Implantation in the back of a skull…someone crawling under a fence… trying to escape something really bad…lives in danger. These are some of the earliest memories that I have. When I was little, the favorite thing of my family was to read books together. I remember us reading this book long before I could read myself. This book left a mark on me. I remember loving this book, and years later would remember things about implantations, and such, and finally asked my mother if she knew what book that it was we had read so long ago, including those. It being one of her favorite books, she immediately knew that I was referring to Gerald N. Lund’s The Alliance. Since I was little, and since rediscovering this book, it has been my all-time favorite novel.

The credit for almost all of the literacy I possess is due to my family. Reading wasn’t something just to be learned in school, but reading was “the thing!” at my house. As I have mentioned, our favorite thing to do together as a family was to read books. Every night before bed, when I was young, my mom or dad would read me a story (or sometimes more than one if I had sufficiently irresistible puppy eyes). Before I could ever read for myself, I could quote the story of George Washington and the Cherry Tree from The Book of Virtues.

Each night before we went to bed, my family would gather to read from the scriptures together. At first, before I could read, when it came my turn to “read,” my parents (or whatever older sibling I was sitting next to) would whisper to me parts of a verse, which I would repeat, so I was also able to participate in family scripture study. As I began to learn to read, I would get to read a verse when it came my turn. As I got better at reading, I got to read more verses like the rest of my family. I still remember the first time I correctly read the word “Jerusalem.” I was slowly reading from The Book of Mormon to my patient older brother (not during family scripture study), when I saw the word, knew it was a really big word, but decided to try reading it. He was so impressed and I was so proud of myself---we immediately ran to find my mom!

Though there was an atmosphere in my home that encouraged reading, I definitely struggled at first. When I was in the first grade, I remember one parent teacher conference in particular. I was sitting with my mother and the teacher, to the side of the teacher’s desk. I can see the scene in my head. I was sitting with my mother on the left of me and the teacher was sitting facing us, her desk to her right and a window behind her, the light brown carpeted walls around us. She told my mom that she wanted me to start going to Title I (a program for struggling readers). I guess I started to glare noticeably at the teacher, because I remember her telling my mother that I was upset because my birthday hadn’t been celebrated in class. I thought this was just the craziest thing ever because I knew very well that my birthday was during the summer—and I reveled in not ever having school on my birthday. I knew why I was glaring at her, and it was because she was sending me to Title I, but I did not say anything. And thus my years in Title I began.

Even though at first I had glared at my teacher for deciding to send me elsewhere during reading time, this turned out to be a great thing for me. We used to read lists of words, and were timed for doing so, though we had to be completely accurate for our time to count. I do not know if we read each new list on Monday and got our first time recorded then, or if we read through the lists twice on Friday. But on Fridays, if our second time reading the list was faster than our first recorded time, we got to choose a free book to keep! I remember one time during third grade that I read my list of words (about 20 words on it, I think) completely accurately and in only 10 seconds! Everyone was so impressed! Because of the praise that we would get for reading our word lists, the free books that we would get, and my little girl competitive spirit, I always wanted to do better.

Looking back on my elementary school years (K-3), I have realized that I am very grateful that my school did not use normal letter grades on our report cards. Instead they used letters like M for “mastered” and PM and NM for “Partially Mastered” and “Not Mastered.” My report cards were not actually that great when I was in elementary. I struggled more in school than I did later…but I did not know it, which was a blessing. All of my siblings were straight-A students, so of course I wanted to be one too. Had I realized that I was not a straight-A student when I was getting some NM’s and PM’s on my report cards, I fear that I would have been really discouraged, and I may not have done so well in school in my later years when stuff in school started to make more sense.

When I went to middle school (4^th -6^th grade) reading suddenly seemed to click for me, and I discovered Nancy Drew books. Thus began my years of devouring books like cookies. When it came to Nancy Drew books, I would get so engrossed in the story that I would fail to notice the class moving on to other things and can remember more than once coming back into reality only to find the class engaged in other things.

