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Claire Kane

Dr. Reiman

English 1103

12 September 2010

From Diapers to Dictionaries

I have always had a great support system in my life; from my family to the

schools that I attended and to my friends. Something that was always strongly expressed

in my family was my education and what it can provide for me. My parents did anything

they could possibly do to make sure I had all the opportunities I could have ever wanted

in my life, they never wanted me to feel inferior or less accomplished than someone else.

All of this encouragement and acknowledgment of education from my parents is most

likely the reason I am so focused on my grades and schoolwork. I am very close with my

family and they are so supportive that it makes me want to make them proud in

everything that I do.

I started out in a charter school for my elementary and middle school education. A

charter school is not a public or private school, but is owned by an organization funded

mostly by the government. Since there is no religious affiliation with charter schools,

basically any books I could have wanted to read were permitted and I never felt I was

pressured into reading or not reading something. I had a wide range of genres of books in

our library and a librarian that was so knowledgeable and comforting that I felt I could

ask anything and be steered in the right direction. She always encouraged us to read and

always made sure she had new books stocking up our library so we never felt like we

were out of options of books that appealed to us. Our school also had a typing program
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for computers that we used for thirty minutes a day, three times a week so typing on a

computer was a breeze for me by middle school and made the time I put into my writing

more efficient.

The charter school that I attended was a Kindergarten to eighth grade school that

from third grade to eighth you learned grammar through this book called Shirley

Grammar. Every year you graduated to a different grade level the color of the book

changed which as a kid especially it was always fun to go from green to purple or yellow

to blue and it would make you feel proud of your color because it meant you were getting

older and should be proud of that. I will never forget Shirley grammar because it taught

you all about nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, etc., but they did it with these

fun songs and you could turn them into whatever you wanted like a chant, opera song,

wrap, anything! Classes would compete with each other of who could sing the loudest or

who could make the best beat on their desks or who had the best dance, etc. Everything

had a song to it that you would spend weeks learning and then apply to sentences when

evaluating them. You would label words as an adverb, verb, noun, adjective, etc., and I

loved hearing my friends singing the songs to themselves as they did it, even as the ³big

bad´ eighth graders of the school I would still hear my friends singing the songs to

themselves. It sounds so silly, but I can still sing them to myself today and in high school

there were people who had no idea what an adjective was and grammar is something that

is so important and I am glad that it is permanently imprinted in my brain and will never

leave.

I attended a private Catholic school for my four years of high school, but still,

even with the religious affiliation, I was never told I was not allowed to read or pressured
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into reading anything. I had the freedom to read and write about whatever I chose, on the

contrary of what private schools have a reputation for sometimes doing. I did not have an

institution that was necessarily a literary sponsor to me, but I did have a few specific

individuals that have strongly impacted my outlook on reading and writing and inspired

me to do more than the bare minimum in regards to my academic and personal goals.

My mom who loves to read and write always helped me with editing my papers;

she helped me learn how to prepare to write an essay as well as how to combine my

thoughts into an organized and well thought out paper. My mom also had a way of

teaching morals to me so I would be a well-rounded and also productive member of

society. She always had me understand that whatever grade you make on an assignment,

test, project, etc., does not make you any better than those around you and to never make

someone feel inferior or belittled by you and your actions. After my mom came my

senior year English teacher, she really taught me how to see the connection of reading

and writing and how to incorporate them to make a truly successful paper. She always

assigned us these little two page papers constantly and once a week we had a four page

paper due and it really broke me into a routine of writing and understanding it is a basic

part of life that enabled me to learn how to interpret something like an event, story,

moment in life, and incorporate it into a paper in a well thought out and organized manor.

Between my mom¶s influence and encouragement and my senior year spent with

my English teacher I never felt I was missing out on any form of education. I always felt

I was being taught something that I either already knew or felt I could understand. I really

feel I had access to any form of literacy I could ever want and I feel that I took advantage

of every opportunity whether it was in the form of a computer, teacher, assignment,

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paper, etc. I am grateful that I had the freedom to learn, write, and read whatever I

wanted to with no judgment or harsh criticism. I truly feel my literacy and the way I have

learned to read and write is due to two things in my life, the strong emphasis on how

important a solid education is and the freedom to choose to read, write, and just explore

anything that interested me. Those two factors shaped the way I understand anything that

is taught to me because I feel encouraged to learn it without any expectations.