literate in the first place. Having a sponsor is the first step when becoming literate because as a child, but soon realize it is those exact people who make it that much harder to learn how to read and write.

Coming to an end, I realize that as I get older, I now understand the challenges I faced when learning reading and writing. I believe that literacy is not just about those two aspects, but about the experiences it took to get there. I had a sponsor but it was because of them I struggled with reading and writing. I cannot say that I am unhappy with how things turned out because I taught myself how to read and write, and if I didn’t struggle, I would still be the same little girl who was illiterate and behind in class. Literacy should be important to everyone but not all can learn right away because of their sponsors. Till this very day, I still watch “The Fifth Element” as much as I can because it reminds me of what led me to literacy. It was because of this movie that created my passion for wanting to learn the ability of reading and writing. Literacy can be problematic, which is why we must continue to educate ourselves and others so that they do not have the same challenges in order to be successful.

References

Alexie, Sherman. “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me.” The Most Wonderful

Books: Writers on Discovering the Pleasures of Reading. Eds. Michael Dorris and Emilie Buchwald. Minneapolis: Milkweed, 1997.  Web. 13 Sept. 2015.

 

Brandt, Deborah. “Sponsors of Literacy.” College Composition and Communication. 49.2

(1998): 165-185. Jstor. Web. 13 Sept. 2015.

 

Hansen, Katherine. “Writing Skills: More Important Than Ever on the Job. “Writing Skills: More       

Important Than Ever on the Job. Live Career, 20 June 2015. Web. 10 Sept. 2015.

 

Malcolm X. “Learning to Read.” The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Random House,

1964. Web. 12 Sept. 2015.

 

Murray, Donald M. “All Writing Is Autobiography.” College Composition and Communication.

42.1 (1991): 66-74. Jstor. Web. 14 Sept. 2015.