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

Hello!

My name is Marcia Smith. I am completing my 14th year of teaching---all in 1st grade. I am also finishing up my graduate classes with this being my last one. Woo Hoo!! I am excited about having some of my family time back after I finish up in July, but I will miss parts of the program very much. This program has been a wonderful experience and has added greatly to my literacy experiences.

The earliest literacy experiences I can remember were before Kindergarten. I spent a lot of time with my grandmother when I was young and I remember her reading to me every day when we’d lay down for a nap. Like many people of my generation some of my favorites were Dr. Seuss books and the Berenstein Bears. I of course wanted her to read them to me over and over again. And of course she did because that’s what grandmas do! I also remember very well reading hymns while we sang at church. It fascinated me when I began actually matching the words I was singing to the words in print! I remember discovering to my surprise that in one particular hymn, Jesus would rescue the “perishing”, not the “parachuting”! Who would have guessed!?

At home when I was young I loved to read riddles, joke books, comic strips, poems and Encyclopedia Brown mysteries. I loved encyclopedias, too. That is where I learned to read captions and skim text for the important stuff. There was also one Childcraft book on our shelf that gave directions on how to make all sorts of things. It was my best friend for awhile. I don’t know if I had a short attention span or what the real problem was, but when I somehow got the idea (probably from my sister who read novel after novel) that what I was reading was not ‘grown up enough’ and what I should be reading was novels of some sort, I pretty much stopped reading except for what was required for school. I read what I needed to, but I didn’t love it. I was totally hooked, however, when I read The Scarlet Letter as a freshman in high school. I loved the story, but what I loved most were the discussions we had in class about the book. That was a wonderful new experience for me.

I haven’t changed much. I still love short stories, Dr. Seuss, poetry, comics and a good (but short) mystery. I don’t read many novels, because the fun part of reading something that in-depth to me is sharing and discussing what I’ve read. Since realizing this about myself, I have tried to incorporate that into my teaching. I try to provide opportunities for my students, even though they are very young, to share their literacy experiences with each other in meaningful ways. I hope I am encouraging them to build a life-long love of reading-- whatever genre they choose!

Marcia Smith