Amarillo

It's that feeling you get when you run up a very large hill to the top and can see for miles. It's that moment of self-discovery when you desire to run around and scream. You want to be in a million places at a million different times. It's the EUREKA moment that I experience quite frequently. I had it, as you may recall, yesterday. Now I'm on this bloggie think where I write down my crazy ideas for people like you to fathom and laugh at me for.


So anyway, to my dismay, I found out my lovely parental unit decided to read my blog. HOW EMBARASSING. I referred to myself as "my dad's little meechy." I will never be allowed to live this one down. My mom just caught me off guard when I walked in the door after work, and she was all like "guitzalitza" is also Hungarian. I just thought to myself "oh-freakin-no-way" "They read my blog." However, in a way, the mental torment of them constantly telling me old stories for the billionth time and being proud to have a daughter who is seeking to embrace her heritage are all worth it for the information I will actually gather from them. I just hope with every ounce of anything I am that is substantinal that they do not parade around my blog at family functions. I don't wish to be the center of Christmas party discussions. I prefer to be the wallflower in the back who wears good clothes and looks pretty.


I will keep my hard work to myself and refuse to discuss the contents of this blog, for I have this lingering little feeling that I am going to encounter a multitude of obstacles...


So, you are all DYING to know...where did I get to today? Well, I'll tell you where...absolutely the middle of nothing, zero, zilch, null.


However, I did encounter some great websites that present to the public some digital history:


http://braceroarchive.org/


Digital history is really fascinating to me. It is the future of everything, and I enjoy flipping through pictures of people I don't know, their stories, and trying to form an argument about the way they lived in my head.


I can tell you there are no sources out there with this much pizzazz on the Mariel Boat Lift of 1980. What I have discovered so far is a 1 cubic foot box of photos located in an archive out in Lacrosse, and some oral history interviews which my advisor has notified me of. I can't wait to grab a hold of these precious pieces of the past. Maybe one day I can create a digital history source revolved around my senior thesis. One can only hope.


So anyway, I am stuck here reflecting on my past. On how embarrassed I am that my parents read my blog.


With that, if you have time, please allow me to embarass myself a bit more. Go ahead read my literacy autobiography. I hope it gives you a sense of how I write, why I write, and why projects like this senior thesis of mine on Cuba and America has grown so fascinating to me:



Spiral, Twist, Explode! With Literacy

I wish that within my collection of vivid memories there was some dazzling story about the day I became literate. I wish I could explain I was a child of 5 years because five is a more advanced age to start reading than the typical six. With that, my brilliant story would go a little like this: one fateful day, after months of practicing the alphabet, moving on to phonics, and eventually words, I finally open to the first page of the classic book Dick and Jane. At this point, I open my mouth and allow my brain to interpret the meaningful symbols written on the first page, thus producing the sounds required to say “This is Dick.” From this moment, I continue flipping through the book’s entirety until I mutter the last word on the last page. Now is when I jump up with glee from my seat and shout throughout the house, “I know how to read!” Perhaps my mother would even go as far as to create a display case in the living room that details the exact date, time and how long it took me to read Dick and Jane. Yet, disappointingly enough to me, memories just don’t work out this way. Instead, my case is much simpler than this. I uphold nothing other than a boring, typical story about my coming to terms with literacy. I don’t really remember it. It’s just a big blurry concoction of several moments twisted up and down from side to side.

In actuality, I recall sitting at our nineties caramel colored, wicker kitchen table with a pair of my favorite yellow monkey scissors, a Bic blue ballpoint pen, and some scraps of paper I had cut-out. Upon these mangled scraps my nimble little fingers gripped the pen and etched writing in cursive lettering, resulting in a series of connected “M’s.” At my age of four, I was convinced that about ten “M’s” in a row spelt my name, Michelle, and so at this point, I was persuaded of my own literacy. The fact that I thought I could interpret a series of symbols meant that I understood the convention of reading and writing, but I hadn’t quite achieved literacy.

This memory continues to be my first concerning literacy. From this carefree point of my life, I entered into a world spiraling, twisting, and exploding with books of all shapes and sizes. They began to float through my mind, words spun through the depths of my brain, and pens accompanied with paper scattered around my world.

