My Literacy Journey

I have very few recollections of my early years and the exact age I was able to read and write. Some of my earliest memories are vague on the topic of my literacy. However, I do remember small memories, such as, learning how to write my name in cursive, winning prizes for reading, and crying over every assigned high school essay. Over the last twelve years my literacy grew rapidly with the help of teachers, large school libraries, my family, and so on. There is always room for my literacy skills to grow, but my family’s help and positive attitude towards my education, the school systems I have been a part of, and the horrible required essays from high school helped obtain the level, skills, habits, and processes that I use as part of my literacy

today.
I was raised up in a family that loved to read and write, like my sister who published a children’s book while she was in just middle school; she also wrote other stories that were loved my her teachers. My parents have continually pushed me and my siblings to read above our grade levels, study writing during the summer, and never listen to when other kids or adult titled us as “stupid”. This positive drive surely aided when I was little and even endures on today.
The positive push when I was little made me want to be the very best in my class and a little bit of a show off. My earliest memory of learning to read or write goes all the way back to when I was around seven years old, and in elementary school on a military base. At the school, there was a reading system called Accelerated Reader, which principally made students read a book, take a test over it and earn very little points from it. And, having grown up with three siblings and my parent’s positive outlook towards learning, I saw the Accelerated Reader as a contest to prove that I can do well. My want to read and motivation came from wanting to read all of the “Berenstain Bears” and “Captain Underpants”, just to brag about to the other kids in my grade. This competitive sensation created a want to read any and every book recommended to earn the most points in the first grade. The library at my elementary school, Marshall Elementary School, had a limited amount of books that were intriguing enough for my little eager mind, thus I moved on to the second grade level and third grade level. Naturally, the higher I went in grade levels the more assistance I needed to understand words. Before I even knew how to properly understand what exactly a dictionary was, I always went to the librarians or homeroom teacher for word pronunciation and meaning. This is when I was able to develop my vocabulary, spelling skills, and increase my Accelerated Reader points. My first grade class was where I started writing for the first time as well. I remember copying and practicing the pronunciation of each letter as well as writing in cursive. After moving elementary schools and states, my motivation for reading decreased dramatically. I still read books above or at my level, but not as much compared to my previous school. In my new elementary schools, because the military required my family to move twice, I did not have the chance to get to know my teachers and librarians enough to extend my literacy as rapidly as I did in my first elementary school. Moving often, during elementary and middle school, left myself discouraged to read or write because I always felt out of place and people in my new school did not like reading as much as I did, therefore I tried to fit in with the group. Nonetheless, I knew I could not just give up on my writing and reading skills.
As I constantly grew my vocabulary skills, from what slight motivation I had, I was also able to learn how to write a majority of the new words I was learning. Though, in elementary school there were not many writing assignments (other than the few times I was kept from recess and had to copy a whole page from the dictionary). The writing part of my literacy did not genuinely improve until middle school.
In the first middle school I attended, sixth grade was the first time I ever encountered the struggle of formal writing.

As for what majority the prompts were, I cannot recall, however there were simple prompts. On the other hand, I do recall reading and having to write a page after each chapter of the books from the Hazelwood High Trilogy by Sharon Draper. As it was the first time I had ever had a formal writing assignment, I had writer’s block for a majority of sixth grade year. It was not until seventh grade when I was actually capable to write with limited restrictions. In seventh grade, my writing skills started to increase. I had more complicated assignments, and my new homeroom/English teacher (which I still think hated me deep down inside), essentially made reading dull but writing enjoyable. My teacher would make us read stories from the textbook and over analyze the text, which was where my love for reading began to dwindle. On the other hand, I started to like writing and the fun, easy prompts the class was given. The prompts were easy to write about and allowed me to make creative stories without numerous difficulties (before I actually learned the rules for formal writing). It was not until eighth grade when I finally began to learn the proper structure of a sentence, grammar, subject-verb agreement, and the restricting formal rules of writing. Although, I fell asleep majority of my 8th grade English classes, I was able to still able to learn somewhat from the

