My Story
Pope, Sarah

>>SARAH: My name is Sarah Pope and I'm with the Bisti Writing Project in the Four Corners of New Mexico. My job is in the library at Bloomfield High School; I coordinate gifted services for high school students and reading has always been a part of my life. I learned to read when I was five; my dad sat me down at the kitchen table with "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" and we went through "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" and after that I didn't know the words and the kitchen light got really, really hot and my dad let me struggle until I passed the hard parts and after I had passed the hard parts one time I could go back and it came easy and then the magic of reading was mine. I've encouraged my own two children to read. My three step children are big readers. Working in a library I have watched especially our Native American population come to the library daily; they're our biggest population before school and after school getting reading materials for weekends and vacations. Even the nonreaders, they will check out "Manga", one of our young men read "Manga" a lot as a ninth and tenth grader and by eleventh grade he was reading novels. So it just made everyone very proud and so I think the more people that read, the more people that will write, and the more people write, the more they will read.