Brandon Harvey

Literacy Narrative
*My literacy history has had its ups and downs. Ive never really enjoyed writing at all. All of my teachers in elementary school thought I was some kind of special needs in writing because I hated it so much that I didnt put any effort into my work. I would write just to get it over with as soon as possible. My first literacy moment that I can remember was probably when I was in pre school. My daycare teacher would always try to get us to think by practicing our ABCs and practice writing letters. We would always play games to learn words and expand our vocabulary. One thing we did to practice neat hand writing was have everyone write a letter and the winner would get a piece of candy. This didnt really work for me that well considering Im a left handed male so I am essentially destined to have bad hand writing. Even though it didnt work for me I still thought it was a cool way to get everyone involved in writing. Preschool was an important time for my literacy. It set the so called stepping stones for me. Another thing we did was play games with flash cards with different words and pictures on them. We would have one on one races to see who could answer what was on the card first and the winner would get a candy or some sort of small toy. This was my favorite thing that we did because I usually won every time and got all the candy and bragging rights. I have always liked a good challenge so having this was a perfect way for me to get involved. I can honestly say that preschool was my favorite time for my literary career. In third grade I took an EOG and my teacher Mrs. Beasley who is the stereotypical mean teacher. She had the worst expression on her face at all time. I dont remember ever seeing this woman smile. Anyway on my EOG I bombed the written part. I mean absolutely failed it. Mrs. Beasley didnt take to kindly to this and decided to call me out on it. Here I was, a little third grader getting pulled out into the hallway to get yelled at over a test in the THIRD GRADE! As I was standing there she starting saying that I wasnt going to be successful in life and would never be anything. As I stood there I couldnt help but laugh. When I was young I could still tell when people were blowing things way out of proportion and would just laugh, I couldnt take the her seriously at all just because the simple fact that she was telling a third grader he was a failure in life. This only made me hate writing even more. In fifth grade my elementary school did a competition for the best poem. It wasnt that hard because it mandatory in all of the english classes and we just had to find a poem to submit into the competition. The poem I chose was about deep sea fishing which is one of my favorite things that I grew up doing. My poem ended up getting second place in the competition. We had to read our poem out to the entire school when we got on stage. This was my earliest memory of public speaking that I can recall. In sixth grade I had another public speaking experience with my church by performing in a play. I was playing Peter and had many major lines. This was the moment when I realized that stage fright didnt really effect my that much. During the play I had to speak out into the crowd and nailed it. I didnt let the nerves take over at all.

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When I was in the seventh grade I had to take a state wide writing test. Of course I didnt pass it. Im not sure if this is true but I think I got the lowest score in my school other than the kids who didnt write anything. I dont know what it was about writing that made me hate it so much. It may have had to do with the simple fact that I was just flat out bad but it also bored me. I could never get into my writings to draw my attention let alone the audiences attention. My writings were dull and my sentence structure looked like a tornado had ran through them. It wasnt until I got into high school where writing started to get better for me. My freshman year my English teacher knew that I hated it and would give me extra attention sometimes to peak my interest in my papers. She would give me assignments that I enjoyed writing. My junior year of high school was when my literary genius peaked(kidding). I exceeded everyones expectations by taking an AP English class. I had always been an AP student in high school but never in English. I ended up getting a very high B in the class which should have been an A if my teacher wasnt such a grammar Nazi. Our writing assignments in that class were like I have never seen before. We used creative writing techniques, free writing, journalistic writing, research papers, and cooperative writing to express our literary talents. This was the first time I actually enjoyed writing by expressing my thoughts and opinions through it. Being able to do that allowed me to expand the length of my papers and also expand my literary knowledge. I found out that I had the talent the entire time, it just took the right time for them to come out. My favorite style of writing in that class was free writing. The fact that I could right down the first thing that popped into my head and express it in writing interested me. I enjoyed looking back on my writings and seeing what I was thinking for that short period of time on paper. Most of the time they were hilarious and I found myself cracking up in the middle of class. I would right down the most ridiculous stuff that somehow made sense in my free writes. I would show classmates and it would have them on the ground laughing. Research papers were my worst nightmare throughout high school. I got so bored writing them. I hate not being able to use my imagination in my writing and research papers just killed my morale. The fact that I pretty much followed a guideline to get a grade didnt set well to me. I find it very hard to stay focused and awake when Im writing one. My AP English class had a final paper that was an eight to ten page research paper on any topic we chose. He gave us a guideline to follow that actually made it easier for me to concentrate. I dont know about anyone else but writing a research paper that long will make anyone try to do it the easiest way possible. I used numerous books and web sources to take get my information that I sorted out onto note cards plus knowledge that I already knew about the subject. I ended up getting a B on my first ever major paper. It also had to do with my teachers grammar strictness. My senior year of high school was probably my favorite year of english. My teacher didnt care about traditional writing. He wanted to be entertained by our work. Everyday we would have journal entries and every Thursday we had to use our vocabulary words and implement them into a story we wrote. Every Thursday I would

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just continue my story and made a series while other would write a different one every week. My teacher treated us as adults. He didnt care if we used bad language in our writing as long as it didnt cross any lines. He thought that it added more entertainment to the stories even though the funny thing was is that he was an endowed Morman and just made him that much cooler. He was young so he could relate to our style of writing. The series I wrote was about a slave master named Rooster Cogburn who was the meanest son of a gun east of the Mississippi who owned the largest plantation in the south. He resided in Georgia and was fine cigar and scotch enthusiast. He was known for his witty sense of humor and stern remarks. My teacher thought these stories were hilarious and couldnt wait to see what I would write every week. One of the assignments he made us do that I will never forget was on the first day of class. He made us write a letter to ourselves and then he put them away without reading them at all. On our graduation day he placed our letters in our seats for us to read. Most of us forgot about them but knew what they were as soon as we saw them. This showed me that he actually cared which was rare for a teacher. After reading the letter it blew my mind. Day one of my senior year to my last day as a high school student. It made me think about all that happened that year and how awesome it was. We had to do a senior project while we were in that class. We had to make a product, speech, and research paper. To prepare us for our speech which had to be eight to ten minutes long he would do exercises throughout the year. The senior project was basically our english class. The class was shaped around it essentially. One day he had us pull out three random items in our pockets and talk about their importance for 5 minutes in front of our entire class. This was so spontaneous that it was very amusing for all of us. Some kids had the most random stuff on them that that was another discussion itself. I talked about my cell phone, wallet, and car keys. This was a fun way to get us used to public speaking which I have never really had a problem with because I have always been very social. For my senior project I built corn hole boards. I thought it would be an easy think to do, plus who doesnt need corn hole boards? My research paper was on the topic of woodworking and the process of woodworking. If I can remember correctly it was about a twelve page research paper. We used the same type of guidelines that I used my junior year. The only thing different was that this time I was actually interested in the subject. I ended up passing my senior project with pretty much a perfect grade. I have a portfolio of all the writings I have done from third grade until my senior year in high school. Just looking at them it is wild to see the progress I have made over the course of time. It is really crazy to look back on all of my experiences with literacy. I can still remember back to the days here I was sitting in preschool tracing letters and numbers on the thick line paper. My teacher holding up flash cards with different pictures on them so I could tell her what they were. It takes me back to where things were easy. Learning to speak and not really having any other worry in the world. My parents often bring up my first word which was flower(I know its a strange first word) and looking at it I am amazed at the progress of my grammar and speaking skills. It is absolutely incredible how much you can learn in eighteen years. I cant imagine what I

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will learn in the upcoming years due to the simple fact that I have learned so much already.