This annotation shows a portion of Madison’s narrative where she first describes how the Title 1 classes single the kids out.

In many schools there are programs that help the students who need to catch up a little a chance to learn what they need. The problem comes when these programs single out kids and make it known to everyone that the kids in it learn in a different way, or have trouble with small things. These programs that give students extra help, but not discretely, almost always end up with the student feeling like an outsider in their school, and with their friends. Alexander describes the idea of an outsider narrative as “Portrays self as an outsider in relation to something else in the story, such as literacy, pedagogy, other students, the school system, etc.” In this context an outsider is someone who writes about their literacy moment from the standing that they are different than everyone else, and specifically with this idea they were forced into being an outsider. In a literacy narrative I found by Madison Derosa she makes a point of explaining the specific program that she was put in for extra help called Title 1, and although helpful it led to her feeling like an outsider as Alexander describes above. She describes her first time in this program “All the title 1 kids all had the same paper books. Not a paperback either… They knew we weren’t as smart as them.” Alexander’s ideas of what an outsider narrative looks like helps to define what Madison felt being in this class. Although the class inevitably helped her, it made her feel lesser than her peers, and shunned by her school. In other words Alexander’s article helps to categorize Madison’s and helps to show what the full effect of this is as she shifts from a success story to a outsider.

This instance shows a very different scenario, but with the same results. We start with a class for smarter people, with the unintentional limitation of students who aren’t at that level. NOrmally people in these classes would be described a s child prodigies, but not everyone belongs in these classes. Alexander’s article has section that describes child prodigy narratives, which is what direction you expect programs like this to do, but students don’t always belong in harder classes, and once again become outsiders. He states that “The child prodigy narrative, the fourth most common cultural narrative, promotes the idea that unless children are exposed to school literacy and learn these values at an early age, they will not be academically successful.” What is being said here is that if children of a young age do not become exposed to normal school they will not be academically successful, but the problem is that being a prodigy does not always lead to success, and many times it leads to being more of an outsider. An instance such as above occurred in Dustin Tripp’s life when he was forced into a higher level english class even though he struggled in the regular class. Most of his class was placed in the higher level so he was carried with them. He describes how the class progressed, “I would always be the last to finish reading assignments in class and I wouldn’t get as much out of the readings as the other kids. Eventually I began skimming the assigned texts instead of reading them in full, which led to my further disengagement from reading.” In other words Alexander’s description of child prodigy, although accurate, can actually be a limiter in people’s lives. The class that Dustin was placed in was created to reinforce ideas already known and to further children who loved English, but for someone like Dustin who already wasn’t good at English it reinforced his ideas of being against reading at all.