My Literacy Narrative

My Literacy Narrative There I was, four years old, in a tiny square room with the walls decorated with colorful alphabet letters. Across the round-table sat Mrs. Esseily, my ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher. English was a struggle for me because neither of my parents could speak it, yet alone read or write in English. I just stared at Mrs. Esseily as she pointed at the notecard and repeated the word over and over. “Rainbow, rain-bow, rayn bow. R-A-I-N-B-O-W”, and so I repeated after her, “rainbow”. Mrs. Esseily smiled at me and I assumed that she was proud of me or happy that we could now move onto a new word. Everyday after snack time I would have an ESL sessions with Mrs. Esseily and this went on until I got to first grade. By

In the middle of second grade my family had moved to Maui and I attended Sacred heart, a private Catholic school that was located right below a mountain. Hawaii’s education system definitely was not the top in the country and my mother thought that it would be best if my brother and I went to a private school to get a better education. As I was sitting at my desk in my third grade classroom I opened up the storybook in front of me and I began to read the short story. I can’t tell you what the story was even about, but what I do remember was as I was reading something came across my mind and I couldn’t figure out the answer. I thought to myself, why was it that I could read a big word like “vegetable” but if I were asked to, I couldn’t spell it. I stared at the word for a while, still bugged by that fact so I decided to raised my hand. Miss. Claudette, my teacher, came over and when I asked her the question that was on my mind, why I could read ‘vegetable’ but not spell it, she then smiled at me and said “..well sweetie, that’s just going to be something that we’ll have to work on”. At that moment I knew she didn’t actually know the answer to my question and just said whatever she thought would shut me up and appease

All throughout middle school when we were assigned to read a novel I would dread it. My perspective of reading for enjoyment soon changed when I was in eighth grade. Mrs. Benavides, my eighth grade language arts teacher, assigned our class to read The Outsiders, and I coursed I was complained in my head, I don’t want to read (actually pretend to read and then use Sparknotes) another lame book. The first day we got the book we were all told to read chapters 1 through 3, and this time all of the kids in my class complained and I wasn’t the only one. So, there I was at home in front of my computer typing in “the outsiders by S.E Hinton”, into Google, and the top search that popped up was a link to the movie on Youtube. I was ecstatic when I saw that there was a movie based on the book and so for the next hour and a half I watched the movie. I ended up really like the movie and I decided to give the book a chance and actually read it since I liked the plotline so much and I was already attached to the characters. That night I sat in my room on my tiny stool next to my vanity table and I began to read chapter 1. I found myself enjoying to read even though I just watched the movie and knew everything that was going to happen, I kept wanting to read. Eighth grade was the first time that I can personally remember liking to