Literacy Experience

While there are quite a few experiences I could talk about from my days spent in kindergarten all the way through high school, I find that none of them really influenced how I think about literacy. As a matter of fact, I probably did not think about literacy much until my sophomore year of college when I made the decision to change my major to education. There are many books and events where someone was reading to me that are very meaningful to me, but I do not feel like they have really shaped how I will teach, how I understand, or how I view literacy now. My most influential experience which will most likely be the memory I turn to when teaching literacy is the entire experience that was children's literature or TE 348.

The setup of the class, the choice of books, the teacher, and my new found love of reading were all major factors in my enjoyment of this class. I have never been an avid reader, nor have I really cared to be one due to the extreme amounts of reading that I have been required to do for classes. These readings turned me away from enjoying literature because it became tedious and hard for me to constantly read for comprehension. This reading left little time for me to enjoy anything else, and to be honest I was just fed up. TE 348, however, introduced me to a world where reading could present itself in whatever way you interpret it. Literature came in many forms that pleased the reader's taste, and provided opportunities to get lost in whatever topic you chose. I began to discover that reading for pleasure was not work, and was not time consuming like reading for my classes; I began to enjoy it.

My teacher was a children's literature fanatic, and because she was so dedicated to her work and the class I began to trust her and allowed her to really sell literacy to me. I began to recognize it as more than words on a page, and really started to gain interest in all that it had to offer. Her enthusiasm was hard to ignore and I was eager to learn what she had to teach us. Overall, her pure enjoyment caught me and I was hooked on literacy. The class introduced me to the elements of literature, specifically children's, and I really took an interest in the different types of genres and how they could be represented in so many ways. As a student I was very interested in history, but I was not so interested in the historical facts books. I knew before TE 348 that genres could be represented in many ways, but the class really introduced me to how I could teach students like myself who are interested in very specific topics. If I, as the teacher, introduce students to specific books that really target their interests maybe their ideas of reading will be less daunting. While learning about genre and really learning how I might one day teach literacy, I also began to understand the many facets of literacy. I began to understand what it takes to create literacy. There are so many elements to be apreciated that focusing on the words is simply not enough. I think knowing this and allowing these new understandings of literacy to shape my future teaching will be very beneficial. I will be able to reflect back upon my own literacy experiences throughout my life, and use the knowledge gained about literacy in TE 348 to really shape my teaching of literacy.