RES 5535: Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (summer 2010)

Hello Everyone. My name is Michelle Moffitt. I am married and I have two teenage daughters. I have been teaching kindergarten for 14 years. I have just finished my first two semesters in the masters of reading program at ASU. I graduated from Mars Hill College with a degree in elementary education. I am a national board certified teacher and I will begin renewing my certification next year. The school I teach at is a large elementary school. We have over six hundred students in grades k-5. It is a title one school and we have a diverse population.
I love to read. I enjoy reading many different types of books. I look forward to my summer vacation so I can catch up on my reading while sitting by the pool or at the beach. I have never been a big writer, but I can usually express myself better in my writing than speaking. I do have a journal that I write in at various times in my life. I like to record important events and milestones in it. I really do not remember much about learning to read or write. I remember reading the famous Dick and Jane books early in school. I also remember writing creative stories in elementary school. My mom saved many of my stories and I was always told that I had a talent for writing creative stories. I was in the academically gifted program in elementary school and middle school and I took honors and college prep courses in high school. I guess I was a typical teenager that really did not enjoy reading and writing in middle and high school. When i finished college I began to really enjoy reading again.
I come from a working class family. My parents both worked. I stayed with my grandmother during the day and I rememberd that she read many books to me. There are several teachers in my family so I followed in their footsteps. My family is from a rural area. My grandmother is 95 years old now and she still tells the stories that she told us so long ago. Her stories have been passed down through my family for many years. She remembers childhood stories and games that were told and played when she was a child, and she has taught each of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren them. The oral traditions have been passed down through the generations.
I am looking forward to this class. We touched on dialect in one of my other classes and how certain dialects are perceived in society.

Michelle Moffitt