Literacy+Autobiography

 Literacy Autobiography  ELD 308  Beginning at a young age, my mother focused on my education by singing the alphabet to me and reading me stories each night before bed. I remember filling my days at home with playing school and practicing writing my letters on our giant chalkboard. I feel like the early exposure to literature has created a lasting love of literature in me, even though my motivation was less than strong at times through school.   When I turned four, my little brother was born. I loved books and once I was able to read I let him be my audience. When our mother read to us, our favorite books were Dr. Seuss and Brer Bear (Disney) because she would do silly voices for each character.

 The only literacy activities I remember from Elementary School were writing little story books and hearing interactive read alouds. My favorite teacher, in third grade, would read to us every day after lunch. When she read chapter books, I found myself inspired to read chapter books because she read with such character and emphasis. The long stories were interesting, and I loved going back to the adventure each day.

 My love of reading continued until about fifth grade. I loved reading __Hatchet__ because my teacher developed lessons that were very interactive, and exposed us to the depths of reading a novel. We explored all of the details, and I can still remember reading the book today.

 Once I began the transition into middle school, the teachers lost me. I had no desire to read over the summer, and I would often pretend to read the books that I was given. Somehow I still received good grades without reading, so I became one of the great pretenders of reading. When high school came around, it was easier to read SparkNotes or to just stay quiet during reading discussions. I am not sure when this unenthusiastic relationship with reading began, but I was able to get by with my methods of avoiding reading. The only books that I can remember reading in high school were __The Bell Jar__ and __The Great Gatsby__, but I mostly only enjoyed reading magazines and newspapers. I liked the 2 books that I did read, but it makes me dissappointed that I cannot remember much from high school other than that.

 In September of 2007, I arrived at college. My negative attitude continued until I had my first theater class in Summer 2009. The theater class required us to read three plays. Since it was the summertime and I had some free time, I took a chance and began to read the play. I had never read a play before, but I was immediately in love! It was an adventure! I wanted to just read more and more plays. I finally became passionate about reading! In addition to reading plays, I became more passionate about reading things that pertained to what I love to do. I began reading more articles about theater, education and the psychology of children. I am very happy that reading plays helped lift my fear of reading. I think that if I hadn’t discovered that reading can be fun and easy, I would still not have any interest in reading anything. However, I now love to read, and find it interesting when I read important things about education. When we need to read for ELD classes, I love reading more than I have to. I enjoy having choice in what I read because if I am pressured to do something, or read something, I feel frustrated and overwhelmed. So, in addition, the flexibility and choice we get for reading has only improved my relationship with reading.

 My literary journey began positive, turned negative then came full circle back to positive. Now that I have come around to develop a better attitude towards reading, I feel proud and confident that I will learn how to foster a good relationship between my students and their reading and writing skills.