Alysa Smith

Instructor Macrum
UWRT 1103
1 February 2016
Personal Literacy vs. School Taught Literacy
Over the years, my understanding and grasp over literacy has evolved beyond
recognition. My initial thoughts on literacy was that it is just being able to read, understand and
communicate your writing but it transcends far beyond that. Literacy is a process of taking any
written medium and critically analyzing it. We do this to either find out what it means to us,
authors intent or how it can be applied to our world. These are not skills that are arbitrarily
hammered in by teachers into a students curriculum, they are skills that take several years to
develop and you can never reach max capacity. Even as a college student in my late teen years I
am still coming to grips with and improving my literacy both inside and outside my course work.
My literacy journey has had its ups in down mainly because of my frustration with the public
schooling system and its tactics on teaching literacy. For now I would like to start at the
beginning.
My dad has been my literacy sponsor from the day I could read. He is a firm believer in
education and he has always wanted the best for my sisters and I. Instead of my parents reading
us night time stories, my dad would make us read to each other each night to improve our skills
and comprehension. I remember at first how we would get bored of hearing each other stumble
over words and fall asleep while the other person would read, but we improved bit by bit and
began to read with ease. My childhood literacy was similar to Alexie, he says I began to read
with a Superman comic book (Alexie, p. 129), we got so wrapped up in the storytelling world

we did not realize how quickly we were learning. As Malcolm X said, I suppose it was
inevitable that my word base broadened, I could for the first time pick up a book and bow begin
to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new
world that opened. (X, p. 121). In addition to reading my dad also had his own version of
summer school where we would have assigned reading and programs on our computer to ensure
we never lost information we were supposed to keep retained over the summer.
I remember lugging around thick hardcover Harry Potter books in my backpack all the
way back in the third grade and staying up until the crack of dawn reading leisurely. My love and
passion for literacy sprouted from a very young age, this mostly due to my dad making my
literacy experience as fun as it was enriching.
Even to this day, my reading comprehension and vocabulary are some of my greatest
assets and this is due to the fact that I was raised on difficult reading and that my sponsor
diligently made sure that I always had a book in hand. Looking back on this experience and our
relationship made me recall on Brandts quote explaining sponsorship: The concept of sponsors
helps to explain, then, a range of human relationships and ideological pressures that turn up at
the scenes of literacy learning (Brandt, p. 48).
With him being a sponsor and a parent, his lessons stuck with me and I became my own
sponsor. He still frequently checks on me and makes sure Im academically where I need to be
but since his teachings were instilled in me over time, Ive adopted his same work ethic and style
of learning. It is no longer necessary for him to be my sponsor because I have retained all of
what he taught me and I will never stray from it. I do not have as much time to dedicate to
personal reading as I used to but my college experience has been made a lot less stressful
because of my literacy sponsor.

Thanks to my upbringing, I have never been one to frown upon picking up a book,
whether it be for leisurely or scholarly purposes it has always been a passion and a hobby of
mine. As I have gotten older and had more responsibilities placed on me, it has become
increasingly more difficult for me to find time to read books that I enjoy for entertainment
purposes but It is still one of my favorite things to do not including school readings.
I did not mind reading assignments in school initially because it was simple as picking a
book you enjoyed and then writing a report about it to prove that you read it. I lost that sentiment
in high school where we constantly had to read dry material and overanalyze it instead of
appreciate the writing for what it is and its original purpose. This approach to reading in school
made me dislike older pieces of literature. Instead of reading being a stimulating activity that lets
you discover new worlds and ideas it became a mundane process of finding different ways to
interpret the same ideas and morals brought up by several different authors.
There comes a point in everyones critical analysis mastery where they no longer need
guidance or an educational setting to read a book and find the authors intent and literary devices.
In short, reading and analyzing texts in school gets repetitive very quickly especially when the
list of readings all have similar styles and ideas. Once the skill is formed and cemented in a
students mind theres really no reason to keep hammering it in, it just makes students loathe
reading and discourages us from doing it in our own time which is the opposite of what needs to
be happening. We should never get rid of reading older texts in schools but I do believe theyre
overemphasized.
For me the breaking point for me improving my literacy came in high school. Back in the
tenth grade I was enrolled in Honors World Literature, naturally when you sign up for a course
like that you expect for the teacher to have higher expectations and standards out of your

