A Literacy Rambling
McMillan, Meredith (2009-04-23)

>>MEREDITH: My literacy story started during my younger years of childhood. I don't remember much around the years of about 2 to 4. But I do remember my parents would read to me every night and sing to me every night, and a lot of the songs that they sang, and this usually came from my mother, she would sing Baptist hymns because I grew up Baptist, but she would also read stories and books to me. I remember some of them were Goodnight Moon, the Peter Rabbit stories, Dr. Seuss, I'll Love you Forever, Thomas' Snow Suit which I actually performed as a story telling piece in high school. I loved that story to death. 

My grandparents bought me books for every special occasion, which usually made us happy. Sometimes we'd want more fun gadgets and things of that nature, but for every special occasion we got a book. I think I had every book in the Madeleine series, which were stories about little girls that lived in an orphanage. And I thought it was so glamorous and I wanted to live that life in the orphanage and London with them. Now I realize that life probably wasn't so glamorous, but I thought it was because it took me into a world that I had never known before. 

As far as writing goes, and when I try to recall these memories, sometimes I'm a little disturbed because it's hard to remember. But I remember in my fifth grade is when I really started to enjoy writing. I just really wrote for myself, not worrying about an audience and who was seeing it. And I think I learned that value from free writing. And we actually did that when I was in fifth grade. I was in an upper level writing class, I think it was sixth grade level, and we would do free writing every day at the beginning of class.

And I don't remember if we had prompts or if we just sort of wrote about how we felt that day. But I do remember writing one story in particular about Snow White and how I wanted to be Snow White, assume her identity, and look like her and change my name and be this very fair complexion, dark haired fairy tale character. And from then on I really started writing all the time. 

I wrote my own speeches when i was running for student council in elementary school and I thought I was so powerful through the speeches. I remember my sixth grade speech started  off with a quote from Forest Gump, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get", and then of course I went on to say, well with me you're going to get a great student council secretary or whatever it was.

But I just thought these words are so powerful. And I talked about things like recess and changing cafeteria menus, but by writing my own speech and delivering it to quite a large audience because I went to a big school, I really started to value writing. And then in sixth grade they asked me to write the sixth grade graduation speech and I mean that just boosted my ego like none other.

And then I kept writing. I participated in Odyssey of the Mind in eighth grade and I wrote the script for our performance. And it all rhymed and I just thought it was wonderful. And I just continued to write it from there. Another thing that I think really contributed to my literacy was, and this might be an unconventional device, but I had a hand-held wheel of fortune game. And I just thought it was the greatest thing in the world. 

And I did read a lot of books at night. I did read the Goosebumps series and some Sweet Value high books, the Boxcar Children, the Babysitter's Club. But I really, really loved that Wheel of Fortune game and I would play it at night and my parents would come in because they could hear the sounds of the wheel of spinning and the letters lighting up and the clapping from the audience and they would tell me to turn it off. It was time to go to bed. But I loved playing that game and I loved putting those letters together to form words that I did not know and phrases. And I really do think that was just as important to me as reading was, and writing.

But I really think my story; I mean it still continues on. I still love to write and read. And most of the things I love to read and write are non-fiction. And a lot of the writing that I do now is academic for school but I really think those formative years of my childhood were what lead me to become literate and to really value reading and writing as I do today.