Celena Dermatas

Cover Letter
Weaver
Rhetoric 1
September 8, 2014
Throughout this literacy narrative I will be discussing my personal literary
identity and how through reading and writing I gained confidence. I believe the strengths
of this paper to be my thoughts and how I explain everything throughout the paper. I
believe some weaknesses are my ability to use higher vocabulary and organization skills.
The intention of this narrative is to convey how reading and writing gave me confidence
as a child, as well as to tell of special people in my life that had a huge influence on my
literary identity. My goal is to share this with readers by recalling events in my life as
well as the effect they had on me.

Celena Dermatas
Weaver
Rhetoric 1
September 8, 2014
As a child I gained confidence through my reading. My first favorite book was
Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park, it was a special book between my grandma and I. When I
was little, my grandparents lived about eight hours away so we didn't see them often.
Every time my grandma came to visit, we would sneak away into my room just the two
of us. We would lock the door, climb in bed and read seemingly endless chapters of the
infamous Junie B. I would say that my grandma had one of the biggest influences on my
literacy identity. This is only because she taught me so much at such a young age and it
made me want to keep reading and learning. My grandma always made me feel like I
could do anything with my life, that the whole world was in my hands and all I had to do
was be the best that I could be. This was shown through my success with reading and
writing at an early age. By the time I started first grade I was already reading at a third
grade level. My family was so proud of me that I only desired to keep learning more and
more. I was so proud of my success that my shy, insecure and timid personality was gone
and came a confident student.
Not only was I reading with family members but I began to choose books of my
own and read whenever I could. I made the most of long car rides, boring rainy days and
sleepless nights by reading pages and pages of Frog and Toad Are Friends, Charolette's
Web, and Harry Potter. My grades were the best they had ever been and I was beginning
to be a very dedicated student. However, when I reached middle school things changed

for the worse. I started hanging around with all of my friends all of the time. I started to
not leave any time for myself to sit down and read or work on my writing. Because of my
dropping grades I lost the confidence I once had in myself, and this changed a lot about
who I was. I had no desire to learn everything in the whole world like I used to and it
showed in my grades.
As I reached the end of my seventh grade year, I became very aware of the low
grades I had in english class. It was my fault I was doing so bad in school. I never read
any of the books I was supposed to, I never practiced my writing and I hardly did my
homework. Luckily I had a teacher like Mrs. Strickland who lent me a helping hand and
became a huge literacy sponsor in my life. She sat with me for many long hours and
basically re-taught me how to be a successful reader, writer and student. She gave me an
oppurtunity to better myself and try a lot harder than I had been. Mrs. Strickland was
simply a good-hearted person and I'm so thankful to have had her as a teacher. I learned
more through my time with Mrs. Strickland than I had with any of my other teachers. I
was very fortunate to have had her as a teacher and again, I became a confident,
dedicated and hardworking student.
My junior year of highschool I took an AP Language course taught by the most
unique woman I have ever met in my life. In choosing this course I was excited to have a
class with all my friends while also recieving college credit. I knew that the class would
be challenging, but I had no clue what I had gotten myself into. Ms. Shipman was not the
typical laid back, sweet, easy going old lady that I had expected. She was tough, she did
not put up with any nonsense and she was dedicated to teaching us something useful in
life. By the second week of the course, we were writing three page essays in fourty

minutes that would be graded the next day in front of the whole class. It's safe to say my
stress level was high, but I liked the challenge. I was learning an abundance of material
very quickly. There was so room for slowing down in Ms. Shipman's mind. She had a
very interesting activity that she liked to call "ugly babies". In this activity, our whole
class sat in circle while she pulled out essays one-by-one and sternly pointed out the
idiotic mistakes in each one. It was humiliating, infuriating and harsh-but it completely
changed the way I thought about writing. I became a very skilled and a very hardworking
writer. Ms. Shipman is a big part of my literacy identity as well because of the way she
pushed me and taught me so much. It was the hardest class I have ever taken throughout
my education, but it was also my favorite.
Throughout these past eighteen years, my literary identity has grown into
something that I can be very proud of. Reading and writing has brought me a confidence
in my schoolwork that nothing else ever did. Because of what I learned at such a young
age, I have the confidence in my ability to read and write successfully as well as present
it to others. This confidence has shown through numerous jobs, scholastic acheivements
and personal relationships. My grandma, Mrs. Strickland and Ms. Shipman had such a
huge impact on me and my literary identity. All three of them shaped the kind of reader
and writer I have become and they all taught me things that I can use all of my life. I am
now a person who has confidence in themself and their schoolwork, as well as a great
knowledge of reading and writing.