Seth Spaulding

My Roots in Literacy
Everyone has a different literacy background. We all have different
upbringings and teachings that shaped the way we read and write today.
Whether it be us being homeschooled and growing up focusing on reading,
or it be going to a school that focuses on math more than reading. If we look
into it, we all have things that have heavily factored the way we do things
today. In this paper, Im going to go into the things that made me read and
write the way I do.
When I was three, I went to the library for daycare. Some of my earliest
memories are being read to in the May Memorial Library down the street
from the house I grew up in. I would go five times a week and there were
about ten other kids. We would all sit around the teacher and be read to for a
while. I always credit this to my early start in reading. I feel like I had a head
start because I was involved in reading at such a young age. I was
surrounded by reading and all through my early years in school, I excelled in
it. As a kid, I really enjoyed reading books like Junie B. Jones and the Magic
Treehouse book series. Obviously these books were just small steps towards
the books we read now, but they were small steps in the right direction.
As a young kid I loved reading, my mom tells me that we used to read
together all the time throughout elementary school. Doing this from such a
young age put me ahead of the curve in school. In elementary school,

everything reading related just came so easily. I remember when we would

read in class and Id always read ahead, feeling like all the other kids were
reading out loud too slow. I feel like all the reading my parents did with me
from a young age really helped me when I started learning to write. Ive
never really had problems writing papers, have always had good
penmanship, and I was in spelling bees for a couple years. I feel like I owe
this to the fact that my parents planted my roots in reading and writing. I
look back on learning the alphabet and writing all the letters and just having
them click and make sense. All the sounds the combinations of letters would
make and honestly I was amazed. I couldnt get enough and would read
whole books when we were assigned chapters, then read other books that
my two older brothers had outgrown and passed on to me. Thanks to them, I
would never run out of reading material that interested me and could
continue reading and reading all throughout my childhood. I feel like my
parents always knew the importance of reading. Ive been reading for as long
as I can remember. I guess through my older brothers, they learned that they
needed to emphasize reading from a young age.
Late into elementary school I switched schools. The school I switched to
didnt focus on reading and writing as much as my old school did. My new
school was more math-oriented as opposed to writing-oriented. It was a
weird change from being able to read and have fun doing something I was
good at for school to doing math that I was bad at and didnt enjoy. I
remember I would always be so happy when we would get assigned book

reports and I could choose the book I could read. Some books I remember
reading are Frindle, Captain Underpants, and Goosebumps. My parents would
sometimes make me read before I could watch TV or play video games when
I got home and at the time I hated it but looking back on it, I appreciate and
understand it. I dont really know where Id be without the constant push to
learn from my parents. A lot of the things they did felt like they were unfair,
stupid rules, but as Ive matured and grown I understand them better now so
I can appreciate them.
Middle school is about the time I started reading books that had more
purpose. Things like autobiographies, documents on things thatd actually
happened, and books that can actually change your view on things. I
remember one of the first books I read like this was Speak by Laurie Halse
Anderson. Speak is about a girl who is a freshman in high school and due to
some things that happened the previous summer, her whole school hates
her. It sounds like a typical teenage book but its actually much deeper than
that. It talks about the terrible things that actually happen and how awful
people can be, something that eleven year old me hadnt completely
wrapped my mind around. After reading Speak I wanted to read more things
like it. I have fond memories of riding my skateboard to the library and
seeing what I could check out. I read a couple different books, some about
real life situations people went through and some stereotypical fiction stories
about teenage hardships and struggles. I always enjoyed a book that the
main character had to overcome some type of problem put against them.

During this time I also like reading different things online. To this day I still
like seeing people discuss two different sides of a topic. Its interesting to see
the big contrast in opinions and ideas people have. I like seeing the different
points people have in a discussion/argument thatll bring more people to
their side. From simple things like video games to more complex things like
religion or current controversial topics. I think Ill always be interested in the
way that people think and love to hear them explain why they think the way
they do.
In late middle school and early high school I started becoming interested in
religion opinions. I read a couple books about from all viewpoints on religion
and just kept an open mind. I learned a lot and still retain some of the
information today. I always feel like reading has paid off when I remember
things from the book that apply to my life later. Reading religious books led
me to more diverse, wise, and open-minded thoughts. I read different
opinions and hearing everyone elses opinions has made me realize that my
opinion is just another opinion that someone else hears. It was really
humbling to realize this.
Starting high school is around the time where I started to have a falling out
with reading. I read a lot through middle school, but in high school I just
didnt read as much. Sometimes you read a book and it changes the way you
think about them and the person loves to read from then on. I kind of had
the opposite of this right before high school started. The summer before
ninth grade, I had to read a book called Guns, Germs, and Steel for my

