Completing Literacy Is More Than Reading taught me almost as much through the process of creating it as through writing the narrative itself.
Looking back at the project, two lessons stand out most clearly. I also see two things I would approach differently if I were starting again.
01. I Learned That Visuals Can Make the Argument
The first thing I learned is that multimodal elements do not have to be illustrations of something I have already explained in words. They can actually make part of the argument.
When I started the Literacy Narrative, I still thought of the written essay as the main product and the visual elements as something that would support it. That changed as the project developed. Figure 1 became a way to show the progression of my understanding of literacy from words, to stories, to context, to curation, and finally to words, images, and design. Figure 3 made another part of the argument visible by showing several viewpoints narrowing into one repeated perspective, which represented the effect of algorithmic filtering.
That changed the way I think about multimodal composition. The visuals stopped feeling like things I was adding to the essay and started feeling like another way of writing it.
02. I Learned That My Definition of Literacy Was Still Changing
The second thing I learned was more personal. I began the assignment thinking I was simply tracing how my literacy had changed over time, but I discovered that one of my earliest assumptions about reading was still influencing me.
As a child, I associated being a strong reader with reading harder books. I carried that belief much further into adulthood than I realized. My first reaction to graphic-novel adaptations of books I loved as a child was that they were somehow less sophisticated because they contained fewer words and more pictures.
Working through that reaction changed the way I understood the assignment. Studying how readers construct meaning through words, images, panels, gutters, sequence, and layout made me reconsider what I had been calling “advanced” reading. I learned that different forms of reading require different kinds of interpretation, and different does not necessarily mean easier or less literate.
What I Would Do Differently
If I were starting the Literacy Narrative again, the first thing I would do differently is plan the visual argument earlier.
Some of my strongest visual ideas developed during revision, after much of the prose had already taken shape. If I approached the project again, I would think about the written and visual elements together from the beginning. I would ask earlier: What needs to be explained in words, and what could another mode communicate more effectively?
I think that would make the relationship between the modes even more intentional and would reduce the feeling of designing after the writing was already finished.
The second thing I would do differently is challenge my own assumptions earlier in the process.
At first, I focused mostly on documenting how literacy had changed around me: books became online communication, social platforms became algorithmic feeds, and texts became increasingly multimodal. The more interesting discovery was realizing how some of my own beliefs about reading had stayed the same.
If I had questioned those assumptions earlier, I think I would have reached the graphic-novel insight sooner and allowed that idea to shape more of the narrative from the beginning.
Looking Back
The biggest lesson I am taking from the Literacy Narrative is that reflection is not only about looking backward at what happened. It is also about noticing what you still believe, questioning why you believe it, and recognizing when the process of creating something changes your understanding of the subject itself.
The assignment began with me thinking about what literacy used to mean to me. It ended with me reconsidering what literacy means now.