Crawford 1 Hope Crawford Professor Jan Rieman English 1103-002 February 3, 2011 Sponsors of Literacy Paper (change title to something catchy) Deborah Brandt, the author of Sponsors of Literacy, defines a sponsor of literacy to be “any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy - and gain advan tage by it in some way.” In twenty-first century America, being literate is something that people o ften take for granted. I will admit that I am guilty of taking my own literacy for granted at times, as I cannot remember in detail the process of my literacy education. Although I cannot remember many exact details ofmy own literacy training, I can remember in an instant the people and objects which encouraged me to learn to read and write - my personal sponsors of literacy . I had several sponsors ofliteracy , but my main sponsors were my paren ts, teachers, and children’s television programs. My parents’ lit eracy education, as they have described to me, was very difficult. Sadly , my mother’s parents preferred her little brother over her and were no help to her while she was learning to read as a child. My father grew up on a farm where he was encouraged to miss school as a child in order to p low the fields which led to him not being fully literate until he was in junior high. Feeling cheated by their parents in regards to their literacy as children, my parents vowed to become my and my sister’s main sponsors of literacy. In fact, my parents were such a huge part in my sister’s and my literacy that we all were reading simple books such as Cat in the Hat before we entered kindergarden. I actually have a picture of myself reading a fifth grade history book to my kindergarden class and to several other curious teachers who later praised my parents for being so helpful to my literacy. My parents sponsored me by buying me tapes that are similar to today’ s “My Baby Can Read” DVDs. These tapes would say a word while showing the
