My Literacy Narrative
Jenny Reid
ENGL 1100.46

I remember when I was around the age of seven or eight, I used to always see my mom reading. She would either be reading in the den, the living room, at the table, or in bed. Reading was what my mom did to pass time and to let go of reality. I was at the age where a lot of emphasis was being put on reading in school. I hated it. My third grade teacher, Mrs. H, made reading feel like complete torture. We had to read, and then we had to take Accelerated Reader tests to measure our comprehension of whatever book, article, or short story we were required to read. This was enough, not only to kill a child’s confidence in reading, but to make them dread reading because it was no longer for recreation. It was mandatory. Accelerated Reader tests always made me feel bad about myself because when I read I did not look for the specific details, which is exactly what the tests focused on. I would take the tests, and even if I loved the book, I could never score above a fifty percent. Reading was my one enemy that I could not escape. But, because of positive influences like my mom and teachers in school, English would actually be my career.

I used to go home every day from school and tell my mom how much I absolutely hated reading: "I hate this; I cannot read anything that I want to read!" My mom hated to hear me say this because reading was her passion and always had been. She cherished mystery novels, short stories, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, political science, and any other kind of literature she could put her hands on. Ever since she was nine or ten, reading was a way to forget and get lost in someone else’s world. She wanted me to be this way, and no one would have ever made me believe that her wish would actually have come true. One day, I came home from school, frustrated as usual, and my mom had a surprise for me. I walked in the door, and she was waiting for me at the table. She had one book in front of her, and one lying beside her. "Let’s read together", she said softly. I did not know how to respond. Surely my mom was not going to make me sit down and read when she knew I despised reading. But, I sat down and I read out loud to her, and she read to me. She read Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and I read Curious George. We sat at the table and read for hours.

My mom is a very intelligent woman, and her level of reading only illustrated this more. Most people would be surprised to know that she was not a career woman, but a housewife. She only got as far as the eighth grade in school, but no one would ever know that if she did not tell them. People might think that since she did not finish high school or go to college that is ignorant and she cannot not read, write, or analyze, but that is far from the truth. Her childhood was far from comfortable or rich, and the only thing she could do to forget about all this turmoil was to get lost in a book, a magazine, a comic book or anything else that focused on someone else’s life instead of her own. As I was growing up, she always said that she never wanted me to live the way she had or to hate school the way she did. This is one of the reasons I believe she wanted me to become so engrossed in books. One of her famous quotes that I always say to myself is, "The more you read, the more you know; the more you know, the farther you can go."

Every day after school when I got home, my mom would always be waiting for me with a book for her to read, and one for me to read. She always picked the funniest and most delightful stories she could find. After a while, I got to where I actually could not wait to get home to read with my mom. Every day I got to where I detested reading less and less. Maybe it was not as bad as my teacher made it sound. My mom continued this routine all the way up until I entered the sixth grade. Even though I was a little older, my mom and I still read together almost every night of the week. Reading became my passion just as it was my mom’s. I loved books. For me books and diamonds fell into the same category. In class I always huddled in the back reading a book, and at recess anyone could find me doing the same thing.

As I grew older, English because my best subject because of the influence my mom had. I loved to write, read, and interpret information. It stimulated my brain. Math, science, history, and other subjects like that did not come as easy for me as English did because I was so good at reading. I would sit in English class and think back and wonder how I could have hated books as much as I did throughout elementary school. I started writing my own stories after I began high school and really got involved in literature. I loved to write poems, even though I was never very talented in that area. My mom was also the one who taught me how to write short stories based on things I read and knowledge I already had.

When I was a freshman in high school, my confidence for writing and reading was almost killed again. I was taking Honors English with Mrs. B, and her class was pure agony. Her reading assignments were hard, her tests were even harder, and to top it off, her in-class activities were monotonous. I tried and tried in that class, and my grade for the first grading period was a seventy five. I was furious. At that moment, I felt like my dreams had been shattered. English had been my passion for so many years, and putting a harder level of it in front of me was like taking a knife through the back. If I could not do English, I did not know what I could do. I went home from school with my seventy five and my mom once again, helped me realize that English was in fact my excitement and that a grade could not determine what I was or was not good at. From then on, I did not let anyone or anything discourage me from my love of reading and writing. If an English class was hard, I just welcomed the challenge.

When I became a junior in high school, I really became involved in upper level books. My all-time favorite novel, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, was what we concentrated on when I was in eleventh grade. This novel was so amazing and just increased my joy of reading further. The following year, I took Advanced Placement English, and this topped all English classes that I had taken or ever could take. This class was so in depth with reading, writing, analyzing, and interpreting novels, short stories, poems, and all other types of existing literature. My English teacher, Mrs. P, is who truly pushed me into studying English. I remember on the first day of class she said, "If you hate reading or writing you need to transfer out of this class." I did like English, but I never really thought of making it my career.

I watched Mrs. P throughout the period of time I was in her class and saw how much she truly enjoyed teaching a classroom-full of students the fundamentals of English. She reminded me of my mom when she got so enthusiastic and passionate about what she was reading. She assigned papers on fascinating topics and reading that was enjoyable. By using humor as she taught, she kept the attention of the students who so obviously hated her class. One of my favorite novels in her class was The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer. Her project for this was not a boring research paper, but a scrapbook with any kind of creativity we wanted to use. The big project for the semester was a seven page research paper that was fifty percent of our final grade. Everyone in the class dreaded this paper, but I absolutely could not wait to get started on it. I spent a month researching and typing and retyping until I got it perfect. The book I wrote it on was Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which is a poem by an unknown author. This story was remarkable. I was disappointed that it was only the research paper we had to write.

Mrs. P, as well as my mom, had a huge impact on my choice of careers. I knew half-way through the semester of my senior year that I was going to college and study Secondary English Education. I had such a passion for this subject that I could have. I felt that if students hated English as much as I used to, then I could help them overcome this and let them realize what I realized. I found that reading was not all about boring information and facts, but that it could be humorous, touching, and could even help me work out problems that I faced with my own life. If anyone did not know how to read or write, I would teach them. I would not be like Mrs. H and torment students with literature that has no meaning or force them to take Accelerated Reader tests to lower their confidence.

Writing is what I do when I want to get my thoughts down and not have to hold anything back. Reading is what I do when I want escape out of my own world into someone else’s world. A person would find it hard to get bored with either of these choices. Reading and writing has had an obvious impact on my life because I have chosen to make it my career. When I was in the third grade, becoming an English teacher was the last thing I thought I would be doing because of my hatred for reading. If my mom had no impact on me at all, it would be obvious because Secondary English Education and would not be my concentration. Maybe if I had not had Mrs. H as my third grade teacher I would have never hated English and I would have always had a love for it like my mother and other English teachers throughout my school years. The negative experience I had as a student caused me to appreciate the positive and made me want even more to be a great teacher whose passion for English can prevent my students from hating it and maybe even help them love it the way I do.