Matthew Specht

UWRT 1103
Fall Semester
UNCC

Literacy Memoir Draft

The first memory that comes to my mind that involves reading is when I read
When a Mouse Eats a Cookie, back in pre-school. That was my favorite book when I
was just a child. My mother used to read it with me almost every night before I went
to sleep at about 8pm. Another classic childrens book that my parents used to read
to me was Goodnight Moon. It is safe to say that my mother and father were both
effective literary sponsors for me early in life. Coming from Brandts article, they
were an important aspect when I was young in developing my likeness for reading
and writing.
In elementary school, I had a good association with reading and writing. Back
when I was in kindergarten, my teacher, Ms. Sigamon, would always use to read my
class a short story before we all took naps on the floor. As tempting as it looked,
instead of taking a nap with the rest of the kids in my class, a lot of the time I would
ask my teacher if she could read to me some more. Ms. Sigamon, being the
extremely kind woman she was, would always say yes and read a couple of different
of short stories to me. This act of eagerness to listen to another story from my
teacher is similar to Malcom X in his article, where he writes how he used to stay up
all night in his prison cell and read from the dictionary. He was so intrigued and
interested in the concept of becoming a better reader and writer. As for learning to
read and write, every day in class, Ms. Sigamon would teach us a new letter and
would tell us what sound it made, and we would mimic her. Over time, my
classmates and I learned how to read simple sentences and write simple sentences.

Matthew Specht
UWRT 1103
Fall Semester
UNCC
Ms. Sigamon and her teaching assistant had a very positive impact on my reading
and writing development.
First grade in elementary school had a minor impact on my literacy history.
First grade was faster paced, and my teacher was just horrible. Ms. Matthews
showed absolutely no sympathy for students who didnt quite get the hang of a
reading or writing task that was assigned for the class. Ms. Matthews would get
frustrated and become impatient if a student couldnt understand a certain reading
or writing term that she had taught. We were in first grade for goodness sakes, of
course many children in the class arent going to understand the new and complex
(to us at the time) reading and writing terms that were being presented to us. The
way that Ms. Matthews treated the not yet literate students can be compared to
the private school teacher and students in the Delpit reading. For example, Maya,
the young African American girl in the article, would get ridiculed for the dialect that
she spoke with in class. The teachers and her private school classmates all didnt
recognize her true brilliant potential, instead they assumed she was just stupid for
the way that she talked. For me personally, I typically didnt have trouble learning
most of the new material. But, when I did have trouble learning new reading and
writing concepts, Ms. Matthews was usually not very helpful when I asked her to
assist me in learning the material. After first grade and Ms. Matthews, my
confidence in my ability to read and write took a soft blo w.
Fourth grade was when I was in my reading and writing prime in elementary
school. I found my niche. Starting in fourth grade, my class would very often write
fictional stories that we could completely make up in our heads. There was really no
prompt to go off of, we just had to write some sort of fictional story of our choosing.

Matthew Specht
UWRT 1103
Fall Semester
UNCC
This is where my writing skills started to shine. My teacher, Ms. Miller, would always
praise me for how imaginative and descriptive I was when I wrote my fictional
stories. When my advanced reading class had to complete numerous writing
assignments that would be sent to state employed graders, I received 4s on every
one of my tests, which was the highest score someone could receive. I took pride in
the stories that I wrote. Writing all of those stories is relatable to the Murray
reading, where Murray states that everything that one writes is an autobiography;
whether it is a fiction story, poem, opinion article, etcetera. One of my favorite
aspects of writing back in fourth grade and to this day is taking a broad prompt and
pretty much writing anything that comes to my mind. Tapping into my imagination
is definitely my favorite part of writing. When my class wasnt writing stories, Ms.
Miller would read a few chapters at a time out of a book out loud to the class almost
every day. Fourth grade was undoubtedly my most achieved year in elementary
school when it came to reading and writing.
Middle school was a time when more subjects became introduced to the
students in each grade, so the intense focus on reading and writing kind of faded a
little bit. Instead of reading a novel or a short story in class, we were assigned to
read books at home. Although I could not remember the readings that we were
assigned in 6th grade, I do remember some of the books I read on my own time
outside of class. I really got into the Percy Jackson series. One of the reasons why I
enjoyed reading the Percy Jackson series so much is because it catered to my
imagination. That is what interested me so much about reading, the fact that I could
read great novel that was completely made up by the author. Most of the time,
fictional stories seem to be much more entertaining and exciting than non-fiction

