Passion For Writing

The concept which I wish to focus on in Sam Michaud’s paper is the path of the child prodigy. The child prodigy concept, as defined by Alexander states that “students portrayed themselves as child prodigies, they conceived of themselves and their literacy as exceptional” (Alexander, 619). Within Michaud’s paper, the author describes how they found an enjoyment of writing at a young age and wrote stories in their free time up into high school. Michaud states “I began to write daily. Through more and more practice, I began to write longer, descriptive stories”(Michaud, 3). The narrative shows the concept of child prodigy literacy writing as the Michaud describes themself as a consistent writer starting in second grade. This is something that is not entirely common, which encompasses the role of the child prodigy concept.

 

Recess and Distress

The concept which I wish to focus on in Blake Beverage’s paper is the path of the victim in a literacy narrative and having a sponsor for it. The victim is a person who has a literacy moment based on being singled out and exploited by a sponsor. Brandt defines a sponsor as “agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withold literacy- and gain advantage by it in some way” (Brandt, 166). In Beverage’s paper he discusses how he felt he was being singled out by the teacher and being forced to do more work than the other students while they got to go out to recess. Though after a while he realized that “she was holding me to a higher standard because she knew I had the ability to succeed in my work” (Beverage, 2). This was his realization that though he felt victimized by the teacher, her method of teaching helped him realize that he was capable of more than he currently represented.

 

Turn Around?

The concept which I wish to focus on in Kayla Farrell’s paper is the path of the victim in a literacy narrative. As defined by Alexander, a victim narrative is backed by the feeling of having “the fun taken out of reading and writing” (Alexander, 615). In Farrell’s paper she discusses how she “having Mr. Stritch as a teacher freshman year of high school as well as junior year of highschool, really destroyed my confidence as a writer” (Farrell, 3). This feeling which Farrell got from having this specific English teacher is a perfect example of the victim narrative as she believes that due to him victimizing her through literacy, that she no longer enjoy literacy due to this reason.

 

Expect the Unexpected

The concept that really stood out to me was the concept of having a literacy sponsor in Hannah D’s paper. Brandt talks about sponsors as “figures that turned up most typically in people’s memories of literacy learning” (Brandt, 167). In Hannah’s paper, her literacy sponsor is her brother who died at a young age when he had a seizure while kayaking. She talks bout how she wants to write this paper well in honor of her late brother, she claims “I wanted to go above and beyond for this paper” (D, 1). This explains sponsorship in a different way than the definition in Brandt’s paper. Here instead of it being a literacy memory, it is a traumatic one which inspired her to keep her brother alive through writing. To me this shows the other possible sides of having an indirect literacy sponsor that does not entirely tie into a past literacy experience.