Joel Wright January 23, 2012 Literacy Autobiography CI 475 Literacy has always been a part of my life.

From a very early age, my parents would regularly read to my sisters and me, and some of my fondest memories involve my father speaking the dialogue from Redwall or The BFG in ridiculous sounding voices. Novels were a staple in our household, as well as other reading materials: newspapers, magazines, a complete set of the World Book Encyclopedia. As I grew older, reading became a more personal part of my life, a way for me to build private relationships and connections with fictional characters, historical figures, or world events. As soon as I could read independently, I began to read when I was alone. My parents have many stories about their sons peculiar reading habits as a child, like the time I sat by myself under the Thanksgiving Day dinner table and read a history book about the Civil War while the rest of the family ate, or when I refused to stop reading The Hobbit on the morning bus ride to school, even though my teacher insisted I do so because it made me nauseous every morning. As I entered high school, I discovered new ways in which I could interact with texts. Printed words continued to be an access point for me into human events, although now, rather than through histories or fantasies and the concrete worlds that they depicted, it was through my encounters with poetry, literature, and philosophy. It was also during this time that I began to discover myself as a writer. I joined an after school creative writing club my sophomore year, and wrote wonderfully typical adolescent poetry about

angst and anxiety. I also experimented with other ways to deliver text; our writing club would regularly perform poetry readings in the community, and I joined my high school speech team, and participated in expository readings, extemporaneous speaking, and debates. During my senior year at high school, I enrolled in an AP Literature class, where, for the first time, I was exposed to the fullness and depth of the canon and tradition of Western Civilization. This class in particular changed my attitude towards literacy. For the first time, books, these self-contained units of story and fact, became literature, this great genealogy of ideas and movements. I felt a part of something historic, something bigger than myself. My tendency towards this historical and academic approach to literacy became stronger as I went through college and graduate school. In 2009, I moved from Chicago to Urbana, Illinois, and soon began working as a paraprofessional at Jefferson Middle School, in Champaign. It was here where I encountered a new challenge to my personal concept of literacy. For me, reading was always an intimate part of my life. However, when I began working with students with learning disabilities and cognitive disabilities in Champaign-Urbana, I was forced to change my conception of what it means for a member of a community to be literate. I began to see literacy as a way of living-in-the-world, as opposed to a particular practice or technique. Suddenly, I began seeing all different kinds of literacy, from being able to read a bus schedule, to being able to interpret another persons emotions, to being able to read the weather report and know how to dress for school that day. It is this idea of literacy of how literacy interacts and mingles with our everyday lives that interests and excites me today, and that I hope I can use to enrich my professional life.