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Alyson Hellenack
Ms. Grant
UWRT 1101
September 8
th
, 2014
My Literacy and My Culture: Three Vignettes
During, moments of my life I was taught how to read a book or write a sentence. As my
level of education advanced my literacy advanced as well. I was surrounded by a community that
wanted to educate me with the knowledge I know of today. If my community did not accept
educating kids I would not be able to read and write at the level I am today, if not at all. Literacy
has come into my life through many different resources like, books, educational TV shows, and
teachers and most importantly my parents. I did not have a rough child hood, I did not speak a
different language or even needed to fit into society I just read to read. I wanted to learn for
myself what this big thing was about reading and writing. I knew that if I learned how to read I
could accomplish so much.
My family was your average American family. There was nothing truly different about
our family than others, but one of the most important things that mattered to us was education.
My earliest memories about reading and writing started when I was only a little girl of two years
old. My mom was a kindergarten teacher at the time, so my exposure to books started at a very
young age. I owned a lot of books from Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss to
Franklin the Turtle books by Paulette Bourgeois. Books were sort of an obsession for me at that
age. My mom or dad would always read me several stories every night before I went to bed. I
can remember listening to them so intently and both of them always making the words and
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pictures seem so real and interesting to me. When they were not able to read to me during the
day because of work, I started to read books by myself. Even though I was too young to
understand what was really going on in the story at times, I would look at the pictures and
formulate my own story in my head. Of course I didnt know how to read, but using what I saw
my mom and dad do I would read my books to myself and to anyone who would listen, even if
it meant that I would make up the words to the pictures. I could form my own stories by also
giving the characters different voices and motions for each word too. This helped me remember
words more clearly by hearing the word and remembering the voice or motion I used. Along
with reading at home, my mom would usually take me to story time at the library each week for
a different atmosphere than reading at home and signed me up for preschool at three years old.
Both places encouraged me and continued to add to the development of my literacy. Another
huge aspect of my literacy history was the TV. Whenever I turned on the TV it was to watch the
PBS kids educational learning channel. I would watch shows like Sesame Street, Arthur,
Curious George and Barney. I actually would watch them so intently that I could repeat some of
the words that were taught in the show. I developed letter and sound recognition from the
different learning activities that were presented on the show. I remember one of the first words I
could write was dog. Elmo on Sesame Street would talk about different types of dogs and he
would go lets spell dog. D-O-G. Now you try! I slowly tried to attempt to repeat the letters
over and over again. They would show the word multiple times on the TV screen so I scrambled
to get a piece of paper and a crayon and attempted to write the word dog on my paper numerous
times. My literacy soon became higher with all the books I read and educational shows that I was
prepared to start Elementary.
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Throughout elementary school I continued to enjoy reading. I would always read at
school during whatever free time I had. I loved reading novels, magazines, newspapers and
really anything that had words on it. During this time, I started reading the series Junie B.
Jones by Barbara Parks. I grabbed onto these books like my life depended on them. You could
always find me in my reading corner with my face glued to a Junie B. Jones book. I would finish
a book in just a couple a days. As I continued to read my vocabulary went up, but I started to
notice that my fluency was not as good as the other kids in my classes. It discouraged me that all
the other kids seemed to read faster when they read out loud during class or by themselves. I
thought I was a fast reader but then realized not so much. I found this particularly hard and
stressful when EOG testing came into my life in the third grade. I felt this was a big hurdle
because I felt tons of pressure to read faster so I would not be the last one in the class to finish
the test and hold up all the other kids. Unfortunately, I would usually end up being one of the last
kids to finish the reading section of the EOG. I also was nervous to read out loud during class,
since my speech was shaky. It was so easy for me to read a story in my head, that I did not
understand what was so hard about reading out loud to the class. Luckily I had a wonderfully
encouraging Third Grade Teacher and Assistant Teacher who helped me bring up my self-
confidence. Once I realized that I was stressing myself out and that in order to do well on the
EOG tests I had to overcome the pressure of being last and do what was best for me I started
feeling better about how I read.

People usually think just school, teachers and family affect your literacy, but actually
there are non-academic experiences that affect literacy too, especially in my life. A big part of
my life has been dance. Ive been dancing since I was three years old and have always
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thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it. Youre probably wondering what does dance have to do with
literacy?, but without it I wouldnt have had the work ethic to achieve my reading and writing
goals. Even at age three I worked extremely hard at dance because I really wanted to be good at
it. Within my 18 years of dance, it has taught me valuable lessons that I have used to keep my
literacy growing more and more every day. It strived me to be good at something and made me
want to know more about dance. Dance made me want to work hard to be the best I could be to
further my dance technique. When eighth grade thru ninth grade came along I lost interest in
reading. I had given up on reading books and I wasnt passionate about furthering my reading
anymore. My reading level started to decrease because I didnt have as strong of a vocabulary
than the other students in my grade. I was taking dance during this time and I remembered how
much I actually loved reading. I had pushed myself away from something I enjoyed and loved to
do with something else I loved to do. This is where my work ethic to increase my literacy fell
into place. Without dance I would have never learned to push myself to want to know more and
to work hard to achieve something. Taking these lessons from dance throughout my life I would
read and read because I wanted to know more about my literacy and wanted to perfect it. My
work ethic knowledge from dance increased my literacy so I could work hard and learn more
about how to read and write.
When I look back at my literacy history, I consider myself to be very fortunate. The
opportunities I was provided by my literacy sponsors, like my teachers and family, have turned
me into a knowledgeable student who knows how to read and write. I was privileged to be
enrolled in my public school that was dedicated to helping me learn to read and write. I was
surrounded by a group of people and a wonderful community who truly dedicated there time to
help me and everyone else learn new things. My determination to read my Dr. Seuss, Franklin
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the turtle and Junie B. Jones books kept me pushing myself forward with my learning process,
and my curiosity of different books grew more. As I start my college career more opportunities
will open up to me to increase my literacy and I will meet so many more people that will help my
literacy journey grow more over the course of my four years at the University of Charlotte.