Intro

Hello everyone one, my name is Anthony Mendoza, I’m twenty-four years old and starting my senior year here at Chico State. I’m majoring in English Education and pursuing my TESOL certificate. I would like to teach abroad for a little and come back to teach at the high school level with more experience and after hearing some of the stories in class my mind is made up. Plus it’s good a reason to travel and see the world which is what I would like to do someday.  I attended Yuba College before transferring where I jumped around majors before making English my focus.

During my down time, I like to compose music on my laptop, write poetry, read  graphic novels and watch movies. I’m also kind of a gamer nerd, I enjoy RPG games and fighting games like tekken for Playstation four. I grew up in a small town outside Sacramento called Olivehurst and I’m  the first one in my family to go to college.  I want to finish school and help my parents out for all their support they have given me. What I’m hoping to get out of this course? Well getting to know you guys and most important how to be a great and effective tutor for students.

A normal day for me regarding literacy is me checking my social media, which is more than I like to admit but hey its quite resourceful and entertaining!  I also check my email frequently and text friends and family members. This is something that through time has helped me hone my digital literacy skills which I hope they improve even more by the end of this course.

As far as Szwed’s journal goes,  I agree with some of his points, he gives us insight on what it means to measure literacy. The truth is we simply can’t measure it in a traditional sense because literacy comes in all types of ways. “I would expect not to discover then, is not a single level of literacy on a single continuum from reader to non-reader but a variety of configurations of literacy, a plurality of literacies.”(424). There isn’t just one category for literacy and would be unfair to put people in one category when measuring their literacy skills.  Literacy has many different variables from cultural backgrounds and locations. For example, someone who doesn’t read books could be excellent in reading sheet music or video games that offer multimodality in many creative ways. Literacy means something different for everyone.

This is something that I didn’t really think about till last semester in my intro to literacy class but in hindsight makes sense.  Literacy comes in different styles and cannot be measured in a out dated way according to Szwed.