This semester, not only have I learned a lot, but I have made amazing friends.  Through these friends, I have learned many things as well. One of the premises of Literacy Studies is that there are many types of literacy other than the traditional definition of reading and writing. Before I took this class I probably would have only added the addendum that computers are a third type of literacy, but now I know that there are all kinds of literacies outside those bounds. I have learned, through classwork and through my new friendships, that there is a new type of literacy to encounter everywhere I look. I have learned to navigate a multitude of new apps and communication formats in a manner of a few months all because of the interactions in this class.

One of my favorite articles from this semester was Keri Franklin’s “The Twitter Essay”. I related to Keri’s point of view because I too was terrified to compose my first actual tweet. Kim assigned us an exercise in class during which she expected us to not only compose a tweet, but to come up with a “hashtag” to use for the entirety of the semester. During this exercise, I learned that while twitter and Instagram are slightly similar, the use of hashtags is vastly different. Being new to most forms of social media, such as Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, I assumed that they all employed the same uses for this apparatus. Not knowing the proper literacy skills for the platform on which you are attempting to communicate can be an embarrassing flaw, and I’m afraid that the learning curve for these literacies leaves much room for humiliation. This is what I have found to be true of all new forms of literacy. One must not be afraid to fail, and quite probably fail often, in order to learn. This lesson has been taught to me by experience on social media, and by Kim, who has told us that we should not be afraid of failure.

In my new friends, I have also found new sponsors to my literacy learning practices. People who help to shape the way that I learn and who will help me to minimize failures. They have an impact on me now, much like my family had an impact on me in my childhood. They are teaching me how to read images I see in the media, how to interpret hashtags, and how to understand what’s really going on in the so-called “twitterverse”. They are, in effect, my new parents. My parents were my first sponsors of literacy; they read me stories every night before bed, and once I could read on my own, they fueled my addiction by practically giving me my own library. They gave me my first access to a computer, and my mother sat with me for hours to teach me how to type properly. Now my classmates have done the same. They are coaching me through the slang, they help me to figure out what to do and what not to do, and overall they make me feel included, which is an integral part of any new form of literacy. These sponsors, friends and family, help to mold who we are and who we become, and help us to shape our futures.

Many teachers are realizing that they can have an even greater impact on their students by teaching them to participate in creating their own literacies. Kim has integrated participatory culture into our class, but for some of us, it may be too late to try to teach us to create rather than simply consume. It is best to begin these practices early. One great example of a teacher integrating this into their classroom is Kristin, a teacher studied in the book “Writing Superheroes”. She teaches her second graders a practice called “Author’s Theater”, in which her students write screenplays about subjects that interest them, then recruit their classmates to help them act those plays out. I spent a lot of time reading this book and I realized that had I been raised and taught in a school with these kinds of values, I would have a completely different outlook on life, and I would probably be more able and willing to create some culture of my own, as opposed to merely consuming culture in mass quantities. I have had at least one class each semester since I began at Chico State in which I have had to write blogs. Only toward the end of each semester did I become comfortable with the idea of my thoughts being put out into the world for anyone to see. Had I been given the opportunity to share my thoughts with more people in my schooling, this would have been a much less harrowing experience.

I would like to quote an early blog from this semester in which I give my thoughts on literacy. “When I hear the word literacy, I think of the line between being literate and illiterate. That line has now been blurred for me, as I am struggling to learn that literacy does not merely mean the ability to read and write. I can’t exactly pinpoint the definition of what literacy is, but I know that it involves basically everything in our lives, from the clothes we wear to the texts and tweets we compose. The innumerable amount of things that we must learn to be considered literate and the number of people who help us to reach that literacy are changing every day.” Now, I know that this is a large quote, but I feel that it captures the essence of what I have come to learn that literacy can encompass. I feel as if the biggest stride for me, and probably for many of my classmates, came on the first day of class, when we established that literacy wasn’t just about whether you sign your name or an “x” on the line. It isn’t about whether or not you can read the letters that make up street signs, but it is about what you understand of the world around you and what methods you use to interpret it.

Now that the semester has come to an end, I am amassing many literacy practices that I feel I will continue to utilize. Not only will the social media apps be used, but I will use the ideas surrounding acceptance, understanding, and creating that I have learned to make sure that I am no longer a passive consumer. I feel that I have mastered the social media aspect, and I will attempt, over my semester abroad, to hone my blogging skills. I still am not quite sure what literacy really is, but I have grown so much over the last few months, and I think that growth is a part of it. I was introduced to so many new opportunities and experiences this semester that I will be able to use throughout my life. While I may still be rather illiterate when it comes to technology, I feel like after Kim’s class I have one foot in the door. Hopefully I can help to contribute to society, and maybe even to someone else’s learning practices someday too.

You know the phrase, “kids say the darndest things”? Well, the book that Pod 1 read for book club proves that this is not just some random cliché.  In stories involving the X-Men, many things other than the heroes tended to show up. Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and a blob family are only a few of the interesting injections that the children in “Writing Superheroes” put into the stories that they write.

In this book, the children’s writing practice, called “Author’s Theater”, shows that children have few constraints when creating their own work. They base their stories on what they know, and form their own scenarios around characters from their lives. Much of the inspiration for the characters in these children’s writing comes from popular television shows like X-Men, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and occasionally, Power Rangers.

