Old: When a sponsor, specifically a teacher, is giving advice they tend to talk to the students like they are on the same level of understanding. Some students take this advice and use it to become a better reader and writer. Others tend to interpret it differently and instead of taking this advice as a learning point they instead take it personal. I do agree that there are some sponsors who just are terrible and don’t care to see their students succeed. But at the same time I feel as though students can misinterpret the message the teacher is trying to send especially at a young age.
New: When a sponsor, specifically a teacher, is giving advice they tend to talk to the students like they are on the same level of understanding. Some students take this advice and use it to become a better reader and writer. Others tend to interpret it differently and instead of taking this advice as a learning point they take it personal. I do agree that there are some sponsors who just are terrible and don’t care to see their students succeed. I have had my fair share of these sponsors and not only have i learned from these experience but they have made me appreciate my sponsors who cared about my academic progress even more. But at the same time I feel as though students can misinterpret the message the teacher is trying to send especially at a young age. This I think this topic could be expanded on further and maybe even research could be conducted to see how many times a student sees themself as a victim and how many times they actually were victimized. But truthfully I think there is something to learn as a student everyday regardless of the sponsors actions. Many students can attest to having a bad teacher but getting their work done so that way they still achieve the grade they please. Sometimes it is about how much work you are willing to put in to become a better student more than anything else.
Old: Another thing that I want to prove is that the sponsors are just trying to make the students better at their reading and writing. One student wrote a narrative about a teacher who took the book twilight away from her when she was in elementary school. “She started to cause a scene in front of the whole class about how she thought that book was out of my reading level, and I wasn’t old enough” I think that the sponsor for one thought twilight was too much of an inappropriate book to be reading in elementary school. I also believe that yes the student might be able to read the book but while she be able to grasp all the concepts within it. Just because you can read a word doesn’t mean you know what that word means. This teacher was a sponsor that was doing her job. Brandt defines a sponsor as “Usually richer, more knowledgeable, and more entrenched than the sponsored, sponsors nevertheless enter a reciprocal relationship with those they underwrite.” She would have been a bad sponsor if she didn’t walk around the classroom and look at everything that everyone was reading. I think the students because they are so young at the time remember the situation much worse or how they want to remember it. Bronwyn expands on this concept by arguing “It is obvious that imagining a scenario doesn’t make it happen. Yet many students who do not feel successful as readers and writers think that these identities are the results of external judgements handed down by the literacy “authorities” in their lives” (Bronwyn 345). Between students trying to be a hero and not taking constructive criticism they are able to paint the sponsor as a bad person when in reality most of the time I feel that they are just trying to help out.
New: Sponsors are very important to literacy narratives because based on how the sponsor engages with the person writing the literacy narrative will determine what type of literacy narrative the student writes. Brandt defines a sponsor as “Usually richer, more knowledgeable, and more entrenched than the sponsored, sponsors nevertheless enter a reciprocal relationship with those they underwrite.” Another point that I want to prove is that the sponsors are just trying to make the students better at their reading and writing. They do so by sometimes challenging students to do harder work and this is what most people would expect when from a teacher. But sometimes teachers will make a student better by encouraging them to take a step back. I think most students would understand this but I was presented with a case where a student didn’t. This student wrote a narrative about a teacher who took the book twilight away from her when she was in elementary school. “She started to cause a scene in front of the whole class about how she thought that book was out of my reading level, and I wasn’t old enough” I think that the sponsor for one thought twilight was too much of an inappropriate book to be reading in elementary school. I also believe that yes the student might be able to read the book but while she be able to grasp all the concepts within it. Just because you can read a word doesn’t mean you know what that word means. This teacher was a sponsor that was doing her job. She would have been a bad sponsor if she didn’t walk around the classroom and look at everything that everyone was reading. I think the students because they are so young at the time remember the situation much worse or how they want to remember it. Bronwyn expands on this concept by arguing “It is obvious that imagining a scenario doesn’t make it happen. Yet many students who do not feel successful as readers and writers think that these identities are the results of external judgements handed down by the literacy “authorities” in their lives” (Bronwyn 345). I agree with Bronwyn because not only are there clear examples of this being true in literacy narratives but I have also seen it first hand in the classroom. Between students trying to be a hero and not taking constructive criticism they are able to paint the sponsor as a bad person when in reality most of the time I feel that they are just trying to help out.
