Free Literacy Narrative Essay Sample

Throughout my life, I have had a certain number of challenges to overcome in order to develop my own sense of literacy. Ever since childhood, I have had my own complicated journey to literacy that was not without its challenges. Luckily, with the help of some fantastic people who supported me, and my own hard work and dedication, I have been able to make myself into a fully literate, intellectually curious individual. I have come a long way in my short experience with literacy, and I fully expect to continue that journey throughout the rest of my life.
My parents were not big into reading growing up; they were focused much more on entertaining and feeding me, and ensuring that I had a roof over my head, than reading to me (or for their own benefit). Television was my babysitter, admittedly, as my parents would prefer to sit down in front of the TV and watch movies or the news. My parents could read and write, of course, but I got the impression they didn’t like doing it for fun very much.
Because of that, I didn’t get the head start in reading that my classmates had before I started going to school. In my first few years of school, I felt somewhat behind in my literacy, as other kindergarten students were easily able to write sentences and read children’s books, while I had to start from whole cloth. I remember being very frustrated with my inability to keep up, even though my teachers were patient and helped me as much as they could.
I remember one particularly embarrassing moment that helped show me the importance of literacy in my education. One day, while in class, the teacher asked me to read out a poem from a book before the rest of the class. When I heard my name called, I froze, just staring at my teacher without moving, unwilling to take the book from her hands to read. Within seconds, I started bawling in front of the rest of the class, as I knew that I would not be able to read it. I felt really embarrassed, as the other kids giggled and stared at me.
My teacher, however, gently took me aside to the other end of the classroom, held the book out to me gently, and told me, “Don’t worry, you can do it. You never know what you can do if you don’t try.” For whatever reason, I was moved by these words, leading me to sniffle, wipe my nose and try reading the poem. I know it took me close to fifteen minutes to read that book, and my teacher coached me quite a bit. However, by the end of that time, I got through the whole poem, and some of my other classmates actually clapped for me.
Going back home from school that day, I felt a bit of a breakthrough. If I could get through one single poem, after all, what was to stop me from doing more? I asked my parents if they could get me books, and the happily obliged. Instead of sitting and watching TV with them, I instead read next to them on the couch. Within a few months, I felt like I was catching up to my fellow students. I also started writing by the time I got into first and second grades; one of my favorite exercises was taking my children’s books from home and transcribing them in my notebooks.
`As I got braver about it, I started to rewrite their endings to give them the ending I wanted. I remember Ferdinand the Bull’s ending being changed by actually defeating the matador instead of backing out of the fight. To be fair, I know now that The Story of Ferdinand relies on that original ending for its meaning about peace and kindness, but I was still inspired by my ability to be creative.
I feel extremely satisfied with the progress I’d made since that day in kindergarten, the crying child with the poetry book. To this day, I feel very proud of the way I reacted to my own illiteracy, and the hard work I took to achieve the kind of reading skill I currently possess. I look forward to improving my reading and writing skills throughout the years, hopefully to the point where I can feel comfortable enough writing original fiction on my own and showing it to others. For now, though, I very much appreciate the position I am in, and look forward to everything I still have to learn.