Brandt Reading

Summary
In Deborah Brandt's article Sponsors of Literacy, she digs to find the reasons/ways people become literate and the ways in which people actually acquire literacy skills. From this, Brandt introduces the concept of "literacy sponsorship" which is defined as the supporting ways and reasons one learns literacy skills.

Applying and Exploring Ideas
1. My primary literacy sponsors were my parents and my education. From this, I was taught academic and civic literacies. I would definitely consider my access to literacy sponsors adequate. Growing up, I didn't have a whole lot of religious literacies, which I am okay with. I was instead able to gain musical literacy, which is even more rare than academic literacy.

Questions for Discussion
2. By Brandt's claim that sponsors always benefit from their sponsorship, (I believe) she means that to have literacy is a wonderful thing, but to be able to spead it, and teach it, is an even greater achievement. For example, I grew more appreciative of my ability to read and write during my senior year when I tutored kids who didn't have the same opportunities to learn that I did when I was younger. I had to think of new and different ways to explain simple literacy skills that I had understood for over a decade- but I now had to teach and spread to the kids I was tutoring.
4. By the word "stratified" (I believe) she meant it as in "stratagies", however this is simply hw I interpreted the word, I'm not 100% sure if that's accurate. And by the word "stakes" (I believe) she referred to keeping up with the literacy 'norms' and being able to keep up with society/academics in a modern world with the literacy needed to do so.

My Own Thoughts
I really liked this article. It really got me thinking about all of the outside forces that influenced me to learn how to be literate. Not just the physical and so straight forward influences, like teachers helping me read books in school, but the pressure and expectations from my parents that I adopted as expectations for myself simply because we come from a country where the majority of citizens place a lot of value on education and literacy and thus the sponsors and opportunities are usually abundant.