[musical introduction] Obama: It's been a long time coming. But tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment--change has come to America. Female narrator: The word I chose is change: a change in scenery, in environment, even in the people around you. This change may bring about uncomfortableness, but with change comes incredible growth. When one can stay confined to the mundane, it's best to take a chance instead. Overstep your individual boundaries and limitations, and have the courage to seek change. Male interviewee: The literacy experience I remember the most are the ones where there was risk involved, and, you know, I remember fifth grade, because that's when I came to the U.S. I was in fifth grade, moved into fifth grade, and it was in the middle of the year. It was February, in fact, it was close to Valentine's Day, which is not something I know, and so suddenly the cultural change that I experienced required a lot of having to figure things out but not in a public way. I wanted to pass. But I remember early on getting in the mail one of those award letters--you've won a million dollars--which again was a whole new genre for me and my family. So I got that in the mail and thought, "Oh my god, we actually won this thing!" So there's a lot of this sense of vulnerability that literacy has. It's reading that text and not understanding what its function is. So yeah, I was an outsider and marked in that way and so it was very--I've always-- it's important to me to find ways to fit in so that I don't seem like an outsider. Now that has changed over time, but as I get older I think I'm much more proud of my cultural background, but early on I wanted nothing to do with it, to identify, so literacy was an effort to erase and fit in and reduce the risk of being marked as an outsider. Female narrator: I selected the word change because the most influential aspects of my life that have truly imprinted my literacy are times that I've been exposed to different environments and people. In 2013, I traveled to Israel on a free trip, not having any expectations of what was to come. However, even though I didn't have a religious background I was really imprinted by the Israeli culture and by the Israeli soldiers who assisted us on the trip. I gained an incredible interest in reading about what was going on in the Middle East as well as writing my own stories that were influenced by their culture and their country. Traveling to Israel really gave me an incredible perspective of the media and the literacy that they portray to viewers and readers. Situations are often described in ways that they were not actually like, and I became a reader who is more informed and more interested in finding out the different perceptions of the situations that did occur. From being in the Middle East, which is such a chaotic area of our world, I really realized that there are many minority groups and individuals who don't have a voice, like the voices that we have here that can be so openly heard. And literacy has truly given them the ability to express their feelings. Realizing this has made me more open to sharing the stories and works that I've created myself, and I am definitely more open to sharing other pieces that I find online or within books to my friends and family, who I really cherish Male interviewee: Real impact in literacy is when I got to high school, I basically had a cumulative GPA of 0.8 going to high school and just didn't really focus like I should've, but then between my junior and senior year I went to summer school and I took an English class. And with this English class during the whole summer, I wanted to be able to achieve getting a good grade, because I had a professor or a teacher before that told me I would achieve nothing. And she told me I was bad at literature skills and everything, and I knew I wasn't. So that motivated me to basically not only to see the light, but kind of prove to her that I'm not what she thought--that she shouldn't have judged me. Basically I went back to high school my senior year. I had to make up 10 different classes from my junior, sophomore, and freshman year from failing them. I took what was called credit recovery, and actually passed basically all my English classes except one in my junior year with the teacher that doubted me. So when I went to my senior year, I focused myself on reading. I did a lot of reading, I did a lot of writings, I actually wrote a speech, the first speech I wrote, it's called "How Can We Change?"