Literacy of a Community
Texas A&M University-Commerce—a place of higher learning, where young adults go to further their education and reach their dreams of creating a better life for themselves. However, there is so much more to this university than meets the eye. It is rich in a history and a culture that many of its students never take the time to learn or embrace. They go about their day in search of reaching their dreams, but never stop to understand what the univeristy really is, a large community. We think of this place as a school, maybe a place of buisness, or for some people it is where they are employed; but, without a doubt, this university is a community. It’s a community with hunderds of sub-cultures or sub-communities, if you will. From the sports teams to the fraternities and sorieties, to the band and the math clubs, there are several independent entities within this university that make it what it is. Each one of the separate pieces all bring something different to the university and contribute to its literacies. The different clubs and teams all have a different literacy or way they go about things which is what makes this university very unique. With all the different types of culture found deep within the university, it is an exciting opportunity to research one of these areas, to find out about its literacies, histories, and to see what makes it function. Researching this will help us to understand how these “sub-cultures” work and how they help to make Texas A&M Univeristy-Commerce the community that it is today.
Perhaps of the most interesting “sub-cultures” to research would be one of the many sports teams. Researching one of the university’s teams is going to provide a good look into how they have affected the univeristy in two ways. Not only does a sports team contribute to the univeristy as part of its community, but it also helps to get its name out throughout the nation by traveling, playing, and (most importantly) winning. Of the many sports teams on campus, the men’s basketball team is a great place to start the research. The team is rich with literacy and history that defines its place in the community. The best way to start the research is to try to step into this small community as an “outsider.” If we look at it from an “outsider” point of view it is going to greatly contribute to the research and give us a better opportunity to understand how everything takes place within this community.
Every community chooses to express their literacy in different ways, and literacy can manifest itself in ways other than just reading and writing. However, when it is examined in those forms, there are several ways we can catagorize it. Accourding to Lauren B. Resnick in her article Literacy in School and Out, the three most common kinds of (reading and writing) literacies are useful, informational, and pleasurable. Resnick says, “Here I consider three of these categories that are most frequently cited… the useful, the informational, and the pleasurable” (Resnick, 119). It is good to consider these when researching a particular community because it helps one to see what types of literacies is practiced the most. It may also reveal something about them. This is certainly what it did in my research of the basketball team.
In my research, I found that the two most used literacies involved with the basketball team are that of useful and informational. Resnick defines these two types of literacies very clearly in her article. She defines useful literacy as “A common type of literacy practice is the use of written texts to mediate action in the world.” (Resnick, 120). She also describes informational literacy, “The reader’s main task is to build a mental representaion of the situation presented in the text and to relate the new information to previously held knowledge” (Resnick, 123). These descriptions are completely parrallel to the way the basketball team uses them.
Located on the back of the locker room door is a chart full of numbers and statistics. Further study of this chart will reveal that it includes the information from the games of the past season. At first, I just disregarded this as useless information but soon realized that what Resnick was talking about was staring me right in the face. That chart is a perfect example of both helpful and informational literacy. It is a form of helpful literacy because the coaches and players are able to study their performance from the past games and learn what to improve on or to keep the same. That is a very helpful piece of information for a basketball team. Also, in the same way, it is a piece of informational literacy. While coaches are looking at it, they are informed of what they did as a player or coach and know their statistics for possible future reference. This information is just one example of the flourishing literacy going on within the basketball community, but it is very evident that Resnick was correct in her statements and definitions of literacy.
As I have mentioned before, literacy is not just limitied to something that one can read or write, but rather it is much more than that. A piece of literacy can be a picture that tells a storyor a banner that represents a community’s history. Whatever the case may be, each community is going to have several different types of literacy.
While researching the basketball team, I found numerous pictures of past players on one of the walls in their locker room. Each one of these pictures has a section of text that displays who that person is and what their contribution to the community was. These pictures tell a story, a story that may not be important to an “outsider,” but to the team it means everything.
These pictures are of people who gave their everything to the community. They sacrificed and dedicated themselves to improving the community that they love. They are forever remembered on the team wall because of the way they helped further their community and help make it what it is today. More specifically, there are two players whose names rise above the rest for their contributions to their community, Jermart Miller and Scooby Johnson. These young men are two of the best players ever to wear a Commerce Lions’ uniform. Their pictures on the team’s hallowed walls are larger than any other. This is symbolic of the way their influence to the team was greater than any before them. Throughout their tenures here at the university, they were able to merit many individual awards and were recognized as some of the elite players in the country. However, their influence on the team goes much deeper than their personal gain. They helped the team reach heights that it had never before reached. They helped produce many victories and eventually championships. These championships became pieces of literacy for not only the team to admire, but also the univesity.
Along with those many pictures of past players, the walls are lines with championship banners for all to see. These banners date back as far as the 1950’s, and each one of them represents a special moment in Texas A&M University-Commerce history. These banners are also a extemely important form of literacy for the university. They use banners to promote the university and get its name out there. This is one of the ways that a sport team makes a major contribution to its university. The more banners thata team acquires only increases the amount of literacy for the school to promote. This is a perfect example of the importance of those players whose pictures are hanging from the wall in the locker room. Without these players, the team would not have reached the heights that it has and would not be continuing to climb further up the mountain of success. The literacy of pictures and banners are a great example to show the histroy of the team and how it can help the university, but what are some forms of literacy that help the basketball team specifically?
In her article Writing in the 21st Century, Kathleen Yancy points out a very important fact. She says, “Today, in the 21st century, people write as never before—in print and online.” The key word in her quote is online. We have seen a major increase in online literacy over the past few years and there seems to be no signs of it slowing down. With the internet being such a vital tool in 21st century literacy, the basketball team has not hesitated in using this tool as well. They have created and furnished their own webpage with a cornucopia of information concerning not only the team but also the university. On this webpage, you will find stories of past and present players, statistics, schedules, biographies, and much more. One of the most intriguing assets to this page is the archives link. This link will take you back several years to the histories of basketball teams from the past and display their successes and shortcomings. It is because of this information that the webpage is a very vital tool in the advancing the literacy of the basketball team and even the university.
In conclusion, when one researches and examines deep into a community, he is very likely to find small, seemingly meaningless forms of literacy flourishing throughout. Upon continued research one will discover that that seemingly meaningless form of literacy is one of the extremely important pieces that contribute to the literacy of the large community itself. We were able to see how the baskeball team developed a form of helpful and informational literacy to be successful, and in their success, they were able to greatly benefit the literacy of the university. These benefits are only coming from one of the many pieces or “sub-cultures.” Imagine when all the pieces are placed together just right; that’s when Texas A&M University-Commerce’s literacy is flourishing!

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