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Journal # 3:

1) Summarize the essential points Williams is making in this article including capturing key terms. (150-200 words)

 

Williams explains that he uses literacy narratives as a tool to gain better understanding of his students. He does this to see what students have had good experiences with reading and writing and what students did not. Williams uses the feedback he gets from the narratives to shape the structure of the course. Williams points out the fact that most students have problems with identity when writing literacy narratives. The part on shifting identities gives a great explanation on how a students identity shifts from being the hero to being the problem and why they might struggle in the first place. Research has shown that the exercises that have been created to help students find an identity do in fact work and if you are having a hard time finding one they should try a couple of them.  

 

Q: What might your literacy narrative look like from another perspective? (50)  Q: Why might this perspective shifting be beneficial for articulating and understanding our own identities? (50)  Return to your literacy narrative and sketch out the narrative from the perspective of another character. (100)

 

My literacy narrative would look like from another person’s perspective as a growth and success story. I believe this due to the nature of the narrative, it is about me reading the dictionary with my Dad everynight in the third grade and how I was quizzed on the words I learned. Not only is it a success story it’s a story about a father and his son having bonding time. Shifting perspective of the story can be beneficial to understanding it because, I look at it now as quality time with my dad instead of it being a punishment like it did when it was going on. In addition to that I can see and understand the reasoning behind doing it in the first place. This is important not only because it will help me grow as a reader and writer but will also help me appreciate the little things in life more.

 raise 10 questions about the stories archived in Rising Cairn (read more if need be). Curiosity, inquiry, these are the sails we need to fill to move forward here.

 

Why did you accept that particular person as a mentor ?

Did you ever have any doubts in your mentor ?

Do you think your life would be different if you never met that mentor and if you would of been able to accomplish what you did without them?

How is your relationship with your mentor today? Have you ever thanked them for what they did ?

The advice and mentorship you were giving for that situation can it be used with other problems that might occur in your lifetime ?

In some mentorships the mentor can learn more from the apprentice than the apprentice does. Do you think this applies to your story ?

What made you pick this time in your life ?

Are there things that you learned long after the problem happened ?

Since you were guided thought that situation. Do you think you could mentor someone else going through a similar situation?

Why was this situation so difficult for you ?

 

 

Where does their thinking start?  Where do they end up?  How did they get there?  What sources do they turn to for answers?

 

Their thinking starts with a big question like about philosophy or science with asking a big question it allows the Brain to open up more and start thinking in more depth. They can end up anywhere from asking a broad question. Since the question is broad it allows everyone to be able to think about it and to have multiple opinions. Abumrad and Krulwich use experts in the questions they ask but they don’t always agree with them and they might think different than what the experts have to say.

Things I noticed about the narratives I chose is that they all gave me the ability to understand them as a person.  Yes I understand that these are all Personal Narratives but these ones in particular didn’t come off as a fake story, these narratives gave me a heartwarming connection and seemed to be 100% honest. In some narratives reading and writing wasn’t easy for some, in others it came natural by the end of each narrative they all came to a understanding that reading, writing and learning are a key to success. In every narrative theres a Turing point. It can be a book they read as a kid or a teacher that supported them, but at every Turing point they started to understand the importance of learning.  The tags for the narratives are right on the ball and tie in well with the writing. I don’t believe there is a limit to their accuracy due to the fact that they are personal narratives and each story is different from one another.

    Dwayne Roberts JR

Literacy Narrative  ENG 122

 

Reading didn’t come easy to me in school. I was at a lower reading level than most of my friends and this became a big problem. I had meetings with my parents and teachers about this. I never enjoyed reading because i wasn’t good at it so I didn’t try my best . I never read out loud because I was too shy to and when i did i always messed up so  didn’t read out loud unless I was forced to. After about 3 meetings with my teachers and parents we started to try something new. I knew at first it wasn’t going to be fun because it had to do with reading and writing. Me and my Dad talked on my struggles with reading and, how I was not enjoying it at all. We talked about my shyness on reading in front of people.

