Literacy Narratives is a project that many teachers assign to students for them to write and reflect upon a time where they had a type of turning point with their writing. Which can be categorized into different identities, a hero, a rebel, a victim, prodigies, and an outsider, which can end in a success or not. The reason these are useful according to Alexander is “As teachers, we have a responsibility to challenge students to interrogate the assumptions they have about literacy leading to success, including the broad, general claims they make about what literacy can do for them.” (625) As students reflect on what identity they have as well as if their literacy narrative ended in a success or not. A success ending is where the student’s outcome is a positive one where they end up liking reading or becoming more proficient in writing and reading. Success ending can happen with any narrative identity a student has, for example, a Hero narrative, which is when a student could have had a withholding sponsor and caused a very negative experience but they did not let it stop them from continuing to do well with reading and or writing. An example of this in a literacy narrative is in Turn around by Kayla Farrell, she writes about how freshmen year she had a bad experience with her English teacher, she starts out as a victim, “Then I got to high school every bit of confidence that I had about writing was stripped. Freshmen year of high school my English teacher, Mr. Stritch, was the person who ruined writing for me.”(Farrell 2) Due to having a withholding and negative sponsor she lost any form of her liking writing and became a victim due to having a negative sponsor. However as her story goes on she has a change in her story, where she is no longer a victim but becomes a hero. She makes this discovery while with a different writing style, “At this point in my life, I am feeling better and better about writing every day, … Getting constructive criticism from other students has just helped my writing in more ways than I can explain.” (Farrell 4) She was able to control her own story and not let herself be a victim anymore and found a way to be successful with her own writing and be a hero for herself through peer review. Writing this literacy narrative gave Farrell a platform to discuss her literacy story which is why it is important for teachers to give this assignment, furthermore it is a great demonstration of how Literacy narrative are not static but the identity can change throughout the story and affect the outcome.
The ways a student identifies themselves throughout their literary experiences can shift through multiple identities due to the fact that every year of education can bring a new task to the table. Some children like Marykate Fitzgerald started out as a child prodigy, she describes her self as an excited reader and was ahead of her fellow classmates from a very young age. However due to her being such a star at reading from a young age, she began to lose interest, “Reading was only so exciting for me for a short time period. After a while, it wasn’t as exciting because it was no longer a new skill, …” (Fitzgerald) This occurs to many child prodigies, they are told they are great at something and are pushed to be the best and soon it no longer seems worth trying to improve on the skill. Which is what happened to Fitzgerald, so once she was in the 3rd grade she had fallen behind her classmates due to her lack of interest in reading. Reading and writing is a skill you always need to practice or you will lose what skill you have. Due to this, she became an outsider because she had to get extra help during class while her classmates got to learn all together she had to be taken somewhere else to receive one on one help. An outsider most of the time feels alienated due to the fact they are at different stages of learning how to read and write and many times they are separated from their fellow classmates. Fitzgerald got the help with reading and writing she needed and soon found her self-being her own hero. Researcher Williams discusses the idea of a student becoming their own hero,“The researchers found that a student’s identity often shifts from being the lone hero, overcoming adversity to succeed, to someone who is more critical of his or her literacy practices and who sees them more connected to relationships with others-either teachers or writing peers.” (Williams) The idea of overcoming a challenge the student has often ended in an identity shift because the student must change how they are learning or how they view reading and writing. If they due to this they then end up being successful. Being successful did end up happing to Fitzgerald once she realized how important reading and writing was, “I continue to struggle with reading comprehension even as a college student. … I realize that as a nursing major these skills are crucial, so I intend to continue practicing them to better myself as a student and a future health care professional.” (Fitzgerald) She was able to connect her learning to what she is passionate about and decided to put more effort into becoming more and more proficient at literacy skills. In the end, Fitzgerald went through 3 different identity shifts, from being and child prodigy to being an outsider and ending with being a successful hero.
The quotes all show the different identy shifts the students experince due to the dfferent outside sponsors influnces.
