Bud-Not Buddy Analysis

In “Sponsors of Literacy,” author Deborah Brandt attempts to explain literacy, its history, and how there are influences that form the way we learn and practice literacy. Brandt argues that the forces that influence an individual’s literacy are sponsors of literacy. Some “forces” that Brandt discusses are influential people, such as parents, siblings, teachers, and mentors. Other forces can include culture, race, gender, language and location, access to technology, and politics. Brandt described several events in our history to help define what exactly a sponsor of literacy is. She spent several years interviewing people from all walks of life to find their unique literacy history and used them as examples in her writing. Varying ages, backgrounds, and sponsors indicate that literacy changes with each generation and is viewed as a valued commodity.

Literacy has the power to transform us. By reading we learn new things and we are more likely to express ourselves to others. We can understand another’s language, other cultures, and know the way others way of thought.

Classrooms are becoming more diverse than they were several decades ago because so many people are migrating from their country of origin to seek for better living opportunities, in search of a safe place and because the United States of America is a super power. Therefore political, economic, and social-cultural reasons are the causes of migration which results in families remaining in the country causing classrooms today to be more diverse than they were decades ago thereby rapidly changing the demography of the United States and its classroom (Vacca et al, 2014, p. 62). To confirm this point for instance, at my school, there are a total of 354 students and the percentage of Hispanics: 41.5%, Blacks: 40.1%, Whites: 13.6%, Multicultural: 3.7%, other: 1.2%, Asians: 0.9%. Students from these different cultural backgrounds have different values, attitudes and experiences.

Literacy plays a huge role in my daily life. Every single day I read and write. Whether it’s writing an email or reading a text message, class assignment, discussion board, etc. My literacy journey is unique because I have had different experiences. As a result, this is how my literacy journey has let me to be the reader that I am.

Set during the Great Depression, Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curits is a award-winning novel about an on-the-run orphan’s quest to find his “real father”. Through an analysis of this text using the Council of Chief State School Officers’ text complexity rubric, I have concluded that this text is easy of students to swallow but difficult to digest (cite the rubric; see Appendix A). By this, I mean that the text itself is not difficult to read or to understand on the surface; however, in order to understand the richness of the text, students must have access to a wide variety of cultural and historical background knowledge of the Great Depression, as well as the ability to decode abstract and figurative language. I came to this conclusion

Literacy is a wide known understanding, used in all aspects of society. Anywhere you go, the stage of your literacy in given situations is tested. Literacy ranges in places like the home, at work, teams, and so much more. When asked to interview someone, and dive into the aspect of their literacy of a given community, I instantly knew what I wanted to do. I recently joined the sisterhood of Pi Beta Phi, and even more recently was given a “Big Sister”, that I will now have as a part of my life, forever. Her name is Hailey Thomsen, and she is a junior at the University of Central Florida, and was the perfect person to interview for this project.

Bud not Buddy is written in a perspective by a ten-year-old named Bud. Throughout the story Bud faced challenges of his own. Bud was adopted and beat up by a twelve-year-old named Todd. Bud ran away to find his dad. The whole story Bud is trying to go find his dad but he has gone through some challenges to get to him.

Bud, not Buddy was written by christopher Paul Copyright 2012 by Eva Kolenko with 236 pages. Bud, Not Buddy is the story of a ten-year-old African American boy named Bud Caldwell and his quest to find his father during the Great Depression. Bud and other orphaned children wait to be placed into foster care. Bud was sent to different foster home and was treated unfairly. Bud has just been placed with the Amoses, his third foster family.

Literacy comes in all different shapes and sizes, and is not always something as simple as a book or literary element. In my case, I consider my high school, Council Rock High School South, to be a very large literacy sponsor for me. I was lucky to have grown up in a middle-to-high class area with a great education system in place. Although Council Rock had great funding and personnel, I did not consider the level of education that I received to be the staple of my literacy. When it came to literacy, there were different types of students who revolved around me during my four years of high school: the overachievers, the underachievers, and the average achievers. The crowd which I associated myself with were the average students and the overachieving students. To myself these groups of people, agreement with a mentor named Malcolm X is very pertinent: “Where else but in a prison could I have attacked my ignorance by being able to study intensely sometimes as much as fifteen hours a day” (X 116). Because of the harshness of some courses, my fellow students and I sometimes felt trapped in the building until the end of the school day.

The students that I observe are all diverse in many ways, which play into their educational development. To begin, there are certain classes that are predominately white, and some that are predominately black. I have noticed that there is never an in-between, and that there is a few Hispanic students thrown into

This is happening again! I wish that Buds mother wouldn´t like she did in chapter 1 of Bud, Not Buddy, Bud wouldn´t go hungry, and they might´ve been poor/broke. I wish that Buds mother wouldn´t die because, he wouldn´t have had to go out and look for his dad because he was already staying with his mother. Also, he wouldn´t be hungry because he was staying with his mother and he could go to school and eat. If Buds mother would have been poor/broke then they both would be looking for Buds dad. Bud Not Buddy is about a ten year old boy named Bud. His mother died when he was just six years old.

Bud Not Buddy and Red Scarf Girl, are two very deep, provocative stories that describe two different, but in some ways similar living conditions of two different children in different time periods. I noticed that both Bud and Ji Li Jiang have conflicts with society, and themselves. Bud has conflicts with the racist society in which he lives in, in Flint Michigan. After becoming an orphan at age 6, he lives in an orphanage. Later at a harsh family’s home, after feeling fed up and tired of the nonsense that they give him he runs away, only after he is stung repeatedly by hornets and is forced to break out of an old shed. Through his journey to find his father, an elusive figure that he knows only exists through an old flyer from his mother, he

The fourth element of my philosophy of literacy education is the importance of teaching literacy through bringing relevance, to establish a deep link between the students and the content. My student population is comprised of an array of diverse backgrounds, all coming together in my classroom. Literacy achievement of students of diverse backgrounds can be strengthened by moving from a mainstream orientation to a more diverse orientation, giving greater consideration to issues of ethnicity, primary language, and social class (Au, 1998). Themes in constructivist work encourage creating relevant learning experiences for students as a central part of literacy acquisition, including

Some may say that America has a racist and stereotypical society; nevertheless, America is actually becoming a more diverse and tolerant society due to our integrated culture and America’s recognition of this new society. Our projected trend of population supports the idea that America has become a melting pot, where a minority becomes a

Our view of literacy needs to be critically examined rather than accepted unquestioningly. As Tobin et al, (1989) so fascinatingly demonstrates, our values affect our curriculum and our judgements of children (Marsh et al, 2008, p.24). A need to bring an internal change is necessary for people to live well in an environmentally responsible society which builds a