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Steve Rongo

English 1102

5/4/2011

Audience: School Teachers

Never Ending Literacy

There have been many ups and only a few downs in my life when it comes to my

reading and writing. I’ve had a few teachers that I can name that helped me gain

confidence in my writing and one in particular who didn’t. Also, with reading there have

been rewards when I was young that helped me excel. Certain books have helped me

gain an interest in reading and to this day I can read about anything. Learning how to

read and write, going for the rewards, and having some confidence boosters and setbacks

have brought me to where I am today.

Reading for me just came natural by reading books at an early age until this very

day. I learned to read from kindergarten to the first grade and haven’t turned back since.

At this time I was about five years old and I was very interested in Dr. Seuss books. My

favorite one that I could read over and over was “Green Eggs and Ham.” In elementary

school there was an AR program that you would read books and take quizzes on them

afterwards and you had to do this to get a good grade. So I would read book after book

after book and if you read a total of like 100 books then you would be invited to a pizza

party at the end of the year and that’s what motivated me even more to read. After and

during the same time I learned to read became learning to write. Writing came natural for

me because I thought it was easy and just picked it up quicker than other students. I

learned to write letters at a young age when teachers were teaching me the alphabet and
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then it came to writing words which I managed to do well too. Reading helped me with

writing by learning to spell certain words and the more I wrote the better my hand writing

became. From the first time you learn how to write till the rest of your life you will

always be writing even if it is just your signature. So learning at a young age helped me

develop my reading and writing and it set me up for middle school and high school.

Throughout middle school and high school I started to realize how important

reading and writing would be in my life. I found a series of books that interested me a lot

called “The Series of Unfortunate Events”. I would read one and then pick up another

upon returning the other one. I would start writing 2 page papers and start the basics of

research papers. Every year there was something new to read and write. I’ve had a few

good and bad teachers as the years went along with writing though also. One a setback

and another a confidence booster.

My 11th grade English teacher Mrs. Wilkins was my setback for writing in my life.

I was given an senior exit project and we had to write a seven page paper on a topic that

can be argued from both sides. I couldn’t think of a topic to come up with and my

teacher just wasn’t helping with that at all. She would tell me there are a ton of topics out

there and never gave me any examples to get me started. I became frustrated just trying

to figure out the right topic for this project. When I finally chose a topic it wasn’t one I

was interested in at all, but I stuck with it and I knew that was going to be a bad idea. So

since my paper was a research paper I would make source cards and note cards like a

normal process I was taught for a research paper. Then I would start on my first draft and

with no help from my teacher at all I was just putting my note cards into the paper like I

just posted them into it. It sounded terrible and didn’t make much sense at all. I went to
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my advisor for help, but he was not an English teacher so that did not do much good for

me. So when it came to my final paper it was the best I was going to have and I had that

one graded. I ended up failing my graduation paper and having to go to summer school

for it. And after summer school they ended up dropping the senior exit project from our

curriculum anyhow. It was still a huge set back because it pretty much took away all my

confidence for writing and also I thought it told me that I was not a good writer at all.

My teacher didn’t give me enough help to get the grade, but there was one teacher that

gave my confidence back.

The 12th grade was one of my best years for writing. My English teacher, Mrs.

Cable, helped me out with both reading and writing. We were given an assignment to do

our senior research paper on a topic we got from a book we would read in that class. I

chose the book “The Invisible Man” so my topic I got from the book for my research

paper was advances in science and technology. My teacher helped me step by step and

we even had one-on-one conferences with her to help us out. I had a good strong paper

with an interesting topic. In the end I got a high grade and my paper was one of the

highest grades in the class. With my teachers help and her leading all of us in the class

one step at a time I was able to get confidence back in my writing and somewhat even

enjoy writing a little more. She also helped me learn how to interpret a book better by

having us find a huge topic from my book. So she was one of the best influences on my

writing and some of my reading.

Reading and writing have just come natural to me and I picked them up as I went

on throughout my life. I’ve had some setbacks in the last few years for me, but then that

was cancelled out by a good teacher. Overall reading and writing have came easy to me
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and I’ve been using it consistently in every school I’ve been to.