Naturally, as is true with most peoples’ development of literacy, this familiarity began during formal training within the confines of brick elementary school walls. My teachers would spit out instructions concerning how I was to go about reading, or how I was to go about writing, and as one of many students, I would gladly memorize and regurgitate it. In all honesty, I would prefer to point out that I was never bubbling with excitement about learning to read. For example, in first grade, our teacher asked us to share what we wanted to learn most over the course of the year. Literally every single student with the exception of myself and maybe one other boy declared: “I want to learn how to read.” What was my expectation? “I want to learn about nature.” Really? Did I have to be that different? Would this simple goal of mine in the first grade that seemingly ignored the importance of reading, writing, and literacy forever impact my impending future?

What I didn’t realize, at that time, was the fact that to fully learn about nature, I needed to become literate. My idea of reading and writing would come back to haunt me intermittently throughout my learning career. I conceptualized these practices as something to be strictly learned and thought it was most important to be the best at it, remaining completely blind to what I could let soak into my young soul. I just wanted to look smart. Therefore, I never grasped the enjoyment a book could bring. So, when my class would read wonderful non-fiction like Mr. Pauper’s Penguins or The Series of Unfortunate Events, all I wanted to do was sit in class and scan the pages as fast as I could. I wasn’t interested in the life of Mr. Pauper or his penguins, and Lemony Snickett never became my friend. I only strived to be the best reader, and my little mind believed that fast readers were best. However, the fact was, those who took their time and actually enjoyed the stories within what they read were the best; they were literate.

For the longest time, I would continue on with my determination to become a speed reader. Take, for example, the second grade, we were forced into nightly reading of fifteen minutes each, to be documented on a monthly calendar. Now this was just about the worst assignment any teacher could assign a speed reader wannabe. I would sit and try, try, try so hard to actually enjoy what I was reading, but my mind was in the clouds, content on dreaming about far off places, places anywhere else than those within the structure of the book sprawled open on my lap. I read to get through the pages, interpreted the symbols but never what they meant.

Upon reflection, my desire to be a fast reader was among other influences that deterred my desire to read for content. I used to plop down the stairs to our creaky, dark, spooky basement. I’d walk over to our meagerly filled, antique hand-painted bookshelf to place my young fingers on the spine of some dusty old book, and slide it off the shelf, only to find a title none of my classmates ever heard of, let alone their grandparents.

Growing up working-class, with a pair of antique obsessive parents, I did not have easy access to the works of all the authors my classmates were enthralled with. I could never read Eric Carle, Beverly Cleary, or Judy Blume. Instead, I read over and over Susie the Squirrel or Never Tease a Weasel that contained explicitly cheesy 1950’s moralistic lessons. With no other options at hand, I chose to just deal with what I had, and at the end of the month bring my fifteen minute a day reading calendar to my mom. She would willingly sign each blank with her initials to declare to my teacher that yes, in fact, I did read. Yet, at this point, I never did. I continued to fake it.

Regardless of just feeling insecure, out-of-the-loop, and lame due to my limited access of books, I still constantly sought to be the smartest. Somehow, unbeknownst to me, I was a part of the gifted and talented program in elementary school. The unconventionality of my childhood, and attempts to look smart by speed reading, really allowed for my placement in these programs. The old books or lack of books in general that I had to read, required me to create stories and worlds within my own head. Instead of looking to authors for inspiration, I came up with detailed daydreams and imagined various life scenarios. By pairing this practice of mine with the appearance of being a fast reader, I could easily slide through the typical cracks of what shapes students to become literate It always seemed like I wore some mask that officially labeled me and allowed me to take on many feelings of superiority. I could feel the need to skip reading all together, and did for several years.
Eventually, an even more amplified version of fifteen minute nightly readings appeared, the dreaded, the hated, the things which I loathed so entirely, AR points: accelerated reader points. This was a system in which every student was required to accrue a specific amount of AR points at the end of each grading period. To gather the needed amount, I had to read books from the school library and then take computerized comprehension tests to assess whether or not they read the book. I recall being so overly anxiety-driven about these tests. My teacher would call out during free reading time that students who needed AR points could head to the library to check out whatever literature was worthy of being a part of the system. Naturally, I would lift myself up out of my seat, walk down the tiled floor hallways, and enter the library bursting with books. Of course, approximately only ten-percent of the thousands of books were AR point books, so I had to search, dig, and suffer through migraine-like headaches to find a book I actually liked. I recall dreadfully boring titles including: A Wrinkle in Time or The Chronicles of Narnia. Consequently, to spark my interest, I checked-out every book with which there was a movie remake of, and apparently there were enough of these books within the AR system to just let me slide by. It is obvious that even my 6th, 7th, or 8th grade self could realize AR points were contingent upon reading for the sake of reading, and I became determined to recognize and exploit the flaws of the system. This was when I began to realize that reading was worth more than points. It was about more than being the first to finish a book.

