My Literacy Narrative
Moments in your life that stick with you forever may not always be significant but they all build on who you are as a person. As a student, moments that stuck with me through my education shows where I developed the skills, knowledge, and love for the things I do now. Reading and writing has always been a big part of my life from childhood to this very day. I used to spend a lot of my free time writing creative stories or reading a new book series. However I did not always feel positively about reading and writing when I was younger. My knowledge of reading and writing was under average when I was in Kindergarten, making it a struggle to be like the other students but with time reading and writing would become one of my favorite subjects.
I was freaking out on the inside. St. Patrick’s Catholic School would hold me back in Kindergarten because I didn’t know how to read. St. Patrick’s was a small Catholic school in Pelham NH that most my family attended. Now I stood in front of Golden Brook School in Windham, NH. My mother held my hand insisting everything would be fine they were just going to ask me a couple questions to assess my current standing in my education. However my confidence was not the very high since I was already being told by my current school that I was not smart enough for the first grade. I was going to be a first grader who couldn’t read! Thoughts raced through my mind but I was mostly concerned I would not be attending Windham schools with my two best friends. Not only was it possible that I would not pass kindergarten, my two best friends Rachel and Taylor Kane would be attending Windham instead of Saint Patts. I desperately needed to get into this school and I was very nervous. When it was time for my interview I was asked basic questions that a common student who was going in first grade should know and was answering them correctly. But, then they brought up reading and I thought that that was it. I couldn’t read and just like St. Patrick’s they would want me to repeat Kindergarten. However Windham offered me a new opportunity. They told me that there was a summer reading program that could help teach me to read. It was like a weight lifted off my shoulders as I was now no longer concerned that I thought “L-M-N-O-P” was all one word in the alphabet. I did not feel embarrassed that I was going to summer school to read, I was excited because that meant I would be going to Windham Schools. I attended all the summer classes and to my surprise there were many kids there who needed just as much help as I did. As a group we learned to read and slowly leveled up our books difficulty over the summer. Months down the road I was reading at the right level and ready to enter Kindergarten instead of staying held back at another school. This experience alone helped me realise reading was not awful and it could be enjoyable. As I started school that year I took the love I developed for reading and started to explore it with writing
My best friend Rachel and I started writing books after I learned to read opening another door to how much I would learn to love reading and writing. We wrote a bunch of books called the Fire Pup Series all about a fire fighting dog who never failed to save the day. Rachel illustrated the book and I wrote the stories. We told each other that when we were older we would write and publish more books and make a living out of it. We spent all of recess planning out the next story and I would get super crazy and silly with my stories but it was the writing freedom that made this experience so enjoyable to me. We then got to read our story to the class and get their reactions which was always an excited one for the fire pup stories. I was so young but the positive feedback I got from my teacher and peers really helped drive my passion to write in a positive direction. Being able to write and share as young as I was then really helped shape my feelings towards writing. Students who had a negative attitude towards writing were different than me who absolutely loved writing essays.
All in all reading and writing caused me some difficulty in the beginning of my education. However over time the subjects definitely grew on me and was a hobby of mine for many years before I decided that becoming an author might not be my ideal job. To this day I still love to read and write. My mind is always buzzing with creativity and I feel like I have so many different ideas to put on my paper. At home I have a bookshelf overfilling with just my favorite books, not even all of them. I am glad I found reading and writing and looking back it is amazing how much of an impact it had on me as a child and as I grew.