 

       When I was in the 3rd grade my Dad made me read the dictionary

every night for 30 minutes a night. He told me that this wasn’t a punishment and that I would thank him later in life for doing this. He said due to my struggles in reading and writing that if I had a better vocabulary That this would help. This method indeed helped me a lot. At first I didn’t enjoy reading the dictionary I mean what 3rd grader would ? But I stuck with It and it improved my vocabulary tremendously. My reading and writing skills improved a lot over that year. My father taught me  a very important lesson when he did this. He showed me that learning never stops. It doesn’t stop if you are 8, 18 or 81 you can always learn something new. My father wasn’t a “Book smart man” he went to a public high school in Houston Texas, and joined the Navy two weeks after graduating. He taught me how to have a great work ethic and to never stop. He is always learning something new and he is the reason why i’m the hard worker I am now. He said to me that he understands reading a writing doesn’t come easy to me he showed me that you can overcome this struggle with it by working hard at it everyday by reading the dictionary at night. This is not only the oldest memory about reading a writing I can remember it’s the most important one. This memory not only connect directly with literacy narrative but, it is a contributing factor to the person I am today. My father wasn’t going to let me struggle in reading and writing. He was going to do whatever he could do to help me with this challenge. Reading the dictionary at night as a 3rd grader not only allowed me to be a better student, it helped me become a better person. It helped me expand my vocabulary and, this not only helps as being a student but as an employee and other various things. This time spent with my father not only served as a learning opportunity but also a bonding time between us. My father and I are very close and he is not just my mentor and idol he is my best friend.This is just one of the many examples of my father teaching me having a good work ethic and how to be a better human being. My father’s values turned into my values like Alexie.  Unlike Alexis father my dad wasn’t an active reader. He can read very well, and wishes he had more time to read but other obligations haven’t allowed him to read as often as he wished. When he went back to school for HVAC he had to read for his classes. We both did our homework together. I cherish these times like how Alexie cherishes his time with his father.I feel that i can connect with him a lot in the way that we both respect and love our fathers a lot. When I was growing up there wasn’t a lot of kids my age that lived on my street. With this said I spent a lot of time with my father. We would plant things in the garden and we would talk a lot. He gave me a lot of life lesson while we garden like the importance of being patience. I was upset when the plants didn’t grow as quickly as I wished they did. My father told me that good things come with time and he was sure right. Patience has been the biggest factor to my success without this I am nothing.

 

          

 

             Reading the dictionary as a 3rd grader not only widen my vocabulary but, opened my mind and turned me into a open minded thinker. Being a open minded person will set you up for success. Like Alexie my father is my idol I strive to be like him everyday. We both share this same connection and both of our fathers have brought the importance of reading. Alexie and my father are very much alike they both always want to learn more. Alexis father was always learning something new by reading. My father is always working on something and, learning from what he did good or bad he elevates himself. He is always working on his Mustang and learning new things on it or what he should do different. We spent a lot of long nights together in the garage putting a new rearend in it. This is my most valuable time spent with my dad. Unlike gardening I actually put his teaching into action. Everything he taught me as a boy from reading the dictionary to being patient gardening helped me to become the young man i am today. A strong work ethic was put into place for me at a young age like alexie. Helping my father work on his mustang was a quiz and reading the dictionary was homework to help me prepare for this quiz without patience that I learned as a boy we would of never finished this project.

 

     Without a strong role model I don’t think I would’ve read the dictionary at night for 30 minutes a night as a 3rd grader. Without my Dad i would of fell behind in school and struggled. The importance of having someone like this in your young Literacy life is not stressed enough.

