Blog Post 2

I wouldn’t say that a community has influenced my literacy development. I believe that my literacy has developed overtime thanks to my parents, specifically my mom. My mom is a preschool teacher/ daycare owner. She enjoys teaching little kids how to read and write, and unsurprisingly took this passion to her own home, and dedicated time to teaching her children how to develop literacy. The communities that I have been involved in that have affected the way I learned how to develop literacy has been the educational system and my immediate family. An example would have been when I was in high school. At the time, I lived in Beaumont, Texas (my birthplace) and I attended one of the most undereducated schools in the whole country. What made it worse was that the school district was independent of the state, and had been stealing money away from students for years. I remember watching SNL one night with my family, and the host stated that the most uneducated city in the US was Beaumont, Texas. I immediately felt embarrassed… but was left in shock. I felt that somehow, I was unintelligent because I lived in that city, and I went to school there, and I never felt academically challenged.

There is two social factors that have influenced and prohibited me from gaining certain types of literacy. My race, I believe has prohibited and influenced me from gaining certain types of literacy. From what my parents have told me, when I was in elementary school, my teacher at the time had told my parents that I would never learn how to read and I would never go to college. I believe that that statement was based on the fact that I am Black, and there’s a lot of stereotypes about young black students and their abilities (or perceived lack of ) to read, write, and learn in the education system. This caused my mother to teach me how to read herself, and I quickly met and passed the average point of literacy for my grade. Another factor that has influenced my literacy development is location. In my 21 years of living on this earth, I have moved more than I can count on my fingers. I have lived in three different states, for a variety of years. I have lived in more than 8 cities in the state of California and have been to too many different schools. I wouldn’t say that moving a lot prohibited me from developing literacy, (even though it was not easy) but it has given me plenty of experiences and challenges to develop in literacy.