I would like to be able to say that I can remember the first time I was learning to read, unfortunately, my memory is not all that great. Although, I can recall a few of my early memories where l was read my favorite childhood stories on my mother’s lap. These stories included The Hungry Caterpillar, The Cat in the Hat, Corduroy, Goodnight Moon, and many more magic-filled, colorfully-illustrated books. As I snuggled into my mother’s arms and listened to her angelic voice, i focused on the pictures within the books and my imagination combined with her story-telling talent, gave them life. As for learning how to write, I remember having exercises given to me in school where letters were not completely written out, but rather dotted so that I had to follow the dots, connect them, and create the letters myself. That was when the idea of writing had become more of a concrete idea, though. Before writing actual letters, I loved to draw.
At home, we had this giant roll of paper that we would roll out onto the hardwood floor. This paper would sometimes be rolled out from one end of the house to the other and I felt as if there was literally no end to my drawings (or writings), since the paper continued to roll out more space for me to draw on. I would lay on the floor and draw for what seemed like hours, documenting the stories I made up in my mind or events that had happened throughout the day that I wanted to ”write” down. These early reading and “writing” experiences had a vew positive impact on me which caused me to be excited for more practice within school! At first, I do remember being frustrated with my inability to write certain letters or read certain words. I had a speech impediment where I could not pronounce my R’s, L’s D’s, or W’s very well: this caused me to not enjoy reading certain words out loud.
However, I did my best to overcome those speech obstacles and grew to thoroughly love both reading out loud and in my mind. I thought it sounded nice when I could read with expression, just like my mom did. I also felt extremely proud of myself for being able to finally read, and read pretty well for my age! I grew up in a Spanish Immersion program, so half of the day I learned everything in Spanish. l was very motivated to read and write in Spanish as well because in second grade my teacher put me in the “advanced readers” group and said I had “a great Spanish accent”! This strengthened my confidence even more. As my reading ability increased, | not only learned how to spell better but also learned new vocabulaw. I started to feel “like a grown-up” and wanted to write my own books!
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As l was fascinated with horses at the time, logically, I wrote my first book, by hand, about a horse named Cherry. Some words were misspelled and some sentences did not make sense, however my parents still read it back to me and I had not felt a greater sense of satisfaction until that point of my life! I continued to increase my reading and writing skills due to that enormous amount of positive reinforcement my parents gave me. | read a lot of “Magic Tree House” books because they were relatively easy for me to read, I learned about history (which made me feel ”smarter”), and there weren’t as many pictures as most children’s books (which made me feel more “grown-up”). These books gave me the idea of writing more “made-up” stories instead of recounting simply events that had happened to me or friends throughout the week. I grew to truly love writing and began even keeping my own journal.
That is a text that really allowed me to learn how to express myself better, as well as balance and analyze my emotions. I used to have a very short temper and fight with my sisters a lot. I would write in my journal about what had happened, how it made me feel, and then I would feel calmed down enough to go apologize to my sisters. Writing became beautiful to me because I connected it to relief, peace, clarity, and excitement! Reading became exhilarating and I chased after bigger books, once I had enhanced my reading skills more; by fifth grade l was reading the whole Harry Potter series. I loved the smell of those books and always anxiously waited for the moment to get tucked in at night so I could read before falling asleep. In my fifth grade class, there was a reading nook draped with paper trees, vines and leaves.
Stuffed animal monkeys hung from them as well and bean-bag chairs covered the ground. Books surrounded the area and it became a place of solace and excitement for me! Once I got into middle school, i began to dislike reading more and only like free-writing assignments. I did not like that | now had to search for information in what I was reading and write about the information rather than make up my own stories and simply read for fun. It was a hard transition to make and caused my love for reading to decrease a lot over the next several years of my life. I still enjoyed writing because [could still go home and de-stress by writing in my journal. In high school, “reading and comprehension” was my lowest-scoring section of tests. I began to accept that fact as truth and made no effort to try to overcome it.
However, I took pride in my writing and considered myself to be very good at writing. During these years, I continued in the Spanish Immersion program and had a few core classes in Spanish, one of these being American History. I loved history, but I became discouraged about the fact that l was learning the history of my country in a different language. 1 therefore did not know the correct terminology in English and was not able to relate to other peers very well in that crucial school subject. Because of this, my interest in reading declined even more and | merely skimmed over the readings to get the ’gist’ of each lesson. Now that l have reflected on my experiences with reading and writing, I understand better the habits I have now academically.
In the first few semesters of college, I did not put in a full effort into reading everything assigned before class or tests because I saw it as a task. This is the first semester where I have genuinely wanted to do all of the readings for my classes, take notes, and truly understand the concepts presented within them. I still am not too fond of reading unless I enjoy the topic; I do not usually read for leisure either. However, I do religiously keep multiple journals because I continue to love writing and expressing myself. lam still working towards reading faster than I do currently and having more interest in reading since that desire has disappeared for so long.
I see literacy as a necessity in the life of every human being. I also understand that in order for people to become literate, it is crucial that they have positive experiences while in the process of developing their literacy. I grew to love writing because of having such positive experiences with that literacy skill. Had I undergone more positive experiences with reading, I probably would enjoy reading more than I do now as well as have the ability to read faster and comprehend what I am reading about with more ease. In order for students to magnify and increase their literacy, they must feel love, nurture. and freedom while learning such skills.
