Kenzie Rowell

September 8, 2015
UWRT 1103
Deby Jizi

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly of Learning to Read and Write

As I look back on the many years of learning to read and write, there are a few things that
really stick out to me. Throughout the years of learning to read and write, there were some fun
times, several mistakes, many new words, and the occasional tears. As a young adult in college, I
still reflect on some of my earliest memories of learning to become literate, as well as my
varying attitudes towards reading and writing.
My earliest memories of learning to read date back to kindergarten when we were
learning the sounds all the letters would make and associated them with how they would look on
paper. I remember reading story books as well as Dr. Seuss books. My favorite one to read was
always Green Eggs and Ham. I read that book so many times, I memorized the whole entire
thing and would walk around my house repeating the lines of the book out loud until all my
family members wanted to slap me. We would also play computer games that would teach us all
about phonics, which I always enjoyed. My earliest memories memories of writing began with
practicing writing the alphabet. Then in elementary school, I recall writing all kinds of fun stuff.
For instance, my class all had pen pals we would write to periodically. Mine was a girl who lived
in Florida. We also would write short little stories and we would illustrate them and read them to
the class, I always liked doing that because I would always get pretty creative with my stories

which almost always had something to do with dogs. My teacher, Mrs. Williams, would also
have us write letters to our parents with borders around them that we could color after we were
done writing. Almost everyone of my letters had something to do with me wanting a dog and I
would beg my parents to get me a dog and promise to walk, feed, and love it no matter what.
There were a few different people involved with my success towards reading and writing,
including my mom, dad, and elementary school teachers and their assistants. My mom used to
read to me every night before bed and then I would read books back to her. Some of the books
we read so often that I didnt even need to look at the pages to read it, I memorized them so well
that I knew exactly what was going to happen next. The Berenstain Bears books were always a
classic for me. I also was a huge fan of fairy tales like the Princess and the Pea, the Ugly
Ducking, and Rumpelstiltskin. These stories were a staple in my childhood and a lot of their
messages and lessons they were trying to convey through the story still stand out to me.
Perhaps one of the biggest benefactors of my success with reading and writing was my
1st and 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. Williams. When I was 7 years old, she helped me reach my full
potential while pushing me to excel in reading and writing by finding more advanced books for
me to read. It was then that I started reading chapter books and other things that might have been
outside of an average 2nd graders lexile range. In addition to that, she pushed me by giving me
difficult words to learn how to spell. I remember she had me spelling words such as
veterinarian and congratulations as a second grader. To this day, I will still remember all the
ways in which Mrs. Williams contributed to my success as a reader and writer. I was always
really good at spelling and I even won my schools spelling bee when I was in sixth grade. I am
convinced I would not have progressed as a speller or a writer if it wasnt for her challenging me
at such a young age.

For the most part, I had a positive attitude towards reading and writing if it was based on
something that I actually enjoyed reading about. At times, I would be reading a book and without
even realizing it, it would be finished in less than a day. However, there have been times when
Ive had to read something that did not spark any interest whatsoever and it felt like teachers
were trying to shove all of these boring, unstimulating books down my throat. When I was in
elementary school, they would attempt to make reading more fun to us by making competitions
out of it, by seeing who could read the most books. We had this thing called the 100 Book
Club which was a ceremony at the end of the year where everyone who read at least 100 books
could go and play games outside, eat ice cream, and engage in other various activities. Naturally,
this made every elementary school kid want to read because who wants to be stuck inside on one
of the last days of school before summer while all their peers are turning up outside eating
popsicles, playing soccer, and getting hyphy in bouncy houses? This sort of stuff was always so
much fun but then it all went downhill when they started assigning us summer reading. I never
liked doing it because they assigned a book for you, rather than letting you choose which book
you wanted to read and a lot of times it was a book that I didnt really care for and felt like I was
reading it because I had to, not because I wanted to. I was always that kid who spent my
summers having fun and living it up until the last week before school started when I realized I
had to read one of these nonsense novels, to which I would then spend the last week of freedom
becoming a slave to one of these novels, in an attempt to read as much as possible in the allotted.
I believe that as well as the various reading assignments I had to do throughout school on topics I
didnt particularly care for changed my attitude toward reading.
I feel like school changed my attitudes towards writing as well, only for writing it was a
little more personal. I loved writing when I was growing up and a lot of times I used writing as a

coping mechanism. Some of the things I was going through and emotions and feelings that I felt
were hard to bear with at times. I felt like I couldnt disclose any of this stuff with anyone around
me, not because I had no one but because I didnt even know how to describe these feelings to
myself or come to terms with them. I felt sad and alone and didnt know always know what to do
with myself. Writing became my escape from reality and I would often write in my journal, and
write poems to describe my emotions in metaphoric terms and analogies. This was always
comforting to me and made me feel like I could actually express myself. I feel as though school
took a lot of that self expression away. I remember some of the writing assignments that my
excessively politically correct English teachers would assign in middle school and high school.
They always wanted to know how you thought about a story or issue with questions for writing
prompts telling you to voice your opinion about the particular subject. However, when I voiced
my opinion, often times it would be wrong. Everything seemed so one-dimensional and it made
me feel as though I had to conform to the popular beliefs of authority just so I could receive a
perfect score on a writing prompt. Because of this, I would get so frustrated that at times, I
disregarded all the things I wrote in my spare time and put it to rest.
To this day, I really enjoy reading certain things like magazine articles and things that I
find on online forums and social media. Im not really a book reader though, I dont usually go
out of my way or take time out of my life to sit down and read a novel. Some of the books I have
to read in college make me resent reading and I kind of feel like I already have so much reading
to do, why should I do any more of that for leisure?
As for writing, despite what I previously mentioned about my frustrations towards
writing in the past, I still really enjoy various forms of writing. My love for writing has come and
go over the years but I have recently discovered a newfound love for it and I still see it as an

escape and a way to feel at ease with myself. In addition to writing in my journal, I have also
written several songs and I will occasionally write poetry. A lot of my influence for writing songs
and poetry come from some of my favorite artists and I believe that music is a form of poetry.
Some of my favorite artists include Jeff Buckley, Ryan Adams, Grieves, Eyedea, and
Atmosphere. The lyrics in their song and the deep meaning inspire me to write some of my own
stuff and I have music to thank for installing a lot of my passion for writing back into me that
was somewhat lost throughout the years of school.
Over the years, I have found school to be the primary reason I learned how to read and
write. With all of the various learning activities, techniques, and mechanisms they have used as
way to improve reading and writing, I believe that school will teach you how to read and write
more so than anything else. However, school cant teach you how to enjoy to read and write and
instead you have to find that within yourself.

Reflection:
For this essay I made a lot of changes in order to improve the paper. I realized that for the
first draft I didnt really put as much effort into it as I could have. When I revised it for the final
draft, I made sure to really extend the content of the essay. Once I extended this essay and added
more detail, I felt as though it was a lot better quality than before. The feedback I received from
my group wasnt really that helpful and they never sent me their feedback, but some of it did
cause me to change up parts of the essay. Most of the revisions came from me carefully reading
over the paper and deciding what I could improve about it.