Karr 1

!
Kayla Karr
Professor Rebecca Agosta
UWRT 1101
1 October 2015
My Literacy Memoir
When I was in fourth grade I was given the opportunity to compete in the school-wide
spelling that fourth and fifth graders participated in. My mom and I would practice the list of
words I was provided every night before going to bed. She would call out a word and I would
spell it. Spell neighbor. Neighbor. N-e-i-g-h-b-o-r. Neighbor. For three weeks practicing
these words was all I could think about. The day of the spelling bee came quicker than I had
thought it would. I was up on stage with 12 other fourth and fifth grade students, clammy hands
and butterflies in our stomachs. The other students began to wither down, and by the end it came
down to me and one of the fifth graders. We went back and forth for a few rounds before I
received a word I wasnt too familiar with. The word was pumpernickel, yet the woman calling
out the words pronounced it puppernickel. I spelled the word exactly the way the woman said
it. Of course, I missed it and the fifth grader spelled the word correctly, winning the Belmont
Central Elementary School Spelling Bee of 2007. This incident shows that a lot of people do not
pronounce words in the way that they are intended to be. If the woman would have pronounced
the m in pumpernickel, I would have been able to sound the word out and gotten it right. To
this day I am upset that because of this woman I got first runner up in a competition that I easily
should have won. All of the time I spent practicing those words definitely increased my literacy
in that I learned how to accurately spell a lot of words, as well as increase my vocabulary. If I

Karr 2
!
was learning to spell a word I had never heard of before, I would look up its definition,
broadening my knowledge of words. Spelling bees are a tradition that most elementary and
middle schools have. From the spelling bees at school, winners can go to the county, state, and
even nation wide level. The knowledge of the English language and knowing how to spell those
words is very important in being able to succeed in American culture. Because spelling bees are
particularly done by Britain and America, it makes this practice specific to primarily the English
speaking community. Every job in America requires some type of ability to spell and read, but a
lot of jobs want intelligent workers, so learning how to spell words through spelling bees as well
as spelling tests in the younger grades will increase our chances of achieve great things in life.
Though I began playing volleyball in fifth grade, I did not become fluent in the
knowledge of the sport until tenth grade when my team got a new coach, Coach Dimmitt. During
the summer before the season started I took private lessons from her to increase my abilities to
where she expected them to be if I wanted to be on varsity. Having the access of money to pay
for these lessons and the opportunity to take them was an advantage in my volleyball career.
Although I had been playing the sport for four years, we started from scratch in learning the
proper way she wanted me to serve, to hit, to do everything. At first I thought it was stupid,
having to re-learn the correct hitting form, but once I got to the level where I was actually hitting,
I saw an immediate difference. I was able to have much more control and could hit the ball even
harder without it going out of bounds often like in my freshman season. I felt like a whole new
player. Because of all this extra practice and better understanding of the game of volleyball, I
was rewarded with getting to start in all of the games the rest of my high school career.

Karr 3
!
My senior year of volleyball I was given an entirely new challenge. My coach was
moving me to the setters position. Sure, I was able to set the ball, but I did not know how much
work it was going to be in having to be the quarterback of volleyball on the court. Being a
setter you have to be the loudest player on the court because you have to tell the passers where
you are so they will pass it to you and tell the hitters who you are setting the ball to. You also
have to be the smartest player on the team. Who should I set it to/who is the most able to get a
point off of this set? If we are down a few points, should I just dump the ball over and get the
point myself or should I trust that the hitters can do it? Setting requires a lot of knowledge and
communication in volleyball. When I first began to play volleyball I was pretty quiet and did not
do much talking on the court. Volleyball demands communication - if you do not communicate
you cannot succeed. I quickly learned that when Coach Dimmitt arrived. I consider her to be the
most important sponsor in my volleyball career, and a sponsor in my regular life, too. She is the
toughest coach Ive ever known, pushing me to my limits because her expectations of me were
through the roof. She named me captain of the team my senior year, leaving me to lead the team
not only on the court but off the court. We werent just your normal volleyball team that went to
practice and played in games. We all had responsibilities we had to uphold and rules that were to
be followed. If those responsibilities and rules were not executed, the seniors would be the ones
to blame. I learned from her that I had to be a leader and make sure everyone was doing what
they were supposed to, increasing my vocational skills from being a shy and quiet girl to being
able to lead an entire group of varsity and junior varsity girls. This new found confidence Coach
Dimmitt brought out in me has and will continue to allow me to succeed in social contexts as
well as being a leader in school while working in groups in class.

Karr 4
!
In my sophomore year of high school my AP Prep English we had to write an
essay with the prompt, Why is my voice important? This essay involved several drafts,
with our final draft having to be presented in front of the class. Writing this essay was one
of the hardest essays ever. Wondering why my voice is important and having to explain it
in a six page essay was not easy at all. Being graded on presentation was also very
difficult because she expected us to basically memorize our essays and recite them. Did I
mention this was hard? During each draft we had peer editing, just like what we have
practiced in UWRT 1101. My peers would do exactly what Straub didnt want us to do they just wrote a couple things that were very vague. They never went into depth about
what I needed to fix. So basically I had to peer edit my own paper to make my essay
better. It seems that in our culture today we are scared of what others think about what we
say so we dont say everything we need to. So when I had access to my peers to be able
to give me feedback, they either didnt wanna be mean or didnt want to put any effort
into it. It was most likely the latter that held them back from giving me good responses.
After all of the changes to my essay I made throughout my drafting process, I began to
realize that my voice really is important. What I say and write is always going to matter
to someone affecting them in some way. My teacher, Mrs. Hord, serves as a sponsor here
in making me recognize that my voice is essential. What I have learned in my literacy
journey, through the all the different school events, increasing my knowledge of
volleyball, and just speaking to other people, is that everything I have done up to this
point has shaped who I am as a reader, writer, and communicator today.