Reading Journal Entries

RJE 1

Brandt: “Sponsors of Literacy”

Quotes:

● “How are we to understand the vicissitudes of individual literacy development in relation

to the large-scale economic forces that set the routes and determine the worldly worth of

that literacy?” (246)

● “Sponsors enable and hinder literacy activity, often forcing the formation of a new

literacy requirements while decertifying older ones.” (258)

1) “Literacy Sponsors” are “people, ideas, or institutions that helped us become literate, but

literate in specific ways.” (ex: private school literacy skills vs public school literacy skills).

Sponsors can also be the reason one is illiterate, by withholding access to education. Sponsors

also typically gain something from being one.

3) This was harder for me to understand. I can’t tell if misappropriating in this case means to

maliciously take advantage of a literacy lesson to move oneself up the social or economic ladder,

or if it’s that but not maliciously.

 5) Regardless of the examples brought by Lopez and Branch, I agree with the notion that

socioeconomic factors affect one’s access to literacy. Branch’s family was upper class, white, and

had access to education early on while Lopez’s family was the opposite. Lopez’s family was

poor, not literate in either Spanish or English, had parents who worked full time or more, and had

fewer academic opportunities because of that.

RJE 3

Cisneros: “Only Daughter”

Quotes:

● “What I didn’t realize was that my father thought college was good for girls– for finding

a husband.” (268)

● In a sense, everything I’ve ever written has been for him, to win his approval…” (268)

2) Cisneros’s father wanted her to go to college to find a man and get married. This was

unintentionally a literary sponsor, as it opened the door for Cisneros to get an education. Though

her father intended his sponsorship and the experience to result in a marriage, Cisneros

misappropriated the situation by going to college to do what she wanted to do, write. She didn’t

leave college or grad school with a husband.

 3) There was no mention of his childhood literacy sponsors, but the text mentions him being

influenced by Mexican sports magazines, I believe Mexican horror (?) magazines, and

fotonovelas. None of these sources push the idea of further education and certainly none of them

push any ideas outside of the heteronormative societal standards in which he grew up in. His lack

of exposure to the thought of women receiving higher education resulted in him seeing no need

for it other than to marry. Cisneros's literacy sponsors pushed her drive to receive a higher

education.

4) Cisneros’s father sees success, for a daughter, as being married to a professional and

presumably being a homemaker. Cisneros sees it as fulfilling her own dreams and becoming a

successful writer who can help people in her community not only access literature but understand

and enjoy it as well.

6) Being multilingual opened up Cisneros’s opportunity to bring in information from a

different culture and present it in a different language (bringing Mexican life to English speakers

and English literature to Mexican speakers). I assume it makes it harder when those around you

are not multilingual as well.

RJE 4

Tejada, et al., “Challenging Our Labels

Quotes:

● “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will lives

its whole life believing that it’s stupid.” (300)

● “There is no way students should be condemned for not exhibiting characteristics of a

style they have never been taught.” (300)

2) I believe that they meant that it forced themselves to look at the ways in which institutions

and literacy sponsors impact new writers. Once the thought of learning grammar rules is replaced

with learning about who we are as writers, it’s clear that remedial classes are far more than just

remediation. This book, similarly to the authors, has influenced me so much on how I feel about

taking a class on “what I should already know.”

5) I definitely relate to the idea that hierarchies in school have made an impact on me and

how that has been a negative literacy sponsor. I often tested into the “accelerated” classes but

couldn’t rise to the occasion with the workload. This along with my parents and teachers saying

“You’re so smart why aren’t you working? made me confused from an early age because I was

working my hardest but not passing. It made me question the intelligence they claimed I had.

Turns out I was undiagnosed as ADHD and Autistic. Early on I gave up on trying because no

matter how hard I tried, I always failed. It was entirely frustrating because I enjoyed learning and

so desperately wanted to understand the material but the accelerated classes would go too

quickly. I got put into lower classes and was made to feel bad for it. Since then I’ve felt bad
whenever I reach out and say something is too hard. It has stopped me from doing it and getting

help when I needed it.

6) I’ve always loved when professors and teachers have presented hard material and then

encouraged us, the class, entirely that we were capable of understanding it despite it looking

completely out of our league. Whether or not I ended up understanding the material given by

those teachers, I’ve felt so much more confidence in myself knowing that a scholar I respect

thinks I’m capable of understanding material of their caliber. I can’t recall any teachers at the

moment who ever expressed that they didn’t believe in me.

7) I think she meant that we’ve been taught strict structures of writing which can feel trapping

while writing. Being freed of those constructs allows us as writers to broaden what our idea is of

writing and thus broaden our writing abilities. I completely relate to her feeling trapped by

writing. I feel trapped by grammar rules, essay formats, and constructs that don’t make sense to

me.

8) I’m avidly anti-time-tests. Timed tests do not show a given student’s full academic ability

and intelligence. Timed tests are an issue for the average person but specifically targets students

with learning disabilities, students with test anxiety, students who have different sensory needs to

focus, students who process differently, etc. It is not an accurate or fair way to measure students’

abilities.