I cannot remember too much about how my writing developed. What probably really helped is that I have always LOVED to receive letters, and the way to receive them was to write someone first. So, I used to write letters to my grandma and grandpa in California. Then I increased my letter writing to include my great aunt Mona. When my older siblings went on LDS missions, I wrote them letters, too. As a now amusing side-note, I don’t think I actually finally got all my letters facing the correct direction until sometime during my 4^th-6^th grade years.

In Jr. High school they taught us to write in the format of a five-paragraph essay. I learned how to do this, but unfortunately after learning that, I do not think I learned much of anything more about writing until I was at Utah State University and my professors really expected a lot of me. An experience with a professor that I really valued is when one of them told me that what I had written was terrible. Saying things like that is probably not generally a good thing for teachers to say to their students, but in this case, I really appreciated it. I had written something that would have satisfied my teachers in high school, but this professor ripped it to shreds. I did not see this as a personal attack, rather as my professor saying that he knew my best could be better, and was demanding nothing less than perfection. I may have done my best in the first thing that I had written, but my professor understood that our best can always be made better, though it may require help.

As far as the other side of literacy: listening and communicating academically, I could not say when there was a difference made in these. My greatest teacher in this was my mother. The daughter of an English teacher herself, she never let us use incorrect grammar at home. Her biggest pet peeve was hearing “these ones” and would always correct us by saying, “’these’, not ‘these ones.’”

My biggest holdup, however, was though I learned to read enjoyable books like the Nancy Drew series, in school I was never taught how to read a boring textbook. The ideas I am learning in my literacy class right now are something I really wish I had learned much earlier in my schooling.

When analyzing my reading, I would say is that I am fine with reading things written for entertainment purposes, and am also just fine reading textbooks that are written more informally and are “friendly” (i.e. are written in the first person or otherwise include personal pronouns). I would much rather read a my math book where the author used language including “I” and “you,” than read a Psychology textbook I had that spoke referring to a person as “one”---even though you would assume that a math book would be boring and a psych book interesting.

As far as my writing goes, for the most part I write the way I speak. (Well, I probably throw in “however” and “thus” a few more times in my writing than in my speaking!) Similar to my preferences in reading, I am just fine writing things when I am allowed to include my personal voice. I can write formally when necessary, but that requires much more concentration.

While I thought I was literate growing up, I think now I was less so than I presumed. I could read, but didn’t, unless it was something interesting. Thus there is much knowledge that I could have had, but didn’t, because it wasn’t very interestingly written. Being literate, as I am coming to understand it, includes more than just what we are technically capable of reading and writing, but also what we actually will read and write. Being truly literate includes not just being able to read written word, but being able to reason with it and question it. Growing up, I probably would not have questioned boring texts at all. If required to read them, I would probably just read them quickly, not retaining much, but doing it so that I could honestly say I had read it. There would be no thinking critically about boring things. We could just say that everyone should instead learn how to write in a more interesting manner, but lets face it—that isn’t going to happen! To really be literate, I believe we need to be able to engage our minds in both things that we find interesting and things we don’t.

In my classroom, I intend to help my students to become engaged in reading more than just novels. The world of the written word is so much bigger than Nancy Drew. I didn’t realize growing up that there could be interesting books about subjects like math. There are, however, a plethora of enjoyable things written about mathematics. I hope to help my students learn to read the things they may find boring by interspersing them with things that are really interesting, and prodding them to question all of them. When I am pushed to learn, I push back and learn. When I was young, my family pushed me to read things like the scriptures that used large words, but when pushed I responded accordingly. In elementary, when pushed to improve, I likewise responded and worked harder, just as in college. The impact this has made on me is that I have come to understand the value of pushing students, and pushing them hard! From my own experiences I have seen that I always have reached (maybe not immediately, but eventually) the bar that has been set for my performance, no matter how high. This has taught me that to really bring out the best in my students I need to set the standard really high, and then as my teachers and professor did, follow through with them, helping their best to reach that standard.