Literacy Development

 

Introduction

My name is Vanessa Baiza and I am currently a junior at NJCU majoring in biology with a minor in psychology. After graduating, I am hoping to attend medical school or a physician assistant program which is one of the reasons I added a minor. Ever since I was younger, I was always interested in becoming a doctor or working in the medical field and in recent years, that interest grew more and more. I wish to make a difference in the future within the racism that exists in medicine and how that shapes health care around the world today. This shifts into the reason why I chose to take this class out of the other courses available.  This class’s description states how we will be covering aspects of race, ethnicity, and culture within public school education in America throughout the years. This is something I found interesting because social media talks a lot about how we as minorities aren’t taught certain things in school while other schools in predominantly white areas are being taught exactly that and much more. 

 

My Literacy Development

I don’t remember much about my first experiences of becoming literate but I do remember that my parents taught me how to read in Spanish. Spanish was my first language so my parents tried their best to make sure I was good at not only speaking it but also reading and writing it. I remember they bought me a book with all the sounds of vowels in Spanish and how they are used in Spanish words. Every afternoon I would practice with my mom for at least 20 minutes. This was around the first time I started to think I was literate.

 

    At school, I remember when we would have reading groups where the teacher would examine our reading levels. As I grew older the teachers would test us one on one by giving us books with different colored tags and we all started at a certain level, then throughout the year we would get tested and some would progress to the next level while others stayed at the same color (level) for the whole year. These reading tests would encourage me a lot because for us students, it was made into a competition to see who could read the best. I would practice at home reading long texts without messing up until eventually I made it to one of the highest colors which indicated a high reading level. Another literacy experience I recall from school is popcorn reading where we would be assigned a book for each quarter of the school year and the teacher would start us off by reading for about 10 minutes, and then they would transition to calling on students to read each paragraph after that. I also enjoyed and was encouraged by popcorn reading because personally, when I would mess up often I took that as a sign to practice reading more so that the next time I read, I would make less mistakes. 

 

    I think my main role models when it comes to literacy were my teachers in preschool, kindergarten, and elementary school. The reason I would consider them my role models is because I remember them the most when I first started becoming literate. When you learn to do something for the first time, you  always remember the people who were there to support and help you achieve that. Those teachers will always be remembered as the ones who encouraged me. I also consider my mom a role model because she helped me better understand how to read and pronounce words in Spanish. She got me started at a young age which is why now that I am older, I appreciate her efforts because I would say I speak, read, and write in Spanish pretty well.

 

    As the years passed, I feel like I lost interest in reading which is unfortunate because there are various studies stating the importance of reading and how it strengthens connections in the brain. I am slowly trying to get back into my old routine of reading at least 20 minutes a day because of how many benefits it provides us with. I think many people stop reading as often as they did, eventually, because of technology and the fact that there is no one there to push us to read as often as they did when we first started learning it.