Literacy History

Literacy sponsors can range from anyone who can support, encourage, provide, deny, or limit literacy for someone, and ideas or associations that can direct and influence literary. Some are directly related to literacy, like teachers, who teach children to read from a young age. Another, less direct relation is a company who chooses to sponsor sports teams or an individual for the company to be advertised while the team or individual competes. These sponsors affect the skills learned and used by the individual and they often benefit in some way. My own literacy sponsors began affecting my life from when I was just a toddler until the end of my high school years.

My literacy history started with my mom. My mom would read to my brother, sister, and I at night when I was little. She also refused to put TVs in our room so we would read before bed instead of watching more TV. By four, I knew how to read and my mom had instilled a liking for reading in me, at least when I was younger. When I reached first grade, my mom was the teacher and she started us off with learning how to compose well written first paragraphs. Then I also learned the 5-7 sentences rule for it to be a complete paragraph. My mom has been my biggest literacy sponsor and influence in my life. From teaching me how to read from the start, she always encouraged reading and helped me grow in my literacies. She helped me grasp the idea of writing when I was young, leading me to write more and include my thoughts into different pieces of writing. She would also help me revise my essays as I grew and point out my mistakes, increasing my knowledge. My mom is a positive influence on my writing process, encouraging organized structure and flow throughout my essays or any of my writing.

In third grade I was taught the five paragraph styled essay by my teacher. My teacher also assigned books to read with book reports to complete. It had to be structured with the introduction first, including your main idea and the three supporting details for your three body paragraphs. After writing those four paragraphs, the conclusion was to basically restate the introduction in a different way and try to include a connection between the 3 body paragraphs. In a way, this did strengthen my writing because it helped me in organization and structural aspects of essay writing. As a third grader, I thought this was always how I should write and it would turn out great. This strict structure for writing was believed to be the correct and most efficient way to write because it was what my teacher wanted, so I always thought it was good writing if she deemed it acceptable. However, it was never about the ideas or purpose of the writing. As long as it had an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion that were all relevant to the topic, along with proper grammar and punctuation, it was considered “good writing”. At the time, I didn’t realize how this was negatively affecting my writing. From third grade and on, I had the bad habit of always writing in this five paragraph structure and just focusing on grammar and organization, since that’s what was always wanted from me. The rest of my teachers throughout elementary and middle school did not do much to improve the actual quality of my writing, and most lacked writing skills beyond the basic five paragraph essays themselves. This issue continuing into some of my high school years, too.

When I got into high school, my English classes were mediocre. I can for a fact say I did not write one essay in my sophomore or junior year. At the time I was pretty much loving it, but when I got to senior year and college applications, I knew I wasn’t in a good situation. However, my English IV senior year teacher, Ms. Flores, changed that for me. She understood the exact situation my classmates and I were in and knew most of us were hopeless, restrained with this five paragraph structure driven into our brains. She was the first English teacher that was completely different from the others, who encouraged us to write differently from the basic structure and not confine ourselves or our thoughts. After seeing just some of our writing in her class, she wasn’t surprised how bad some students’ writing were, she knew how bad the system of writing in school was. Ms. Flores knew she couldn’t reverse everything that had been taught to us in just the one year she had us. Right in the beginning weeks of school, she made us start writing our college application essays. She encouraged us to write freely and was there to help us collect our ideas or revise our writing when we finished. With Ms. Flores, I saw more to writing than the five paragraph way everyone always said to do. She helped me become more open in my writing and not so confined in thinking and letting my thoughts flow into what I was writing. She helped me portray and realize a larger purpose as to why I was writing, not just writing because I’m being told to. Ms. Flores has been the second biggest sponsor affecting my writing process. She brought me to see the restraint this structure caused in the writing process and how the purpose and meaning of writing is what’s most important to focus on. With her help, I showed the true purpose in my writing, especially my college application essays. I became more of an open writer and let more of my ideas and thoughts flow. My voice actually started being portrayed in my writing, which will grow more and help improve my writing in the future.

In the future, I can include more figurative language and incorporate an increase in sophisticated vocabulary in more professional pieces of writing. I can change the temptation and habit of writing the strict 3 reason body paragraphs after my introduction and not limit myself, but expand more in my writing. Currently, I’m declared as undecided, but if I choose to major in pre-health sciences or biology to pursue an orthodontics career, I will have to write to communicate thoroughly with my patients about potential procedures, problems, or collections, and clearly communicate with my assistants concerning patients. Overall, I hope for the future of my literacies to improve upon my organizational skills, language, and have a clearly defined purpose in my writing.