Please choose 1 or 2 sections to complete.
Community
A. Describe a literacy sponsor from your childhood or young adult life. As Deborah Brandt defines it, a literacy sponsor refers to
…any agents,
local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, and
model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold, literacy—and
gain advantage by it in some way….sponsors set the terms for access to
literacy and wield powerful incentives for compliance and loyalty.
Sponsors are delivery systems for the economies of literacy, the means
by which these forces present themselves to—and through—individual
learners. (Literacy in American Lives, 19)
As you
describe this agent and their relations and experiences with you, be
sure to identify the mood, feelings, thoughts, etc. that you experienced
as a consequence of your interactions with this agent.
B. Choose a location in a community in
which you have lived and/or worked in which you felt a strong sense of
belonging. Draw a picture of that location, making sure to include
houses, shops, trees, monuments, signs, rivers, etc. in as much detail
as possible. This spot may be one in which you had a personal experience
that has made a lasting impression on you or it can be a spot that has
much historical, cultural, and/or political significance to your
community. Upload this drawing and below, write about this location,
using vivid descriptions to help us understand what this place looked
like and why it made a strong impression on you.
C. Choose a specific local legislative
issue or unofficial social code that that stood out in your community
and constrained your and/or others' behavior. Include an anecdote about
one of your or others' experiences that supports or problematizes the
"rules" of that law or social code. Then describe what this anecdote
says about the values, norms, behaviors about your community, which
might have shape your own beliefs, thoughts, actions, etc.