This book details the differences in the play and writing of different groups of children, and the ways that they attempt to mend the rift between themselves and their classmates. Many of the girls in the classroom tended to write stories about homes and families in everyday situations, and in acting those out, they had no difficulties fulfilling the roles in which they were cast. The boys tended to create stories about good guys fighting bad guys, and they didn’t have as many problems with that as would be expected. However, when the star of the book, Tina, decided to cross those gender lines and create a story about females in “non-traditional” female roles, she had more difficulty getting cooperation from her classmates in acting out her story.

In our group, we discussed at length the stereotyping and division of different groups that took place in this book. The female students took on stereotypical female roles, such as the damsel in distress, and the males asserted their aggression in more stereotypical male roles, such as the strong super hero. There were also issues of race introduced into the classroom’s acting dynamic, though in the sections I read, it wasn’t as much of an issue as gender was.

This book, I think, is intended to show that in allowing students to learn at their own pace and to express themselves in ways which will help them connect with one another, we can help those students to gain new abilities. If we let them govern themselves and create for themselves, students will break out of stereotypes and make their own assumptions and observations about life. They will practice their own forms of literacy learning, and surpass any expectation. Also, it’s about kids playing superheroes, and going to get (imaginary) fast food.

This week’s blog was difficult for me. Not only did I have to read these articles once, but I had to reread them to do this. I’m not disparaging the works of these authors, nor am I disparaging anyone (Kim) who uses them as a teaching tool. I personally had a hard time reading them because I never got any practice. I was raised in a home where when I was learning to read, if I got bored or was uninterested in a work, I stopped reading it. This transferred into my academic literacy when I was learning more advanced subjects in GATE and having to return to subjects that were easier for me in normal class. I felt that I already knew the subject matter, so I didn’t have to do the academic reading. This quickly became my worst habit, and it was formed out of the formative days of my literacy.

What I have learned over the time that I have spent in this class is that not only is literacy an extremely individual learning process, but that what happens in the early stages of that process can impact a person’s literacy for the rest of their life. Literacy learning practices are varied everywhere you look. Different cultural backgrounds, financial backgrounds, family academic histories, and many other factors play into the earliest stages of literacy learning and that’s before the influences of school and socializing come into the situation. We talked a lot about sponsors to literacy over the course of reading Brandt’s pieces, and the ideas involving the role of a sponsor intrigued me.

I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of environment having such a great impact on a person’s life, and since reading has always been such a passion for me, this seemed to be the best part of literacy to look into. Not only was I vastly incorrect in thinking that sponsors were the most interesting thing, I was also mistaken in the definition of the word I was attempting to learn about. When I hear the word literacy, I think of the line between being literate and illiterate. That line has now been blurred for me, as I am struggling to learn that literacy does not merely mean the ability to read and write. I can’t exactly pinpoint the definition of what literacy is, but I know that it involves basically everything in our lives, from the clothes we wear to the texts and tweets we compose. The innumerable amount of things that we must learn to be considered literate and the number of people who help us to reach that literacy are changing every day. I figure that by the time I have finished this class and possibly pinning down the definition of literacy, there may be a new one popping up.

I grew up with limited access to the internet. I had it, my parents used it every day, but they were strict about enforcing their rules. I was only allowed to use a computer for school work, and even then I was only allowed access to Microsoft Word. In high school, I didn’t get a phone until I was a junior, and even then it had no apps or anything but a telephone and limited texts. I finally got a smartphone more than half way through my senior year, and only received a laptop when I graduated. This doesn’t sound like much of a deficiency, and honestly, I know that I lived a very charmed life. However, I consider myself to be extremely deficient in my abilities involving technology due to this upbringing. Parents are often times the first sponsors of digital literacy in addition to print-based literacy.

I think that we consider print-based literacy to be a requirement in our society; if someone can’t pick up a book and read it, then they do not fit into our society. The same result comes of people who cannot function properly within the realms of the internet. Especially in my particular age group, knowledge of and use of the correct apps is the newest form of literacy. I have had a Facebook for years, however, I am only beginning to use Snapchat, Instagram, and I only technically have a Twitter. Much like Keri Franklin, I still struggle to understand and use these apps according to convention. Much of these apps is social, and so much of my past is the very opposite of social. Any ability that I have in these apps is gained in spite of my first digital sponsors, and thanks to my friends in this generation.

Without sponsors of my print-based literacy, I never would have learned to read, however those same sponsors were detrimental to my digital literacy. I think of my sponsors as people of experience in both capacities, however I think that only older people can educate in print-based literacy, while contemporaries or younger people are those who can educate in newer digital literacy. In many ways, those sponsors of print-based literacy get in the way of any new forms of literacy by not embracing it and attempting to learn it themselves. Much like my parents only embracing email and only knowing the most basic uses of computers, these previous generations of sponsors inhibit younger generations from learning and fitting in with their cohort.

What kinds of writing did you see your parents, siblings, and other family members doing as you were growing up? What did they read, where, and when?

My mother worked as a social worker when I was a child and so, I am certain, she was a proficient writer. Her cursive was awful, as is mine, and I didn’t see her writing much at home. My father was always an outside kind of guy and I have no idea what his writing ability was, so I cannot say I ever saw him writing. Both of them read, but with some exceptions, they seemed too read Readers Digest condensed books when I was very young. I know my mother became a voracious reader later, but I don’t remember when that was.

I know that this isn’t a normal blog, so I don’t need to add anything, but this is one of the things that I am most proud of in my family. My great grandmother (the mother mentioned in this quote) was one of the first 1000 women allowed admittance to Stanford. There she pursued a degree in Romance languages, then went into social work. She raised four children while working as well. I would have loved to interview her, but she passed away at age 99 about a year and a half ago.