Derek Tremblay
Major Garriott
ERH 101-03
November 16, 2016
Literacy Journey
My literacy journey was influenced largely from the experiences I had learning and reading as a youth. Ever since I can remember, reading was greatly encouraged in my family., Before kindergarten my aunt would take care of me every day being that my dad had to work every day of the week. I can remember us occasionally walking about half a mile to the local K-mart to get lunch at the K-mart café and after we would head to the book section where I would pick out numerous books that I thought I would be interested in. Firetrucks, cars and construction vehicles were more often than not the topic of the books that I chose. I would go home and my aunt would read them to me and I would look at the pictures for hours and try to read the books for myself. However, my literacy journey has not always been so reinforced as it was when I was younger. As I got older I started to drift away from a strong background of reading and writing. My development journey of literacy has shaped my strengths and weaknesses in the way I write today.
My aunt played a large role in my literacy development from a young age. My dad worked two jobs to provide for his four young children and was often not at home, after my mother passed from cancer my aunt stepped in to help my dad and even moved with us to Virginia from Maine. She took care of me and my siblings and did her best to provide us with the care we badly needed. While my siblings were at school she would do “play school” with me and I would dress up like I’m going to school and she would teach me letters and numbers. She would read to me and help me learn to read for myself. A book she had in her apartment that really aided my development as a child was “Dick and Jane. She would read it to me until one day I was able to read it myself. The simple words and fun stories kept me interested in reading and was the start of my literacy journey. My aunt’s positive interactions with me since I was a child gave me a solid foundation and a head start on being interested in reading and literacy.
Influences on my literacy development didn’t end with my aunt, eventually I started school and my dad got remarried so I was less dependent on my aunt to take care of me. In kindergarten I was the “problem child”. I constantly challenged my teachers and didn’t listen to their instruction. I would get in conflicts with the other kids and I often got sent to the office for my behavior. Despite this behavior my kindergarten teacher, Ms. Scott, was very kind toward me and she was always willing to work with me to make sure I would learn the material. Ms. Scott’s kindness showed me that teachers could be trusted and learning could be fun, she reinforced the positive literacy experiences I previously had. However, not all of my teachers throughout elementary school. In the third grade my Language Arts teacher didn’t care much about us and the learning process of third graders. She assigned us to read books that were way past our reading level and books that we weren’t very interesting and hard to follow. She would then give us packets with questions on the readings. Me with my third grade reading level was unable to comprehend a 400-page book such as “Little House on the Prairie” and answer difficult questions on the text. So for the first time I started getting bad grades and I started believing that I wasn’t very smart. Rather than having a bad teacher harming my literacy development, I believe that actually aided my development. I had a strict father who would punish me with grounding for my bad grades, so my Language Arts grade caused me to spend continuous months alone in my room for being unable to bring up my grade. All the time I spent in my room as a child I was reading books. I remember in elementary school I would go to the library and request for them to get certain books. I then would check in with the librarians every morning wondering if the book had come in, probably annoying them to death. That’s when I fell in love with reading, and I would even leave my lamp on until late at night because I read what I wanted to read and I was interested by the stories.
It was around this time that my dad remarried. My step-mother was an avid reader and still is today. She would always read books with me and encourage me reading on my own. Countless times she would take me to the local library to pick out books, and as I grew older and was able to read bigger books, I would carry home two armfuls of books every time we went. Me and my step-mom would read the books I got from the library and we would talk and have engaging conversations about them. She read books that I liked such as the Artemis Fowl series and I would read some of the books that interested her like the Jason Bourne series. This was a large part of my literacy development growing up. My step-mother’s influences made me interested in reading and writing and was the pinnacle of my strength in writing.
During middle school my literacy decreased for multiple reasons. In the seventh and eighth grade I started to become really involved with sports. Having baseball and football practices mixed with weight rooms really took away from the energy I was willing to spend reading late at night. Also, I stopped getting in trouble and getting bad grades so I stayed out of my room and I stopped having an excuse to read as much as I did. My interests changed and I also saw it as “uncool” to read. My time became more preoccupied with other hobbies. As I moved to high school my habits didn’t change and I never picked up reading again. The school work became harder and the sports became more demanding and I grew further and further away from where my literacy once was. Maybe I just became lazy and these are all excuses I’ve led myself to believe as to why I don’t read anymore. Either way my literacy and my writing ability has suffered over the years.
The writing and rhetoric class I’m taking at VMI is starting to re-develop my literacies. The assignments and readings are causing me to be more thoughtful about reading and are encouraging me to read more. I am gaining valuable reading skills as my writing becomes more self-aware and part of me and my experiences. I see my writing improving and Major Garriott has played a large role in my writing and unlocking my writing potential. I hope one day to start reading again and I hope to write successfully and better each time in future classes I’ll take and papers I’ll write.
My literacy journey has been full of ups and downs but I see it slowly improving.