Assignment 3: Literacy Biography

I have always loved to read. I remember having my mom read to me every night, even when she did not want to. I would watch the text as she read and began memorizing the words in the book until I could recognize and read them on my own. My favorite book was Goodnight Moon and a Sesame Street book. By the time I was in Kindergarten, I could read the text for that level on my own. Reading came very easily for me, and I do not ever remember struggling with reading. My family often read together and we traveled a lot to Eastern Oregon. Whenever these trips came up, we would go to the library and books on tape to listen to.

In elementary school, reading was accompanied with writing. This was awesome for me. I was put into a writers group that met a couple time of week and we got to write our own "books," poems, etc... and have them published to take home. I still have some of those samples some where... Writing was a little more difficult than reading. There was one instance when a teacher got tired of me writing 'poot' instead of 'put.' I had to write it 50 times the correct way and turn it into her. I never spelled it wrong again. I also had a lot of people on my case about how I held my pencil when I wrote and tried to fix it. Being part of the writing group was much more fun because I could be me without being afraid of someone getting after me all the time.

Middle school became a big shift in reading and writing for me. I got into those Goosebumps/Fear Street series among others and was always talking about reading with my friends. When I got into 7th grade, everything changed. We had to write an imaginative story and create the pictures for it on the computer. I worked hard on my piece, finished it, printed it, and gave it to my teacher. With in what seemed like seconds, he read it in front of me quickly and told me it was not good enough. He promptly wrote a 'D' on it and thew it on a pile of papers on his desk. I was heartbroken. Since then, I was always afraid to write stories which then bled into other areas of reading and writing eventually turning into uncertainty in my own ability. My reading became very private along with different genres of reading.

High school through college was a struggle in gaining confidence in myself as a reader and writer because of the fear of risk-taking. I am often disappointed because I feel like I lost out on a lot of opportunities to challenge myself as a reader and writer. I avoided exploring new ways of writing and style along with reading rich and difficult texts outside what was assigned. My teachers hated how I avoided the options for writing poetry, narratives, and imaginative works. I did have a fantastic professor who changed my perspective and I will always be grateful for that.