Week 4: Sponsors in Literacy

My sponsors in my life can vary in only two direct areas of my life. At home, my sponsors would have been my family members. Brandt will state that sponsors, or agents, are people who stand in your life to benefit or gain from some sort of economic advantage through means of support or other mechanisms of opportunity. Brandt will go on to explain the benefits that are gained through learning to read and write through sponsors or agents in our lives.

Learning to read and write can vary depending on the resources that are available to you, or the society in which you live, and the resources that are available to you. Some benefit more than others. I have seen this most in the inner city, for example MPS, as opposed to living in the suburbs.  Not all students are given the same access and materials to successfully learn to read and write. In my own personal life, my family was my sponsors in that they pushed me to succeed and then through that I was able to go to school and get an education. I learned by watching my own family live, struggle, and survive in their own lives and their actions were a form of literacy for me.  These very actions pushed me into college where I would go on to continue my education, and get 2 degrees so far.

The family name that I was given, the name that was printed on my birth certificate and the signature that I learned to sign was my first agent. The second were my instructors in society who taught me the knowledge that I have today.

Mary Goodwin