Literacy Narrative

Reading and writing have always been stressed as important skills to develop and maintain within my family. My father, being British, was continuously correcting my speech amidst other socially constructed expectations. "No, Sarah. It's Jenny and I...not 'me and Jenny'..." I remember being read to often as a young child, anything and everything. All the adults in my life would graciously take the time to read to me and answer my incessant questions about the plot, characters, setting, etc. I also remember being taught phonics in kindergarten...the rote recitations and the marking of long and short vowels. It was brutal most of the time, but I do feel that it gave me a more firm grasp on the individual components that make up words and ultimately our language. I always loved the library and always participated in the summer reading contests our local library offered. I read lots of mysteries and the American Girl collection and books about other places. Because of this early love, my imagination usually ran away bringing me with it to places new and exciting, places that I felt like my favorite characters would have explored. My childhood dream job was a librarian. I would make my own version of card pockets and cards and tape them into the backs of all my books. My mother being a chef bought me all the kitchen play stuff, including a shopping cart which became my book cart. People would then have to check out my books. (Almost 20 years later, the books at my grandma's house still boast those little homemade cards.) I would get in trouble at night for staying up to read after I had been tucked into bed. I always had at least 2 books under my pillow. Needless to say, I was quite the little nerd and it is not surprising to anyone that I grew up to become an English teacher. I am still a nerd and pack my books before anything else when planning a trip. McKays is one of my favorite places and my husband and I date at coffee shops with books in hand.

Throughout my rather nerdy experiences, one thing has become evident to me. Literacy is not a clear-cut line but rather something that is a lifelong process. As I read, study, and encounter society around me, I feel that I become more literate and able to analyze and translate various spheres, be it writing or other. Literacy isn't the sole responsibility of classroom teaches, but of all members of society. It's family members who spend hours reading to their kids or younger siblings or friends who introduce another to new online worlds or even TV shows that arouse curiosities and expose their viewers to worldviews outside of one's self. Literacy is one of those terms whose definition changes and expands as our society and culture changes and expands. I no longer feel that it is simply the ability to read and write. It is the ability to translate those skills to all arenas of our ever-changing society to be an active member of our global society. J.L. Lemke said it well when he stated that "literacies provide essential links between meanings and doings...they also provide a key link between self and society: the means through which we act on, participate in, and become shaped by larger 'ecosocial' systems and networks...I do not think we can define it more precisely than as a set of cultural competencies for making socially recognizable meanings by the use of particular material technologies" (71). Based upon this statement, it becomes quite clear that this notion of literacies goes beyond the traditional reading and writing. It encompasses computer navigation skills and visual interpretation skills as well as a vast number of other increasingly necessary skills. The age from which writing and print were the primary means of communicating, learning, and interpreting is behind us and we now live in an age in which "all literacy is multimedia literacy" (72).

Quotes taken from the following source:
Lemke, J.L. "Metamedia Literacy: Transforming Meanings and Media." from Handbook of Literacy and   Technology; Transforming in a Post-Typographic World. Ed. David Reinking, Michael C. McKenna, Linda D. Labbo, and Ronald D. Kieffer. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998. 283-301. Rpt. in Handa, Carolyn. Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World: A Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Lease Burton. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004. Print.