Matthew Specht
UWRT 1103
Fall Semester
UNCC
novels. Another series that I loved to read and finished in middle school was the
Hunger Games series. Like the Percy Jackson plot, The Hunger Games series is a
completely made up story and world that the characters live in. Those sort of books
are what really got me into reading at that period of time. I spent a few hours every
day just glued to whichever story I was reading at the time in my middle school
days. As I continued through middle school, I did read a few more novels along the
way, just really not any novels or series that interested me as much as Percy
Jackson or The Hunger Games. The three language arts teachers that had taught
me in middle school were all fairly good at their jobs. Ms. Williams, Ms. Arthur, and
Ms. King all tried to make writing essays and reading articles fun. My knowledge of
reading and writing did increase as I went through middle school, and I did gain
motivation to be a better reader and writer going into high school.
My first year in high school, English class was not very much fun for me.
Analyzing works such as Shakespeare or writing poetry or analyzing texts from
Odysseus was just not a good time. I never understood the message that
Shakespeare was always trying to convey, and I was never curious as to what
Shakespeare was trying to say. My class didnt really write many essays, I think the
objective of the freshman year course was just to become better at analyzing
scholarly works like Shakespeare or the story of Odysseus. I sort of stopped reading
novels on my own time by freshman year because I was much more consumed with
homework and sports. My enjoyment of reading various novels slowly began to
dissipate.
Sophomore year was a little better than my first year in high school. At that
point I knew who my friends were and werent, and I was more comfortable with the

Matthew Specht
UWRT 1103
Fall Semester
UNCC
environment around me. My teacher was a relaxed, nice lady who wanted to help us
become better writers. That was fine with me, because I was over the whole
analyzation of reading thing. Instead of analyzing the books or texts that we read,
we had to analyze a prompt and write an essay that answered that certain prompt. I
would say that sophomore year was the year that English teachers really started to
focus on the writing of essays. I was actually pretty decent at writing essays, too.
Junior year was when reading and writing were both critical to the course objective.
My class had to read about five novels throughout the semester, in which I read
none of them. Just like Graff in his article, I felt like I was forced to read books.
Taking into account all of the other AP classes I had my junior year, and being on
the varsity golf team, I just didnt have the time to read 20 to 30 pages a night for
my English class. Looking back on it now, I could have definitely made time.
Anyways, I didnt read a single book the entire semester. One of the assignments
for the class was to do summer reading, which was to read two books and write
analytic essays on both of them. Didnt do that. As much as I enjoyed reading books
when I had the time to, I just couldnt get around to reading ANYTHING that had to
do with my English class. Looking back on it now, I wish I did read the novels that
were assigned to us. I feel like my literacy level would be higher, and that I would
just be more informed and knowledgeable of some of the most well-known books of
all time. I loved my English teacher, too. Ms. Mitchell would give the class
vocabulary words to memorize each week, and we would be quizzed on those words
every Friday. I actually kind liked that because I found it fairly easy to memorize
each list of words assigned us each week. Not only did I like it because it was easy
memorization, but it was good for my overall literacy level as well.

Matthew Specht
UWRT 1103
Fall Semester
UNCC
Lastly, senior year AP Literature and Composition came upon me. My teacher was
easy-going and fun to talk to. That actually might have been my overall favorite
English class in high school, even though it was technically the hardest English class
that I took. We did have to read many novels throughout the semester, which I
didnt do, again. But I did do well on all of the essays that we had to write. The
essays in my senior year English class were actually the easiest to write because
every prompt that was given to us was pretty broad. Broad prompts meant that we
could just take that simple prompt and write almost anything we wanted to write,
and thats where I excelled. I would typically get between a 90 and a 100 on most
essays. They just werent very difficult, it came easy to me. My reading and writing
skills did significantly improve in my senior year English class. The biggest essay
that was assigned for the semester was our senior project, where we had to do
something to give back to our community, and then write a ten page paper on what
we did and how it helped our society. So I went to my local food pantry and
volunteered twice a week for a month straight, and then wrote my paper on it,
which was not very difficult. Not only did my senior year English class restore my
interest in reading in writing, it enlightened me as becoming a better person as well.
The main influences on my literacy career were all taken place in my early
stages of life. The literary sponsors that I had in elementary school and middle
school took the biggest toll on my love and hate for reading and writing. In
relevance to Petersons article, the early, mostly positive literacy experiences that I
endured while I was young has generally had a positive effect on my literacy level
and my enjoyment of reading and writing today.