Reading together

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Time photoOur course invites you to work with data collection and analysis, readings, and discussion around the field of literacy studies

Watercolors and Literacy

Watercolors and Literacy

Literacy in the beginning was everything to me. Reading and writing meant something more than just survival. As a first grader this word “literacy” opened new doors. For the first time the letters all around me came together to make up words. As I grew up the words individually were forgotten and instead it was about the worlds that were painted in my imagination. Literacy was a blank canvas. Words became a paintbrush. Books were an escape and writing meant freedom.

In the beginning the definition of “literacy” was simple and straight forward. And now that I’ve made it this far in this class it seems that literacy has an infinite amount of definitions. I personally loved Brandt’s piece, Sponsors of Literacy. I had never taken a moment to write down my sponsors and then to consider who my loved one’s sponsors were, forced me to be thankful for something I had never considered before. Brandt wrote, “obligation toward one’s sponsors run deep, affecting what, why, and how people write and read”(Brandt 1998: 168). This sentence struck me as significant because throughout my life many decisions that were mine to make, were ultimately made to make my sponsors happy. I know that many people around me are guilty of doing the same. Many of my sponsors sacrificed so much to allow me to be here today. They pushed me to become more than anything they had ever personally accomplished. They pointed me to the paths that they knew for a fact were safer because they had chosen to take another one instead. And they have relentlessly told me how much they believe in me because I constantly struggle to believe in myself. It may be off topic, but the question I have been asking myself repeatedly is, in the midst of being thankful at what point do we stop and go after our own dreams instead of the dreams that our sponsors have for us?

Literacy is now different. It looks different. Literacy is more than the letters that make up beautiful words. Literacy is shapeless. It’s bigger than a story that fits in between a front and back cover. Literacy is more than the ability to absorb and take in a beginning, middle, and end. And literacy is not a status to be achieved. We can’t pin point what literacy is and there’s no clear map to make sense of it. What has changed is the blank canvas that was quickly covered, colored in, and concluded at the end of every book you read. Literacy is now and will forever be a partially finished canvas. The “definition” of what literacy IS is forever being added onto. The colors are infinite, the future brushstrokes that will be added are ceaseless, and the canvas will never be signed.

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