Literacy Autobiography Blog #1

              My journey of becoming literate was very amazing of how I began to learn very easily. I remember myself being in my kindergarten class in Haiti, where the teacher teaches us songs with the words written on the board and we had to read it word by word. This made learning very fun and was excited to go to school every single day. Whenever the teacher decided to repeat the song in the following week, the song is already at the tip of my tongue. I felt like I was the king, I taught I was really smart. But that wasn’t the case when I move up to the first grade.

        

This was the book where I learn how to read

    In the first grade, I began to feel very frustrated, school wasn’t fun anymore, it was a real nightmare. In the education I came from, when you’re in the first grade you are assigned a book which contains about 200 pages. Every day the teacher will assign one to three pages as homework. So that the next day you can read it in front of the class. If by any chance you can’t read a phrase, you’ll get the same homework for the next day and so on. It was tough for me because in that grade you must learn how to read, write, and spell. Writing and spelling wasn’t a big issue for me but reading was. Remembering the pronunciations of a word was a bit difficult. I remember my aunt who use to help me with my homework. When she helps me I remember the words and how to pronounce it. But the next day when I go to school for some reason I forgot everything that I’ve read when the teacher calls me up to come read, I blank out, I wasn’t able to read a word. I ended up barely passing the class that year. I remember in the community I used to live in, most kids were very smart and top students. And they get presents from their parents because they bring in good grades.




         So the next year when I started second grade, it was even harder because there was a lot of reading to do from different subjects like science, history, geography, etc. not only that, you would have to memorize every single word, to recite the next day. I didn’t like this at all, but it forces me to learn to read and retain pieces of information. This is extremely difficult because a chapter is assigned from each subject which is a lot of information to remember. The only way I was able to retain all these information was because I used the method my kindergarten teacher taught me, “singing”. So I began using this method in my reading which helps me memorize a lot of information. Even though I remember all the stuff I was very anxious once I come to class. Because if the professor specifically asks you a question from one of the chapters assigned and you don’t know the answer to the question, you get punished and if you tell your parent’s you get punished even more. This situation motivated me to always do my assignments because I didn’t want to deal with the sort of punishment the professor had waiting for us. Because of that, I was ranked as the top student every school year. And that’s how I learned how to read efficiently.

        As a literate person, I feel like having basic literacy skill help me to express my ideas, to process information and to also exchange information’s and point of views with others. I use literacy mostly every day. for example, when I watch soccer I chose a player that plays in my position and I take notes on things I can apply to my game. With the desired and passion to become a better player, I read books and takes notes of things that can help me become a player, a better life and a better person