Sponsors and their Influence on Lifelong Literacy
From the moment we are born, literacy and sponsors of literacy are all around us. In a sense, these two items are chasing us to educate and to change our lives. As we grow older, our “sponsors” (i.e. parents, teachers, etc.) are constantly bombarding us with many forms of literacy. Parents try to teach us and to see whether mommy or daddy will be our first word, while teachers are teaching us to read books such as Child’s First Bible and many others. These are only a few examples of how we are introduced to literacy at such a young age. These and many other memories lock themselves away in our thoughts because of the effect they have had on our lives. As different experiences and events arise in our lives, we automatically recall these moments and their effect on us; and we are able to see how they have influenced us and ultimately changed us forever.
These experiences vary for everyone and just as the experiences are different, literacy itself can be very different. “The analysis of scholarship forces us to consider not merely how one social group’s literacy practices may differ from another’s, but how everybody’s literacy practices are operating in differential degrees of power, and different scales of monetary worth to the practices in use” (Brandt, 70). Literacy is not just limited to speaking and reading as it may seem, but rather literacy can display itself in many forms. One very common form of literacy deals with computers and being computer literate. The most computer literate person in my household is my father. Dealing with computers is a major part of his everyday job, and he has been working with and repairing computers for as long as I can remember.
Because of his extensive knowledge of computers, he has been able to be a very successful, positive sponsor of literacy for me. We have always had a computer in my house and it has been a very integral part of my family’s lives. My earliest memory of computers and my father’s teaching go back to when I was four-to-five years old. He would teach me how to turn on and off the computer, and how to load my favorite video games. Soon I would be on the computer by myself, able to log on to play my favorite games such as Mario and Space Pinball. The experience that I got on my own allowed me to try to learn and to use new things on the computer other than games. I began to learn how to communicate with my friends over the computer and I thought that that was absolutely the coolest thing. I became very well rehearsed at using my favorite tool, instant messaging. I would get home from school and even though I had just spent all day with my friends I would still log on and chat with them for hours because of how much fun it was to be able to use the computer. As I continued to get older and more rehearsed in the things I was learning, I was also learning how to use the computer as a tool for many other things in life. My father was able to “sponsor” all of this learning by simply teaching me how to log on and play. What started as a place for a five-year old to enjoy some video games was now a device that I used for emailing and searching the web. Soon I figured out that the computer was a very vital tool in my schooling and education.
While I was still playing games and furthering my computer literacy, I was also developing my literacy in other areas such as reading and writing. I have been very fortunate in these areas as far as sponsors are concerned. My mother and aunt are both teachers who are very skilled in English and grammar and have been very influential but different sponsors to me. My mother teaches elementary, specifically first grade, and my aunt teaches an English class at the secondary level. They were both able to very positively sponsor me in my literacy, but they sponsored me at two different levels.
I can remember when I was much younger, my mother working with me at home and in school on developing my reading and writing skills. She taught me how to write, the specifics of how to form my letters, and how to develop my words and grammar. All of this was at an elementary level, but she was able to get me started and I was then able to learn and develop it from there.
My aunt has had a more recent sponsorship on my literacy. She was my sophomore and junior English class teacher, and she not only taught me in class but also helped me develop outside of the classroom as well. While my mother had taught me the basics of reading and writing, my aunt began to teach me grammar and the right way to use it. The lessons I learned from both of them have turned out to be a very valuable tool that has helped me throughout my life. These lessons instilled values and basics that I have been able to build upon and become stronger in as time goes on.
Everyone is different in the way they are sponsored and by whom they are sponsored; however, they tend not to see how a sponsor can affect them in more than one area. We notice when somebody sponsors us in a specific area, but many times we only recognize their sponsorship in that particular area and not in others. I know that I have fallen victim to that very thing. I have failed to notice that my mother, father, and aunt, while they all sponsored me in different ways, their efforts all tie together in one large attempt to develop my literacy. By my father “sponsoring” me on how to use the computer, I was able to take that knowledge and apply it to my schooling. I had learned to use the computer thanks to him and his efforts, and many of my school projects required a computer to complete. I knew how to handle and to operate the computer in order to finish required projects and papers; and inadvertently, my literacy in school was developing over the use of the computer.
This same “sponsoring” was happening with my school work but in complete opposite. My aunt would assign a paper or an English project, and it would have to be done by computer. I would then go home and begin to work on the computer to get my project done, and concurrently, I would be developing my computer literacy while working on my English assignment. I was not able to see it at first but I soon figured out that my dad was also a sponsor for me in my English literacy, while my aunt was also a sponsor in my computer literacy.
In conclusion, Deborah Brandt described sponsors best in her article “Sponsors of Literacy.” She describes sponsors as “figures who turned up most typically in people’s memories of literacy learning: older relatives, teachers, priests, supervisors, military officers, editors, influential authors.” We all have sponsors who affect us either negatively or positively. Whatever the case, we should take time to remember these people and our experiences with them because they have helped develop and mold our literacy to where it is today.

Advertisement