My first literacy sponsor was my mom. Using Brandt’s terminology, she enabled, supported, and taught me to read. As I started grade-school, my literacy sponsors became my teachers. They more often taught, modeled, and regulated the ways that I wrote my letters or pronounced certain words. My first teachers taught me the basics, but junior-high was where we learned to construct our own written arguments. It was in this period of my literacy education that I both grew and dwindled as a writer.
My sixth-grade English teacher, Ms. Happ, was challenging because she had a passion for education. However, her sponsorship of literacy often meant overly regulating and suppressing the writing styles of her students if their work did not strictly adhere to her guidelines. She believed that she was making stronger writers, but I believe now that she was withholding creativity.
My eighth-grade English teacher taught me otherwise. While I had spent two-years believing that there was one objectively good way to write, Mr. Coffeen not only allowed but encouraged students to explore different writing styles and develop their own voice. He achieved his teaching goals, and his students had a better time improving as writers.
As I’ve advanced in my education, I’ve had this same back and forth in the teaching styles that I have been exposed to. There are some that believe in over-regulation to produce strong writers, and others that believe that being supportive sponsors of literacy will lead to better writers. I understand that sponsorship of literacy according to Brandt can be far more expansive than the education experience that I’ve described, but it has been the most influential in my life, especially as an English major.
I feel like during elementary school and middle school, I experienced a similar restriction of the ways that I could write. Teachers enforced rules and formats that limited my creativity and experimentation with writing. As a result, I felt a disconnect with writing and loathed doing it for class assignments. In high school and my college experiences, I have rekindled my appreciation for writing and have been allowed the agency to develop writing techniques and skills that I might have enjoyed when I was younger. However, I see the benefit of having a common curriculum and establishing a standard for writing, so that students are learning at the same pace, but I wonder if there’s a way to do that without hampering and discouraging modes of writing that could perhaps be more natural and interesting for students?