performance. It seemed like a fair trade off initially, extra work in order to prepare you for
Advanced Placement courses but I was in no way prepared for the awful teacher I ended up with.
My teachers name was Mr. Coia, a skinny balding man likely in his thirties or forties. He
had a grating high pitched voice and barely stood over his students because he was not blessed
with great height. His pompous, nitpicky and downright arrogant attitude made it virtually
impossible for me to enjoy the course. He was one of those teachers that thought their class was
important enough to take precedence over all others, he handed out detention slips left and right
and belittled and criticized you every chance he got.
To be frank, almost all of my worst writing experiences are centered around his course.
No matter how much effort I put into my work he would never mark me above a C. I do not
mean to sound overconfident but I firmly believe Im not a mediocre writer like he made me out
to be.
I can recall an assignment where we were supposed to analyze the symbolism in
Candide. I spent the majority of my night working on it and editing it because I had grown used
to his overly harsh grading style and wanted to be sure I was well beyond his standards. When I
turned the paper in the next day I was confident that it was my best piece of the year, only to find
out I received a no points for the assignment. Why? Apparently I spent so much time trying to
perfect the contents of the paper that I put my name on the wrong side of the paper. Instead of
cutting me some slack Mr. Coia just drew a large circle around my header and drew an arrow that
pointed to the other side. When I confronted him about it he told me he refused to grade or even
read it for that reason alone and I was not offered a chance to make up the lost points which
caused my grade to plummet. Needless to say I came out of the tenth grade with a very sour taste
in my mouth for literature and writing.

I have a similar sentiment with reading in school due to my negative experiences with my
teachers. My first thoughts when it comes to reading is that it is an intellectual escape, it opens
up many worlds and ideas while stimulating your brain. Even though I do not really have enough
time to dedicate to leisurely reading I still enjoy it and it will always be one of my favorite
pastimes. Reading assignments in school gradually became more stressful and boring. In your
younger years you are often given the freedom to read what you want and your assignments were
usually nothing more difficult than a book report. As you get older your critical thinking skills
develop and you are expected to pick up harder reading and analyze the syntax and other literary
devices. Reading in school became more of an annoyance for me once it became more about
picking out and overanalyzing literary devices rather than enjoying and appreciating literature at
face value and learning from it. It is no wonder that my worst reading and writing experiences
come from the same time frame because of a single teacher.
One of the required readings for my tenth grade year of high school was A Tale of Two
Cities, it goes without saying that it is an exceptionally difficult read and it can be confusing just
keeping up with character names. Mr. Coia, my honors literature teacher at the time, made the
reading much more difficult than it needed to be and ultimately caused me to hate the book.
Along with analysis essays he was assigning 60+ pages of reading per night and the quizzes were
ruthless with obscure quotes and passages appearing on them. The book has a brilliant moral but
we were forced to spend so much time chugging through unnecessary assignments that I lost
sight of the true message that Dickens was trying to inform his readers of. Knowing what I know
now, if I gave the book a second chance and read it at a comfortable pace I would definitely be
able to appreciate the piece of literature a lot more than I do currently. The experience didnt

deter me from reading at all, it just makes me more frustrated with our education system and
makes me not want to pick up books from certain time periods.
Now that I am in college and free to choose what I want to learn and my own courses I
have come to grips with the fact that literacy is ever evolving and ever changing. There is an
endless amount of knowledge to be sought and the pursuit is what makes us literate whether we
fully understand this concept or not.

Work Cited
Alexie, Sherman. "The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me." Writing about Writing:
A College Reader. By Elizabeth A. Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/St.
Martins, 2014. N. pag. 128-132 Print.
Brandt, Deborah. Sponsors of Literacy. College Composition and Communication 49.2 (1998):
43-64. Print.
Malcolm X. Learning to Read 50 Essays Ed. Samuel Cohen. Boston; Bedford St. Martins.
2011. 119-127. Print.