Literacy Behind Bars - Annotated Bibliography

This selection is about how a man in jail was able to teach himself to become more literate than ever.  When Malcolm X was in prison, he chose to constantly read and copy the dictionary to gain knowledge.  It's as simple as that.  He began copying pages of the dictionary at a time.  Malcolm would also stay up all night reading, but making sure the guards at the prison didn't see him as they passed by his cell every hour.  He refers to his education as "homemade".  Now he takes a book with him everywhere.


X, Malcolm. "Literacy Behind Bars." Norton Field Guide to Writing. 2nd ed. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 2010. Print.

Mother Tongue - Annotated Bibliography

Amy Tan explains the different types of "Englishes".  Includes information about people using different dialects yet still being literate.  The majority of the reading is about how her mother had a terrible Chinese accent and how people treated her differently because of it.  One incident happened at a hospital.  Her mother went in to get results for a CAT scan and spoke in perfect English.  The hospital still treated her poorly after they told her they had lost her results.  She had to call her daughter, Amy, and have her speak with the hospital employees in order to get an apology.  After telling about her mothers' encounters, Amy writes about her personal experiences with language and what she had to do to improve her reading and writing skills. 


Tan, Amy. "Mother Tongue." Norton Field Guide to Writing. 2nd ed. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and    Company, 2010. Print.

"the secret of Education lies in respecting the pupil"

I was in an 8th grade science class and we had to do this big weather project that took no less than a week to do complete the entire assignment.  The teacher said that we had to present the entire project to the class in a 10 minute speech.  I lost 20% on the test because I made a note card to do my speech off of.  I guess we weren't allowed to use one and all of the information was supposed to be on a poster.  That was one of the hardest classes to recover from because everything after that wasn't any easier.  You could call it a lack of respect for the student of a lack of information given.  Either way it was a lose-lose situation.  The funny thing about the teacher is that she taught me how to run the hurdles very well.  I think that's the only reason she liked me at all.  It was a mind game that got old really quick.