Literacy Narrative outline- Ms Carr

 

My first word was “newsweek” my mom says I saw it and read it off the cover of one of Dad’s magazine covers.

 

My favorite book when I was young was “Goodnight Moon”

 

I don’t have many memories of those rudimentary reading books like “Dick and Jane” or “See Spot Run” but some memories of my father tucking me in at night and reading to me in efforts to create a bedtime routine and take my mind off my mother not living with us anymore.

The series books of my time were “Goosebumps” “Baby Sitters Club” and “Sweet Valley High” for example. I had a few of those last ones, but the series books didn’t interest me that much as the characters weren’t relatable: they tended to be about privileged white people with trivial problems. And I didn’t like horror or mystery so the title alone of the Goosebumps books were a turn off.

 

My parents are big readers in their own right. My mom was never without a book and always had big hard cover books by such authors as M Scott Peck and Sue Grafton. Whereas my father wasn’t huge into reading books/literature but without fail, every morning I would find my father reading the New York Times at the breakfast table and at various points throughout the day. It helped having countless issues in the house for current events projects in school.

But no one was more influential than Ms Morelli, my 9^th and 10^th grade English teacher. She’s the sole reason why I have pursued a teaching career specifically in English and why I work so hard at my job and believe in what I do. She is, was, and will always be, the archetype for English teaching for me. And despite our visible differences, while I was in high school, she was everything I wanted to be in a young woman and young adult: well read, intelligent, fair, well traveled, in touch with her students, multi lingual, funny, compassionate, and very successful in her job. We girls loved Ms Morelli. I especially adored her and loved English class. Prior to Ms Morelli my favorite subjects in school were gym and lunch. My life revolved around sports and eating. I didn’t mind reading at all, I had countless books at home and did fairly well in English/Language Arts, but I would rather be running or chasing a ball and eating a huge meal 97% of the time. Once my father found me behind one of his “Newsweek” magazines and was quite impressed with my initiative to pick one up and educate myself about current events and the world around me. He asked me WHAT I was reading, and it was an article about the newly formed WNBA and women in sports… He then said to me, “you do know there’s more to life than sports…” and I said, yes I know, and kept right on reading. In recalling this memory, he failed to see that in reading about women in sports I was actually educating myself on the topic instead of flipping through pictures of female athletes. But meeting Ms Morelli in 9^th grade English really introduced me to the importance of words on a page and how teachers can impact lives in ways we are totally unaware and completely unsuspecting.