In rising Cairn another literacy narrative that I could related to was “Eighth Grade English” by Carolina Dimler, she was able to answer or make sense of the question I had about sponsorship. In Brandt it states “Sponsors, as I have come to think of them, are any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, or model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy — and gain advantage by it in some way” (556), which doesn’t state if a sponsor can come in the form of a spirt or can someone be their own sponsor. In Dimlers writing she explains this story of how her exiting assignment for middle school was to write a letter to her future self. When she recieved it in the mail post graduation she explained how bad her writing was back then. She then states that “Realizing what I had written allowed me to analyze how much I have grown, not only as a person but as a writer” (Dimler 2), so this little assignment that her teacher assigned was a gift which would mean that her eight grade teacher is her sponsor. Although later in the text Dimler explains that “Now I have new opportunity to take this time frame of work and effort to put it towards my four years at college” (3), which explains the growth mindset theory. She is going to take the fact that she did not pay attention to much of her literacy movements in high school and apply it to college. To me as a reader it shows that she is showing a success epsisode as Alexander would explain as future-looking. Dimler is being her own sponsor and modeling to herself who she wanted to be in the future.
collreadwrit2e
