Literacy Narrative project-2

Overview for Family:

I interveiwed my brother who is in highschool. In the whole interview he mentioned me as in his sister couple of times because we share a close bond since childhood. He have stated how i used to read him stories, he have also described how he overcome with his writing habits and is a successful writer now, he gets A's on his essays.

Overview for peer:

In my peer interview, he stated that his mother loved reading and would read comic books to him, whereas she would barely write only for work purposes. He would write letters to his friends. His teachers also read to him. He also wanted to be musician. Reading played a big role in his life because of his mom.

Analysis:

Literacy, an ever-changing process that individuals and society correlate with different activities suited for their use. Literacy is meaningful to people in different ways. How we develop our literacy is branched off base on our surroundings. We reflect our communities, cultures, families and peers literacy values into our own to create one’s sole definition of our literacy. No one person literacy is associated with another. They differ for every individual to distinct one selves from others. The literacy I developed came from opportunity of foreign land, and being able to blend my culture and religion into my literacy shaped it only for me. My literacy is meaningful for me as it opened the door to my success and future from a desolate world I was known in, shaped my culture, found allies that I can relate. While my literacy had relations to adaption, my peers and family literacy had relations to their opportunities. Being able to talk to a peer and my brother about what shaped their literacy allowed me to dive deeper into understanding literacy.

My peer, was surrounded by active readers and writers as he was growing up from his mother reading the comic section out of the newspaper, to the friends he would write letters to. His father would read and write only for work purposes, yet his mother would sit down and read the newspaper out loud to him and occasionally rip out the comic section to directly connect with her son and develop his literacy. Having him at a young age, allowed for his mother to still be in school and having to focus on classes, reading books and writing essays. It became the first thing they would bond over as she read to him. Not only at home did my peer shape his literacy, his fascination for music and wanting to be a musician played a big role in generating his literacy, he would develop his essays like a lyrical story, everything he read would come with an occasionally humming. His work came with a flow that correlates to him, something that distinguished himself from others. Assistance from his teachers were vital because they were direct opportunities for my peer to succeed, they would do everything to see a baby bird fly. My peer had many supporting factors around him that gradually generated his literacy.

His literacy supporters and developers positioned my peer to be in context with society. He would understand the values associated with literacy and how our surroundings can mold us. His literacy adapted and changed over the years to fit him. His literacy gradually took form as he was nurtured throughout his years. The readings he listened to in middle school diminished his want of reading, he felt bored, empty, conformed to listen like the rest of the students, yet lead him to take up reading on his own, to keep himself occupied like his mother did for him in his younger years. He struggled reading straight on, it gave him no satisfaction, but he was fond of different musicians such as Jimmy Hendrix, so his literacy adapted to a more lyrical sense. Just like there are different genres in music, my peer literacy was able to adapt to his sense of writing. He wouldn’t find it hard to write an extensive essay over a piece that he loved and felt connected to, but would create a generic essay to adapt to societies view on his literacy. At this instance his literacy had direct relations to adaption, shaping him to use different forms of literacy that gave a lyrical and calm flow, allowing him to read books like he is writing musical notes, allowing him to focus on every word and find the hidden meaning like a lyric of a song, yet create something based off of what is required from the community perspective. My peer literacy is meaningful for him, as it became a need to leap towards his career of a musician, it opened the door to something he wants.

Being raised in a heavy religious family such as mine, my brother, Ahmed’s literacy was highly influenced by the teachings of my family. His grandfather would follow the simple but effective routine of sitting down at the table to read the Quran, to enter a world where it is just him. His parents would be working overnights, so his sister would sit home and read to him, nurturing his literacy. For Ahmed, his parents never had the same opportunity to develop their literacy, so he uses it as motivation to develop his literacy towards his liking. Being read to by his sister allowed Ahmed to base off his sense of reading, and style of writing to his sister. He shared a close bond with his sister, so everything he did, he did with her. He picked up her writing habits, he wrote essays similar to her. Ahmed love for Superman jumpstarted his own literacy that sense of justice and protection, Superman carried around meant so much to Ahmed. He would carry himself in a way of being fearless but looking out for others, which came out in his writing. He wrote to his teacher in a confident tone, addressing the important topics, writing in a way that is grand to him, while protecting his sister’s sense of writing in his work.

Nothing could be more influential to Ahmed’s literacy then his sister. He would base his values off his sisters, yet his literacy took a form resembling him later in his school years. Ahmed always turned in his work with confidence, with a hint of his sister writing style, so with approval by society on the way he wrote, he continued, until a teacher name Mr. Hill changed his entire outlook on his writing. His literacy wasn’t his own, it was shaped to protect the one he had a close bond with, protect her traditions. Mr. Hill criticized Ahmed’s paper that his writing habits are a problem that he isn’t writing true to himself but for others. The criticism Ahmed received directed his literacy towards a path of his own. He would write essays not with anger but with excitement to prove Mr. Hill wrong. His literacy had a goal and it separated itself from his sister. He wanted nothing more than to prove his teacher wrong. It moved his literacy towards relations with power. It became a priority demand to beat his teacher, it engaged his literacy as an instrument for liberation and social change. His literacy emphasize a relationship between power and society views on literacy. His teacher manipulated his literacy to have a shape of its own and not one that resemble his sister, yet Ahmed felt restricted in what he could write due to society wants such as STAAR. His writing conformed towards society. His literacy wasn’t a form of his imagination and creativity but a tool just to move up in educational institutes; however doing activities such as Football directly correlated with literacy. Watching Peyton Manning get injured and the coming back to take his team to the big game, resonated with Ahmed. He felt the restrictions impose of his literacy by society was no longer oppressing him, but was a stepping stone to develop his literacy. Ahmed literacy stressed the importance of the individual by adapting and adopting the different criteria from STAAR to in class assignments Ahmed literacy is meaningful to him as it allowed him to create his work based off of the criteria deemed for the assignment.

These literacy opportunities developed my peer and my brother literacy. One who sense of music and wanting to feel everything lyrical developed a literacy that can flow with traditions of society yet has a sense of individuality. The other who close bonds with his sister left him wanting to protect her sense of writing developed a literacy that uses different forms and values to society wants yet protecting the ones who had supporting roles in his literacy. Their understanding of the values associated with their literacy shaped how they were perceived and how they thought about themselves. There literacy became meaningful to the individual.