class about writing, but it was very little. My literacy skills did increase in middle school, but not as much as it did during high school.
High school, for me, was where my literacy made an enormous leap to an improved state. My reading and writing skills were not pushed in middle and elementary school. In the school system, it was mandatory for the teachers to keep every student’s writing throughout the years up to graduation. The majority of my papers was lost when moving from different states, however by the end of my senior year, I had many papers that showed the transitions of my writing and skills.
Freshman year of high school caused an excessive amount of pressure to do well.

In my English class, I wanted to do well and ultimately became competitive to be the top student. I would read several passages, plays, and books through the year and at all times write as much as I could for the essays. My overall goal was to prepare for the ACT during junior year and earn “Advanced” score on my EOC/Benchmark scores. Hence, any writing techniques I could learn from my teachers, I would. I learned a majority of my writing skills and techniques in my sophomore and junior honors English classes. During my sophomore year, it was the first time I was in an honors course and it challenged me with writing even more. The summer assignment for the class was reading the book “A Separate Piece” by John Knowles and to complete and A, B, C of literacy techniques and elements, which was simple enough. While beginning the assignment, there was what appeared like a heap of unknown and new words, which left to question if the class was for me. By the end of that one assignment, I learned several new literacy elements and techniques that I would go on to enhance my writing as well as add new vocabulary to my everyday conversations and papers. My sophomore year also required a good amount of writing for state standardized tests. In my Honors English II course, for a certain score on the standardized tests, the student would receive extra credit points for class. Parallel to when I was in

elementary school, I became competitive to acquire the highest scores as well as the most extra credit points. This motivation forwarded me to learn the sentence structure that I did not find necessary from in middle school. I finished Honors English II on a confident note and moved on to Honors English III in my junior year. My junior year English class was more thought-provoking than my previous English classes combined. My new teacher always had the highest scores in the Montgomery County in English and Writing, so she desired for all her classes to do the best. Honors English III class was where I began to like reading again, but it would never be as it was in elementary school. The passages and stories read in the class were more interesting, for instance The Great Gatsby is one of my beloved books from the school year, but not the movie. My English III teacher was the one who actually taught me writing techniques such as thinking of the audience when writing, more transition words, and how to enhanced writing in my own voice. My senior year Honors English class was split into two different teachers, one teacher each semester, for the reason that my school system disliked how my first teacher taught the class. But both teachers did teach additional writing techniques I was unfamiliar with. My second semester teacher, Mrs. Baron, was the teacher who made reading pleasant again. The approach that she took to reading in class created an entertaining environment with reading in some way, made me like reading certain books again. As the semester went by the passages and books we read were all interesting to me, except the poems (but, I have always disliked poems). At the end of my senior year, we had a mandatory essay in order for us to graduate, I remember the topic was “Current issues in the media”, and I wrote about body shaming and false and unrealistic body image in the media. That was the first time I ever had to create note cards for my sources, and cited everything I used properly in the essay and bibliography. By the end of my senior year, I had a decent amount of knowledge on how to write and what I needed to do to become an improved writer.
After elementary school, I knew how to read and write simple sentences. At the end of middle school, I knew how to write stories, 2-5 standard paragraphs and how to over analyze a simple story. By the time of high school graduation, I was able to put all I learn previously together and type 2-5 paged papers, read multiple books at once and understand them, format a paper MLA style and much more. And even now, while currently in college, I am reading more than ever within the first three weeks. Currently, I like to read, but I do not have the attention span to read, reading one book may take I personally longer to read that a normal college student. I prefer to read books that have movies to go with them, so I can compare and contrast the two as well as put a picture to the words. As for writing, I like writing, there are rare days that I cannot write anything at all, but it is fun to type and write different papers. All of these stages of my school years have helped my literacy grow further and further than I could imagine, but my parents, teachers, librarians could.