Literacy Autobiography November 5, 2009

When I think back on the first time I felt like I was literate I remember two books that my grandma would always read to me. One was Thumbelina and the other, for life of me I cannot remember, dealt with a man who fishes all the time and is caught by a fish himself and kept in a fishbowl by the “child” fish. That was the first book I ever read. I was about four years old and I remember it because my grandma was so proud of me and had my entire family listen to me read it. The thing was that I had heard it so many times that I had it memorized and remembered what the words looked like when my grandma said them. That is the first time that I realized that people who are smart read books. Strange that was at such a young age, but my family played a huge role in my notion of education being important.

When I was in elementary school my father was concerned that I wasn’t getting the attention I needed to my writing because my handwriting was atrocious. He had our next door neighbor tutor me for three summers in a row in writing. She had been a teacher and had retired to our neighborhood from Maine. Such an interesting lady. She would have me read a book of my choice and I had to turn in book reports to her. I would have to revise if there were too many errors and I would have to do writing exercises at her house for two hours everyday. It sounds extreme to some, but my father instilled in me a work ethic that I still use today and my tutor gave me the ability to read something and comprehend what I was reading as well as write about it.

In middle school I can recall multiple projects that I did that allowed my writing to further develop. My 8th Grade English teacher Mrs. Steerwalt gave many opportunities for her students to write and express themselves creatively. The interesting thing is that we as the students had to periodically pick a piece of writing and read it to the class in front of a camera. She wanted us to feel comfortable expressing ourselves while practicing our public speaking skills. Activities like this allowed me to compete in a school wide competition for the Optimist Club. This club had members of the community that held this competition for middle school students. The students would give a speech about what goals we had for the future and what we expected from life. I ended up getting third place out of about 120 students and this was a major confidence boost for me in my writing skill and ability to express myself. It was after my speech experience that I began to keep a journal and write my own poetry. I never really have done anything with it in a public venue other than writing them for my father who proudly displays them in his judge’s office. The importance of writing for me began as a release of emotion and it wasn’t until I got to highschool that I realized that I needed to harness that emotion and focus it into cohesive and clear statements.

My first experience of harsh writing criticism occurred in my junior year of high school with Mrs. Arthur. She had the tendency to make my papers bleed. Considering that my writing had always been received positively until that point was a rude awakening for me. I was in honors english classes all through high school and so the important thing for our teachers to get across was how to write for the test we would take to klep out of college 1301 by our senior year of high school. Needless to say grammar was not the main focus of my writing until I entered Mrs. Arthur’s class. She was a structure “nazi” to coin a phrase and would not let anyone slide an inch. In this class I learned to take criticism and learned revision on another level.  In high school, however, I also met one of the people who inspired me to become a teacher. Mr. Farrington taught freshman english and psychology honors class for seniors. He was an amazing teacher that emphasized appropriate language in his class room. Whenever a person would speak or write in his classroom it had to be thought out and polite. He would not stand for people to speak just to hear the sound of their own voice and felt that any type of writing needed to make a point and go somewhere. This attitude was very influential in how I view my own education and ability to write. Though I have grown from that point, and still have farther to go, I would say that his attitude towards writing is one that made a important impact on my own writing process.

The next phase of my writing process, I would have to say, came from my undergrad at LCU here in Lubbock. My professor Dr. Blassingame is the one teacher that I would want to emulate if I could emulate anyone. Many of the attitudes I take toward analyzing texts and actively reading come from the english classes that I took from her. The revision process with Dr. Blassingame was taken even further for me from high school in that she required at least three to four revisions on a paper that she had to read before the paper could be turned in.  She spent so much one on one time on revision and paying attention to the big problems first and then narrowing down with each revision to the more minute details. I think that her teaching style and committment to her students success made a lasting impression upon the effort that good writing requires as well as good teaching.

My literacy process would have to be characterized by the idea of trial and error. I have tried, failed, and learned to improve. I have never had the innate ability to write that some may be blessed with, and I owe a lot of abilities to my father who continually instills in me the need to work at something to be good at it. This work ethic has carried over into my class room performances and allowed my teachers to guide me in the right directions acquiring techniques that I still use today in my own writing. There are probably many more instances of literacy realization that have occurred in my life, however, upon reflection these experiences would have to be the most influential.

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