RE_5539

i found this chapter of the book to be fascinating. i immediately began to reflect on my own life as a child. i thought about how caregivers, social experiences and strands of one's life history play such a tremendous role in our literacy life. then i begin to think about my parents and their experiences...and jake and lee ann and their parent's experiences...and what about sean and terry...and then i went back in my mind to the skin we speak book...everyone's moments in life from birth form their future literacy. wow, how huge and profound. gender is learned. race is learned. class is learned. everything is learned from our environment.

first i remembered stories from my mom about her experiences growing up i the bronx of ny. she was born in 1943. in school she had friends from everywhere...they were black, german, polish, irish, british, italian...you name it, they were her friends. she learned how to make food from different countries. she went to the met. museum, broadway plays, and brooklyn dodger games. such culture! how exciting. i would ask her to repeat their last names in her annual because i found them so interesting. she was an only child, living in a middle class working family. is that why i always desire children from different cultures in my kindergarten classroom? is that why i find them so exciting to teach? is that why i want children to experience different kinds of people?

my father was born in 1914...no, that's not an error. my parents were thirty years apart in age. he grew up in an old shack in sc. when he was in the second grade, he had to drop out of school in order to start working in the tobacco fields and cotton fields. his father ran off and left his mom with eight children. so impoverished...is that why i tend to have close contact with social services when i feel a child is living below standards...in risky situations.

growing up with parents that are 30 years apart was not an easy task. i have two siblings...im the middle child...with an older sister and younger brother. my father built a company...he was determined to make it. however he expected perfection from his children. as my sister and brother discuss the past, we often talk about how hard it was to be perfect for our dad...it was hard! and he expected mom to do the cooking and cleaning and the taking care of children. is that why i feel that i have to be the perfect wife and mother and have a career?

i also reflected on a student that i had last year that was verbally and physically abused by his mother and then abandoned. he has a separation/attachment disorder. if my father pushed and pushed and pushed his children to the point where all three of us will work ourselves until we are sick, then what will happen to this boy that just assumes that everyone will leave him because he is worthless?

then i began to think about other things that play a role in the strands of our life histories. i noticed growing up that my sister was pushed much more harshly than i was. my brother was the baby but the only boy! my father expected him to be the perfect athlete, the perfect student the perfect son. and then there was me. i had such a hard time reading...my saving grace was my mother who desperately tried to get help for me. i was expected to make it...so i did. does birth order play a role in our histories? when we have a siblings in our classroom often they come with their our identity...own literacy.

and finally i thought about the age difference of my parents. perhaps it wouldnt have been so tough if my father hadnt had such an impoverished life, but we had three generations living in one house. and im not talking about having a grandfather or grandmother living at home. i mean, my father was older than my mothers dad! he was the head of the house! you could never wear shoes without socks and tank tops were not allowed even if it was 110 degrees outside. did that make me more able to communicate with people of all ages? do students that do not have grandparents have less social experiences with people older than their parents?

wow, great chapter...loved it!
donna byrd-wyatt