Against the Odds: Literacy Sponsorship in One Migrant Student’s Trajectory to College

Abstract

Ivan (pseudonym), the son of Mexican migrant farmworkers, rarely spent more than six months in the same school and by high school was still classified as an English language learner. This article traces Ivan's experiences as a language learner and writer, telling his story in his own words through his writing and ethnographic data collected during his junior year of high school and his first year of college. I examine how literacy sponsors (Brandt, 2001) helped or impeded his reading and writing as he worked to change his life. Through Ivan's writing and oral reflections, I argue that rather than solely supporting their reading and writing development, literacy sponsors for immigrant second language writers support learners as a whole. Central to Ivan's evaluation of his literacy sponsors is the role of caring relationships-or lack thereof-that endured longer than the technical literacy skills he learned from any one sponsor. _______________ IVAN'S NARRATIVE OF "CHANGE" "Ivan go outside and take out the trash." My mom said. "I'm not taking nothing outside. I'm going with my friends to hang out. Bye." "Ivan, come back or I'm going to call your dad." "I don't care." She slammed the door and I went outside. A few years ago I was doing very bad. My life was on the wrong track. I was in a gang and I was also using drugs. I was very disobedient to my parents and very irresponsible. I didn't care about school or my life in general. However, later on, something happen that made me change the way I look at life. Before my attitude change I was with the wrong crowd. I was part of a gang fighting for insignificant things, like colors. The color that I was wearing was blue. Last year four of my friends and me were going to the store and a black car parked outside the store. Four guy came out the car wearing red that color was the color we hated. One of my friends said, "hey you norputa what are you looking at." The other guy star hitting my friend so we jump in and it was all against all. After 3 minutes passed somebody called the police and we ran to one of my friends house. When we got there we started drinking beer and at night I went home. I didn't care about the trouble I was getting into. One day in school I got into a fight just because the other guy was staring at me. The security took me to the office. In the vice principal office were two guy with a bag that say gang unit. They took me to the office and I was introduce to a gang unit officer. He told me "[Ivan] what are you think with that personality you are going to ruin your life. Here is my card call me anytime." The next day I call him and we were talking. He told me, "Theres people who do stupid thing and go to prison for live. I just had a case were a 14 year old boy went to prison for life." That really got me scared and