Now thankfully, I overcame my anxiety post-middle school through a lot of determination and hard work. Happily, AR points weren’t a complete whirling black hole within my memory of literacy. Instead, they taught me I couldn’t achieve intelligence by covering up my insecurities and remaining lazy. Sooner or later, I felt guilt. I would get off the bus with a backpack containing a day’s worth of homework, walk up the street, to my front door. Here, I entered the living room, and headed to the kitchen table. Now, I would plop myself down, scruffle out all my assignment sheets and reading, scramble, and finish within fifteen minutes. After this daily routine, I’d flail out in front of the electric box of a T.V. to watch pointless programs about family dramas and everything unenlightening until bed. Overtime, I realized I had to wake up, smell the roses, and put in hours of hard, hard work, but I was so far behind. It is true: T.V. rot my brain.

So, in high school I did it; I finally began to read again. With this chance to turn a new leaf, I read textbooks, the stories we were assigned and became determined to no longer live a lie. There was only one problem; my reading comprehension was nonexistent. It seemed impossible for me to remember anything that I read. I tried, and tried, and tried, but it was one of the biggest struggles of my life. In addition, I didn’t want to ask my parents or teachers for help because I was always labeled as being “gifted and talented.” That would have just been a complete embarrassment. So, I would once again enter our creaky, creepy basement. With book in hand, I read everything out loud to myself. I remember pronouncing, all the phonemes, words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, books, and upon finishing had such a sore, scratched, fatigued voice. Regardless of its difficulty, I was dedicated to this strategy; it was the only way.

In addition to improving my reading, I also focused on mending my non-existent writing skills. As was the case with my reading out loud, I learned to compensate for my writing in a similar fashion. For high school essay assignments, I would attempt to twist the words of other author’s in order to write what I thought sounded intelligent. I can vividly recall going onto Google, typing my topic into the search box, and then copying and pasting an author’s work into a word document, where I would attempt to rewrite and make my own work sound similar. This was a lengthy, difficult process, but it propelled me to become a cohesive writer. Eventually, I didn’t need to utilize these aides I created for myself.

After a couple of years of this self-prescribed reading and writing remedy of mine, I began the most important moment of my literacy career. It hit me with a huge punch. My quest for knowledge and literacy would finally coincide. It was senior year, contemporary communication arts class with Mr. Penn. I was seventeen and we were assigned to read a book entitled Kaffir Boy. Prior to choosing this course, I would see students carry this book through the hallways, and the picture of a saddening African boy on the front cover always made me question how such a discontented face could exist in the world.

Then I opened the book, began reading, and my world was twisted upside down, shaken 60,000 times, and forever changed. This book about a boy, Mark Mathabane, growing up in Apartheid South Africa, marked the fever-pitch of my life: I finally identified the importance of literacy. His story chronicles his own struggles with literacy that were far more dreadful and significant than my own. It goes on to explain how reading, writing, and knowledge of the world eventually sparked his success. With my jaw permanently dropped, I finished this book in two days which was a record for me, and I wrote the accompanying essay with ease.

On the whole, my literacy career is not ideal. I didn’t start with a triumphant moment, but the fact that it came about later in my life through reading Kaffir Boy speaks volumes. Eventually, as I have begun to study the teaching profession, part of my decision to continue down this career path is to inspire all my students to experience a similar shining literacy moment. Whether it occurs for them at age 6 or 17, the ability to read and write is a value like nothing else in this world.

I realize that achieving literacy was a result of my own independence and determination. From this, it is incumbent upon me to suggest that all students grasp literacy in a different fashion because all students are different. As a future teacher I will poke, prod, inspire, and work hard to understand what interests my diverse students. With this knowledge, I can warp my curriculum to suit their individual needs and communicate the value of literacy. That way, they will be able to discover through their own will, the value of reading and writing: the value of literacy. Their world will spiral, twist, and explode with literacy.


Adios Amigos!



Michelley