My History of Literacy

            I am the youngest of four children. I remember many a day watching my siblings leave for school and yearning to follow them. I also remember the first day of school. There were kids all around me crying and holding on to their parents. I remember thinking, “What’s going on? Don’t they know we're in Kindergarten?” By the end of the year we had spelling tests. Well, really it was letter tests, but they were called spelling tests and I loved taking them. I don’t remember much about learning to read during that year, but I do remember the summer between Kinder and First grade and wanting to read a book before school started back up.

            The book was Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss. Every day I asked my mom to read it to me, and every day I practiced the sounds. I actually remember making connections to the rhyming words. Finally the day came when I was able to read the book on my own, without any help. Now looking back on it, I’m not sure how much I memorized versus how much I actually read, but I do remember how proud I was for finishing the book all by myself. This sprung me into wanting to be the best in every way academically. I was at the top of my first grade class, but then we moved.

            It was February, new class, new classmates. I remember being confident going in. I was a reserved child, but not afraid. This school was behind my previous school and the teacher let me sit and read a lot that first week. Apparently that made one particular child jealous. The beginning of week two, I was searching for a new book to read when I came across a book in which all of its pages had been torn out. I took it to the teacher. I returned to the book shelf, found a book and sat down at my side of a dual desk. There in my cubby were all the torn pages from that book. When I took it to the teacher, she looked at me with a very disapproving glare. She demanded I admit to tearing up the book. I insisted I hadn’t but she refused to believe me. After that, kids made fun of me, I never felt as if teachers liked me, and I could care less about being in school.

            My family had the complete Nancy Drew series, and I love mysteries. But as much as I wanted to read the books, I just never got very far. I preferred making up my own mysteries outside on our farm or in the woods. Books had become very unimportant to me. Even after I grew up and had children of my own, reading was not a big interest to me. It wasn’t until my oldest daughter began reading that I began to understand the importance of reading. I pushed past my own feelings and began reading every night to my children.

            For one year I was a Librarian Assistant for an elementary school. The librarian had to preview all of the new chapter books before they could be shelved. This became one of my jobs, too. All of the sudden I was being sucked into this wonderful world I had forgotten existed. I began promoting books to students that I loved. I was able to help student find just the book they would like and many times the students and I would stop to talk about them. This also made it easy to know just the right book to report on or read to students for some of my college class projects.

            I believe negative experiences can damper a child’s interest in learning. Therefore, being a teacher for all children not just a selected few is crucial to a positive learning environment. We must approach each child as a unique individual so as to build their confidence and lead them to find their path to the wonderful world of reading.

For now I am consumed with college work. I do, however, have a list of books I plan on reading and blogs to follow after I graduate in December. My excitement for reading has returned. As a teaching assistant, I love promoting reading to my student and I look forward to instilling a love of reading to my future students, as well.