these show me connecting my idea of how teachers affect students

The way teachers represent themselves and their attitudes have a greater effect than they realize on their students. Teachers are supposed to be the role model for students and set the tone for their learning and understanding of difficult material. Different examples of this can be found in literacy narratives written by older students like the one Shamus Gorman wrote, The 180. Shamus writes, “There are teachers who will ruin things for you, change you and make you want to quit. But all it takes is that one teacher, friend, and/or mentor to change your mindset”(???)  Shamus had two teachers that he wrote about. The first one made him give up in English because she was never there for the students and didn’t connect with them. Shamus had even asked for extra help with his teacher and when the time came, she never showed up. Things turned around for him though in the seventh grade when he met his new English teacher. She was friendly, made learning fun and connected with her students, especially Shamus. Both of these experiences reflect onto Brandt’s idea of sponsorship. Brandt states, “Sponsors, as I have come to think of them, are any agents local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy – and gain advantage by it”(556). The teachers in Shamus’s life were both sponsors to his literacy performance. His first teacher was a withholding sponsor because she helped him back in learning literacy and took away his confidence. His second teacher was a facilitating sponsor because she aided his literacy performance in a positive way and made him confident in his writing again.

 

Throughout literacy narratives, you can see a shift in how students perceive various sponsors, such as teachers. This shift is usually seen in victim narratives that transition to a more positive narrative. In Abbey Small’s literacy narrative, Sophomore Year From Hell,  she provides an example of this shift. At first Abbey hated her teacher, but by the end of the year she states, “But by that point, I had grown to respect Mrs. Lane. She was the only teacher that had really taken the time to help me learn and grow” (???). Abbey is reflecting back on her experience sophmore year with Mrs. Lane, and doing so, her attitude towrds her changes. This is an example of Alexanders idea of shifting identities within a literacy narrative. He states, “The researchers found that a students identity often shifts … to someone who is more critical of his or her literacy practices and who sees them more connected to relationships with other-either teachers or peers” (343). Alexander explains how students change their perspectives of relationships within their narratives, especially with teahcers. Abbey came to a relization that even though her teacher was being hard on her and making her do the work, she was the only one that didn’t let her give up on her self and she didn’t give up on her.