My Spelling Story
Anonymous

ANONYMOUS: My literacy experience began when I was in the fifth or sixth grade. I can remember being transferred to an elementary school across town where the majority of students where Caucasian and I was maybe one or two percent of the population were African American and that was when I realized how poor of a speller that I was, which I still am, and for years I attended class and was very active in many activities but I was still a poor speller. In my adult life that caused me to be shy of attending college or even attempting to further my education. But one year in the summer me and my family had lunch with a doctor and he sat on the opposite side of the table and he was explaining to us how his education experience was and how he is and was a poor speller and hearing him make that comment encouraged me to return back to college, which I did. In my college experience I still struggled with writing correct sentences or even using proper English but as time went on I have developed some of the skills but I still struggle. It takes me longer to write because I have to look up some of the words and even when I'm just holding a general conversation I struggle because I was unsure of what tense to use but still to this day I have a college degree. I have a couple degrees, I have an associate degree in criminal justice and I also have a bachelor's degree in organizational management but still I know my weakness is spelling, English using correct verb terms, even sentence structures. So what do I do? I love the computer now that we have spell check but you can't always depend on that because sometimes your spelling is so poor it just doesn't recognize so I still have to revert back to using Webster's Dictionary. So wherever I go or whatever office or whatever job I hold I have to have a dictionary there and even in my career because of my poor spelling or my weakness in writing I have allowed that to be a hindrance in furthering my career. But still I do consider myself as a success because I have accomplished one of my major goals and that was getting a college education and one might ask how can one get a college education and a be a poor speller, as you still hear, I struggle. To be a poor speller I've come to realize that everybody has some kind of handicap but you don't allow your handicap to hinder you. You use the tools that you have by going to tutoring or going to your resource center and you utilize the tools that you have to accomplish you goals and that's what I have done in my life. Here today I am 52 years old and still a poor speller, I'm ok. I'm still striving to better myself in that area but I think from early on in elementary school or even in kindergarten, I think that had that foundation been laid then I could have built upon those skills. So me, I will always have a dictionary and I will always use spell check. Thank you.