Personal Narrative: My First Memory Of Literacy

Literacy is one of many words in the English language that is not accurate in definition; rather it varies from person to person through cultural experiences, community, exposure, and even academic submersion. Literacy, or being “literate,” is a skill that people use constantly to perform daily tasks such as reading road signs, texting a friend or calling a family member on the phone for a few examples. Through my experiences, however, literacy is as a form of communication, writing, and reading. Each family creates traditions in their household, ranging from food traditions to holiday traditions. Some of these traditions include eating specific meals with corresponding days of the week, like Taco Tuesday, while others’ traditions could be

When I first began writing my name, my mother used dotted line paper that would have my name dashed out so that I could trace each letter to spell my name. This paper was special to my literacy learning because it had a “house” set up, with an attic and basement. Each part of the house was responsible for housing in specific parts of a letter. For example, in the letter Y, the Y’s tail must “hang out” in the basement while for a capital T, as in Taylor; the T must have its “hat” in the attic. Learning to write my name this way paved the way for the rest of spelling and clarity of writing words. I remember specifically before each spelling test or writing test I would draw dotted lines on my paper so I could properly place each letter in the corresponding location of the letter “house.” In addition to helping me write neat and concisely this paper setup paved a pathway for the cursive style writing that I would later learn in the first grade. The cursive style of writing used the same letter “house” technique, which led to an easier transition between standard print-form writing to cursive writing since I already knew how to keep my letters in the designated areas of the

In the fourth or fifth grade, I remember reading, writing, and grammar becoming a competition in the classroom. Coming from a family with ten older first cousins, competition was something I always loved. However, in class when every assignment I did in English turned into a competition on who could read the most books or who could get a 100% on every reading comprehension quiz, I began to dislike the logistical literacy learning. I understand now that I was still performing literacy through other acts such as talking to my friends or singing music in the car, however, I was becoming disinterested in learning in the classroom because I did not want to be of a less value to my peers. Looking back my hate for the competition style learning was a fear that my stellar performance would be no longer apart of my identify. From a young child’s perspective, the thought of my peers knowing that I performed below expectation because my name did not make the board that day became intimidating, and eventually not something I wanted to be a part of. If I could go back to this classroom today with the same teacher I would encourage her to let each student explore themselves as learners and not to interact with competition as each person learns at a different pace. For some this style of learning could cause retraction and not