Journey through Literacy: Triumph over Challenges

Reading, Writing, Learning

Reading has always been a core subject taught throughout any student’s educational life; in the earlier years, we learned the basics of writing. For some students, it’s an exciting time, figuring out what goes into the story books we read and finally learning how words work. However, the story was different for me. As a child, it was intimidating when I notice that I didn’t catch on as fast as the other kids. Sometimes learning involves compensating for the skills one lacks. It’s a journey; here’s mine.

I never actually enjoyed reading. I have a focus problem in my vision so spending long periods of time looking at the same thing made everything go blurry. Growing up, I never wanted to get made fun of or called

In first grade, when we were assigned our first list of spelling words, all of my teachers thought it would help their students learn better if they wrote them 5 times each or made sentences with them. Throughout the years, I can only remember of one teacher who made it enjoyable. It was in the fourth grade and I had Ms. Hinson. We had to create a fiction story about anything that we wanted, as long as we included all of the words on our list. Once we completed our stories, we got to illustrate a picture to go along with it. This, of course, was my favorite part because I loved to draw. It drove me to do my best on the paper so that when I was done I could draw the picture. I can’t remember to this day what the story was about but I do remember the feeling I had when I showed my mom, dad and sister. They were so proud of me. At the end of the year we took all of the stories we had made and published a book with all of them in it. I will never forget about how much enjoyment I got out of that assignment throughout the year. Due to the fact this assignment was given to me in fourth grade, I think it may have been too late to change my feelings towards reading.

As I grew up and entered high school, expectations for essays were much higher. I got my first paper back from my 9th grade English teacher with a big, fat "D" on the top left corner. I had never gotten a "D" in anything before. She allowed people to go home, make corrections, and turn it in by the end of the week. I went home that night and read my paper over and over again till I could recite it without looking at it. I couldn 't figure out how exactly I could