Acquiring a new Discourse is a very complex and difficult thing to do if you wish to master that Discourse. You first need to be an apprentice of that Discourse and spend time learning under a master of the Discourse and to understand what it takes to be where they are. Mastering a Discourse is very difficult to do at first. There are some things of a discourse that you cannot get at first.”Discourses are connected with displays of identity:failing to fully display an identity tantamount to announcing you don’t have that identity, that at best you’re a pretender or beginner.”(9-10) In Coaching you need respect in order to gain this respect you need to have experience at first Belichick did not have this like all young coaches do. Due to his young age of coaching it took time to earn not only his players respect but other coaches respect as well. Most Coaches won’t listen to some 20 year old telling them something. But in Belihcikcs case he has been around coaching since birth and he isn’t like the other ones he is the chosen one. Since Belichick is a beginner at the Discourse of Coaching he needs to learn quick or he will fall behind and can lose valuable information on that Discourse he will not be able to display the full discourse of Coaching at first due to his inexperience at it just like with everything else you are never the best at it the first attempt. This means that he was able to learn not only under his father but his friends aswell  and other Coaches he had in his playing career. ‘He already knows so much . He’s like a coach ” (86). With this said Belichick is on the right path to becoming a master of the Coaching Discourse. At this moment Belichick gained more respect this is a very important part of his Coaching career even though he was told by some high school coach that “he already knows so much. He’s like a Coach.” this is proof that he is understanding the Discourse well and gaining trust, and respect within the Discourse of Coaching. This not only helped him learning the Discourse of Coaching but it helped his confidence due to the fact that a Coach said what he said  when he said it. Coming from a former player and aspiring coach this would raise my confidence in myself by 100% if a master of the Coaching Discourse said something similar like this to me.   

Bill Belichick is acquiring his new discourse of being a coach every day if his life by just being around football as much as he is. At the age of 6 he was attending Navy practices with his father who was a Coach at the time. He was getting game reports after every game and study the plays so he could understand them. By the age of 10 he was going to recruiting trips with his dad learning all about the recruiting process. At a young age reasonability and wisdom was installed in him. This is a reason why he is who he is today. He started being a coach and an appurtenance of one at a very young age like how appertains were in the medieval times.Belichick was taught the discourse of being a coach at a young age and this is why he can wear that costume so well. Football is the way of life that Belichick knows. In a way Belichick was wearing the cut off hoodie at the age of six. The hoodie Is the costume and how he acts and talks is part of the discourse. Due to the fact that Bill Belichick was coaching at such a young age the discourse of coaching is his main discourse and he lives and breathes it every day. By the time he was able to become a Coach he was more then ready for the task on hand. He had years of prior experience and practice. In Belichicks case he was surrounded by masters of his discourse his father was one of many of them. Due to the fact that his father was a coach most of his friends were also masters of the discourse of coaching. With this said the only thing Belichick could learn as a young man was coaching and the game of football. The social practices that Belichick was taught was to be respectful,grateful and to be responsible. He was taught this because this is the way he was brought up between his father being a coach and grandfather being a coach and with the people he was surrounded  by at a young age this is all he knew. The reason why Belichick looks so serious all the time is because he was taught this at a young age. This is why he doesn’t talk with reporters that much and what he does say it “ We are on to cincinnati.” But if you were to try and talk just football with him he wouldn’t stop talking if you gave him the chance.   

• Gee explains that apprentices often have to use Discourses before they’re fully fluent in it (9). He also explains that no one can “engage in a Discourse in a less than fully fluent manner…[without] announcing [that] you don’t have that identity, that at best you’re a pretender or a beginner” (9-10).

In most cases Discourse is needed to be use before you master them. This is due to the time and experience that it takes to acquire a good discourse. “Discourses (and therefore literacies) are not like languages in one very important regard. Someone can speak english, but not fluently. However, someone cannot engage in a Discourse in less than fully fluent manner. You are either in it or you’re not.”Gee (9) With this said by Gee it is showing how much practice and time it takes to be good at certain discourses. If a hispanic woman comes up to you and only knows 15 to 50 english words you can tell that she does not know english well. This is just like discourses. You can’t fake them either you have them or you don’t. When I was learning ASL (American Sign Language) I was not fluent at it and I am still not. A way that helped me understand this discourse was the connection to the written language that it has.  It is a lot like written english so I was able to connect one discourse to another. This is how you learn and acquire discourses. Like most classes there was a teacher who is this case the the master of the discourse. And like every other discourse you need a master to show you the apprentice how to learn and acquire that discourse. With time and practice with my master I was able to fit into the ASL Discourse more day by day.   

• Gee explains that the “superficial features [of a Discourse] are the best test as to whether one was apprenticed in the ‘right’ place, at the ‘right’ time, with the ‘right’ people. Such superficial features are exactly the parts of Discourses most impervious to overt instruction and are only fully mastered when everything else in the Discourse is mastered. Since these Discourses are used as ‘gates’ to ensure that the ‘right’ people get to the ‘right places in our society, such superficial features are ideal” (11).