history class. To this day, I have never read a book so boring, timeconsuming, and confusing, especially to a thirteen year old kid. Guns, Germs,
and Steel seems like a book that Id read for a difficult class that Id take if I
majored in History. Im guessing its one of the books an adult would read
and probably enjoy, but when youre younger you just dont appreciate it.
After starting high school, there was a lot of reading I had to do that wasnt
for fun, but for class.
When I think back to all the books I read in high school, theres such an
overwhelming amount. Starting in high school, reading wasnt really
something I did for fun anymore, it was something I had to do for class. I had
to read so many different things that I just really didnt feel like reading
anymore. Im not trying to play it off saying school forcing me to read made
me not enjoy it, I cant really blame anyone else for something I lost interest
in. Its just that pretty much when I read a book, its usually just to remember
things about it for an assignment, also, its not a book Im reading because I
want to, its because I have to. I know this paper isnt about pointing out the
flaws in our education system, but whenever I read a book throughout high
school, we were tested on things that werent even main story points or
something that you think youd need to know. Despite everything, I did learn
a lot in school and in books and I cannot deny that.
In my sophomore year, I read a lot of books that were interesting. Its was
also the first time I had an English that I really liked and connected with. My
teacher, Mr. Neas, was open and was intelligent and wise about whatever we

read. He really understood whatever we were reading and found a way to

make it interesting which doesnt happen often. The summer before class,
we had to read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. When I read it I didnt
appreciate it or really pay attention to the material, but when we talked
about it in class I saw the deeper meaning of the story and it made clear
sense to me. Having such a good teacher like Mr. Neas somewhat rekindled
my love for reading and English because I saw the deeper meaning and
understood everything and it was nice. It made books a lot more interesting
when I was actually looking for deeper meanings and symbolism instead of
just skimming the book and taking it for face value. It really allowed me to
fully immerse myself in the scenario of the book. It was nice to completely
understand the book and not have to ask any questions about it.
In my senior year, I had AP English IV. The AP English IV curriculum was very
reading intensive. In my senior year, we probably read over ten books and
had multiple projects on each of them. It was a lot to read but I did enjoy a
lot of the books. We also learned a lot of writing techniques from this class
that I carried into my UWRT classes. We learned how to better analyze
readings for questions that can be asked on tests and things like this. In this
class, we also did a lot of vocabulary. We lot of prefixes and suffixes of
common words so we could apply them to anywhere necessary. It really
helped knowing the parts of a word and being able to use context clues on
prior knowledge to find out what it meant. At the time, I didnt think much of

these suffixes and prefixes and thought they were pointless, but they quickly
proved to be helpful when I came to college, especially this semester.
Obviously, we read a lot of complex books in college that use big words. I
came across this in my liberal studies class: Science, Technology, and
Society. We were reading a book called The Golem at Large: What You Need
to Know About Science. With no exaggeration, this was the most confusing,
and complicated book Ive ever had to read. The fact that Id be tested on it
made me so nervous. I took the class because I thought itd be interesting,
but it quickly turned into a hard class and is the only one Im struggling with
this semester. We had to read The Golem and at first glance I really thought I
just would not be able to read the book and retain the information, but I tried
my hardest and I was able to get through it with an understanding of the
book. I caught myself stumbling across a lot of words I didnt know and these
word parts I learned in my senior year really helped me a lot. The tedious
work of writing out about three hundred fifty flash cards in my senior year
turned out to be much more helpful than I thought: which is what happens
with a lot of things we do when were younger, we take them for granted.
Throughout my life, Ive really learned a lot about reading and writing and
thinking back to it to reflect on it really made me realize that even more. Im
glad I learned all of these skills and techniques and had these building blocks
under me before I got to college because theyve all been useful in getting
me to where I am today. I never really think about how you are a culmination
of all the things you have learned and once you do think about it, its

amazing all of the things you know that make you think, read, or write the
way you do. Im thankful to have had such a rich root of education planted in
reading and writing.