Advanced Essay #2

As a writer this helped me reralize that everyone learns different and the self set goals we make for others and ourselves.

“Proficient literacy”

In the warm brown fluorescently lit dining room, with stacks of textbooks and papers. My brother was across from me getting really frustrated doing his english homework after flying through math, while I was kind of the opposite. The three lined cinnamon apple candles flickered in the middle of the table covered with green lining; their smell was masked by the smell of arroz y gandules and pastellios, not to mention the delicious smell of the sofrito my mom had made to use in these things, freshly cut cilantro and peppers, among many other ingredients. I was trying to finish my shape, multiplication and identifying rays and lines so I can go in the kitchen and help because i love the smell of the “classic Puerto Rican food” that most people thing we eat everyday, while i glanced towards the kitchen to make sure she wasn’t done I noticed my brother enticed by the flickering of the candle as he held his paper closer and closer until it caught fire. He threw it on the table and my mom came rushing over smacking with her cooking mitts.

“I am sick of this bull shit she stated, Tati go get the children's

Dictionary”. “Okay” I responded not knowing why her anger was directed to me. She took the book and flopped it on the now charred table-cloth and paper. “Flip and point to anyone” she said, I flipped a few paged and pointed to car. “Matt say that word”, struggling I saw his mouth reform over and again, “fars” he said. Frustrated, but trying to calm she said “Okay, it takes practice you can’t try to hide or destroy your homework every time it get’s too hard, c makes the ka sound” At that moment, I realize my mom wasn’t going to let my brothers disability get in the way of him learning. It was weird to see her have to teach him different and that he didn’t learn the way most people did, I didn’t know why I even assumed he was supposed to learn like me.

People often define for themselves what is proficient literacy, but what is to one, isn’t the same to another. In most cases, figures of authority determine the definition of proficient literacy and hold every person learning from them to that specific standard. As, Mark Rose said, in ‘I just want to be average’,  “Students will float to the mark you set” which is true, like in the class he was mistakenly in the standard’s were set low, but if you set them high you’ll get someone willing to work. Setting individual goals of learning is more important than setting a set in stone mark for everyone, to reach at a certain time. My mothers definition of proficiency was different for my brother and I.  She knew the difference and she knew we couldn't learn the same.  My brother had set a low mark for himself, however my Mom set one way above what he thought was capable of, helping him float to the mark realizing a mark set was temporary and changeable.

Again, when the ‘students’ are expected to do the minimum by the ‘edler’, ‘wiser’ person people can become discouraged and Like in How to Tame a Wild Tongue. Gloria Anzaldua said “when not copping out we know that we are more than nothing.” Which took me back to the look on my brothers face a month after my mom pulled out that dictionary and word slipped and skidded off his tongue with ease, no fighting with the letters and vowels and I saw confidence. In this moment my brother knew what he was capable of more on literacy, he knew he could advance and understand if he tried. Self exploration with a push is important of the beginnings of literacy.

Sometimes, when we let the learner, reader, the student find and indulge in literacy themselves, we  allow for, that ‘proficiency’. Like in How Changing Your Reading Habits Can Transform Your Health stated, "We use challenges a lot in our work, because they give you something tangible to aim for and a sense of achievement once you’ve completed them. It can help you develop your skills, or help you discover something new," says Wilkinson; this goal setting system is an idea that can be in ones thoughts. However this is a self defined achievement, which has nothing to do with cultural capital, but every indivisual persons ambition and self defining proficient literacy.

Although figures of authority often decide on, what is the ‘standard’ for proficient literacy, it is important that once one begins to explore literacy in the simplest form. With time comes the understanding of code-switching and the belief of ‘cultural capital’ however with the fundamentals of literacy it is just a person testing the limits and floating to the marks the authoritative teaching figures set for the  learning students. As long as students can meet the glorious feeling of  being literate  they will crave full literacy and raise their previously sets of proficient literacy.