Literacy Narrative Process Reflection

This semester as a Teaching Assistant, I worked with an instructor who taught ENGW-005, the most rudimentary course of basic writing at Medgar Evers College.  She assigned a literacy narrative to her students and they responded enthusiastically.  They wrote extensively and some even shared their narratives out loud to their classmates.  Having been simultaneously assigned a similar paper in Basic Writing Theory and Pedagogy, I was happy to share the experience with the students I serve.

Much like my students, I responded enthusiastically to this assignment.  I am very open and not too shy about sharing my story with others.  However, I have not really thought about my literacy history. 

Having my classmates peer review my narrative was valuable.  It helped me to see other people’s points of view about my story.  It helped me to recognize what was missing and what was unclear.  After the peer-review, even before I heard back from Barbara, I took my two and a half page paper and turned it into six pages.  This was a good experience as it led me to remember pleasant memories from my childhood such as jumping rope with neighborhood friends, staying up with my dad as he told us stories and even things with no relevance to the assignment such as drinking Haitian hot chocolate during thunderstorms, church parties and visiting relatives.

The literacy narrative forced me to view myself as a writer, a title I had been sheepish about assigning myself.  It allowed me to revisit my past successes with writing, such as having been published in my high school’s literary magazine, in my college’s newspaper and having won the creative writing prize of the National Black Writers Conference that is held at Medgar Evers College.  When I received feedback from Barbara, I was happy that she liked not only what I had to say but also my writing style.

Though Barbara’s comments were largely positive, I had some changes to make.  I rewrote it as best as I could and asked my supervisor, a basic writing and freshman composition instructor at Medgar Evers College, to read it.  He had always been a fan of my writing and gladly read it and provided me with more direction.  Though his comments were similar to those of Barbara, they allowed me to make deeper introspection and further urged me to view myself as a writer.

Having gone through this process of writing a literacy narrative, I understand why they are assigned to basic writing students.  It is not just to get them to write but also to raise their confidence about writing.  I had a conversation with an instructor at Medgar Evers College about students and writing.  He teaches basic reading and freshman composition.  He surprised me by saying that he assigns literacy narratives even to his freshman composition students.  His idea is that even students at this level who have never been in developmental education are not exactly college ready.  They often struggle to write and tend to be resistant to certain assignments.  Literacy narratives, in his view, are a way of breaking the ice between his students and writing.

I learned a lot from this assignment.  I view conversations with Barbara on my narrative as a model for best practices.