 

“superficial features [of a Discourse] are the best test as to whether one was apprenticed in the ‘right’ place, at the ‘right’ time, with the ‘right’ people. Such superficial features are exactly the parts of Discourses most impervious to overt instruction and are only fully mastered when everything else in the Discourse is mastered. Since these Discourses are used as ‘gates’ to ensure that the ‘right’ people get to the ‘right places in our society, such superficial features are ideal” (11) This is a true statement by Gee. I believe that everything happens for a reason and it might take a lifetime to understand why or to find out why but they due simple happen for a reason. Sometimes you just aren’t at the right place at the right time like discourses. In some cases you are needed to be able to learn certain discourses quicker than others and if you can’t keep up then you are out of it. You also need to be with the right people at the right time. I want to become a college football coach and i believe that I am at the right place, at the right time, with the right people. I say this because this is a start up program in its beginning years. This looks very good on a resume to any employer and especially other coaches and schools. I believe I am with the right people because i have the chance to work with people who have been around division 1 football for over 30 years and this is the discourse I am attempting to enter I have a multiple masters of the discourse of being a coach at my fingertips. Most apprentices  have 1 master in my case I have over 8 that are very excited on working with me and this goes both ways.

 

Discourses can be the difference between getting the job you want and working at Mcdonald’s flipping burgers for the rest of your life: It can be the difference between finding your future wife and being lonely for the rest of your life. Discourses simple come down to Black and white but, they make a lot of grey.  

 

According to Gee, discourse is how people act, value things, and do things with different groups of people (6). For example, you wouldn’t talk to your boss the same way you would talk to your kid. I wouldn’t act the same way in a bar as I would act in the office. Discourses are like a costume they are interchangeable and with this costume comes with the character if you were to dress up as a cowboy for halloween you wouldn’t go around saying Arrgh!! Wheres me Booty? You would talk and act like a cowboy. This is how you act in discourses you follow along with what you’re in. For example when I am at football I am a completely different person then I am around my family and friends. As soon as I walk into the Athletic complex it is all business I am more serious then I am anywhere else. This is part of that discourse, my behavior is more serious than otherwise. This can also be completely flipped around depending on the discourse you are in at the moment. The way you speak,act, think, dress everything is depending on what discourse you are trying to be part of at the moment. With that said they can change rapidly if needed. Sometimes you are needed to be part of certain discourses for a very long time and this can either be good or bad.

 

Discourses give us the ability to not always be our truest self. It gives us the freedom to either persuade people or hide from others. You can get jobs from using discourse the right way. It gives you the ability to show off character and to use things differently. Discourses allow people to connect with people they usually wouldn’t connect with.  Discourses are developed according to Gee by “Two Discourses can be transferred to another Discourse, as one can transfer a grammatical feature from one language to another. (9)” What Gee is explaining is that you learn discourses from one another they all connect one way or another. For example when I was learning American Sign Language I was able to understand it better by connecting the signs with words and terms that I used every day. By doing this I allowed myself to understand the concept of the language.  

 

Discourse is gained by experience and time. Over a lifetime you will learn different discourses, these can be also called costumes. And just like learned about costumes it takes time to learn them how to act in them and what ones mean what. With time and experience with older and wiser people you can acquire multiple discourses. Like most good things in life it takes time to acquire many discourses. In order to get good discourses you need to live life. You can’t be shy or be not around people and real life simulations you need to experience things in life.

James Paul Gee is a Mary Lou Fulton presidential professor of literacy studies at Arizona State. Gee played a role in the formation of a new field that which is the field of “New literacy studies.” He studies language, learning, and literacy in an integrated way. He is in touch with the digital world and how it affects these concepts. He wrote “Good Video Games and Good Learning” as well as “ Women as Gamers.” He explains how video games can be applied in K-12 classrooms cognitively socially and culturally. He has 14 reasons why video games have important learning principles. 

 

 

Matt Cook , Dwayne Roberts Jr