Handwriting, and left handedness Talk about speech impediment from WTE Reading, and how it was what

allowed me to learn Bring in the advantages of homeschooling, and my mother being the main influence on my learning Going into highschool, being graded a lot (bring in Kohn essay) compare to homeschooling without grades reading with my dad/ morning bible studies? - maybe Find quote/thought from reading responses to bring in? (delpit, shen, etc) Talk about my brother/other people needing different things to excel Interesting title? Theme? Idk

I.Try moving from the specific to the general. Try brainstorming important reading and writing events in your life then think and write through the ones that seem most interesting. Your memoir might be structured around the description and analysis of several of these events. Alternatively, try thinking more in terms of particular factors that you feel might have been important to your literate development: journaling; particular books; particular challenges or growth experiences at school, work, in church or other non-school organizations, etc. II. Try moving from the general to the specific, rather than the specific to the general. Consider all of the factors that we discuss in class as they relate to defining literacy and literate development and how culture affects these developments. Consider key ideas, such as how dialectical differences function in American culture, and then relate them to your own experiences. Guidelines: Resist the impulse to engage in writing school personal narrativesthose characterized by bootstrap stories of progressive development toward big, momentous realizations and enlightenments. Be wary of familiar storylines. You are writing to investigate and to inform a scholarly discussion about literacy: you are not writing an entertaining story. Be skeptical of the impulse to tell a story of individual achievement through exposure to great works or people. Maintain a sense of proportionality. You have probably read People Magazine or Sports Illustrated as well as Robert Frost, Gabriel Garcia Marquez,Chinua Achebe and Emily Dickinson. You have likely read religious texts as well as novels. You may have had to read and learn employee training manuals as well as Shakespeare. You have been tested for reading and writing abilities again and again throughout your life. Some literacy events may seem more important and be more interesting to you than others, but think broadly. Your writing should reflect a complicated view of reading and writing. This means that you should not see any form of literacy as outside of history or culture. Every time you have writtenfrom school essays to textingyou have done so within a social, cultural and historical context: this has shaped why and how you do what you do. Your work should reflectin some ways conveythe conversations and concepts of the class. The best work will contribute to the conversation that we are having. It will reference some of the terms, and perhaps the specific readings we are doing in class. Dont over-simplify for the sake of having an easily proven or supported thesis. Take risks!! Say something that matters.

What I will be looking for: Is your essay interesting? Have you developed something that is original and oriented toward an audience? Does your essay come out of complicated thinking about literacyis it clearly informed by the conversations and readings from the class? Does it move beyond familiar personal narrative? Does it use experiences to develop scholarly insights? Does it use some of the vocabulary from our readings and discussions in class?