Author: jlarsen3

https://medium.com/rising-cairn/the-mean-teacher-b93daea9bba9#.la0kdf3u8

This mean teacher narrative can relate to questions I’ve asked because it falls along the lines of feeling judged in a classroom setting – but by your teacher. Within this narrative a young boy struggles with a hard teacher who doesn’t do much teaching, and when she does the students are wrong or childish. Lesson being; you can’t always rely on the teacher to do the teaching, you sometimes have to teach yourself in order to get to where you need to be.

collreadwrit2e

 

https://medium.com/rising-cairn/cars-turning-over-to-the-sun-ce8e1bb55d56#.z82vo8m91

This narrative gives insight to some of my questions about being scared to answer questions or read out loud in class… Some students have trouble with speaking/pronouncing words and become self conscious. Not all teachers are encouraging when it comes to students with these issues. However, if most teachers were like the one written about in this narrative, maybe students would be more willing to read, or wouldn’t be so worried about judgement.

collreadwrit2e

3. A “master narrative” is defined as an “overarching story people tell themselves about their experiences in relation tot he culture, literature, or history of a society” (610). According to Alexander, some problems she has with these narratives are that they have “the unfortunate result of gross overgeneralization and act invisibly to structure and define our lives” (610). When looking at my own literacy narrative, I do not believe this to be true… The way we write/what we write about does not define our lives. The stories or experiences that students write about could be something that they overcame, and are not in that same situation anymore.

5. Child prodigy is when someone excels at reading and writing at an early age – put to display for others to see their brilliance. Alexander’s view on the child prodigy is that, “unless children are exposed to school literacy and learn these values at an early age, they will not be academically successful”. In other words, you should be exposed to school literacy at an early age to succeed. Outsiders portray self as an outsider in relation to something else in the story. Alexander’s view on this is that the students who write about this narrative “regret over not viewing them selves as readers or writers” (622). Both of these narratives interested me because I do not come across them often (read about them/write about them). As the child prodigy is more common than the outsider, I still have not read one (that I can remember) in my years of schooling.

7. I believe that the success narrative relates to apprenticeship, and filtering. I feel as though you cannot become successful overnight – as Alexander writes, “Equates literacy acquisition with success, liberation, development…” (615) and I feel as though you cannot reach success through development without the help of others – an apprentice. Along with apprenticeship, I feel as though a student can gain success through filtering. As a successful student learns, I feel as they would be able to filter certain knowledge from some classes and mix it with another class or certain studying techniques.

collreadwrit2e

 

Here I highlighted how education = power. When reading about these narratives, the most common narrative was about success, which is what all students aim for. Along with a successful education, you gain power.

Here, the text says that little narratives are told by groups such as women and minorities. My question is, why women and minorities? Why are they subjected to their own “little” group?

Here I highlighted how every student wants success. The success narrative is appealing to everyone despite their social background and can enlist hope, status, income, and reputation to literally anyone – any student.

collreadwrit2e