Reflective Essay: My Literacy In The Classroom

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Literacy is defined as the ability to read and write. As a child, I was never the type to want to read, much less write. Spanish, being my first language, I always felt intimidated by the words like they would come out and bite me if I pronounced them wrong. I am the second child in a family of 9, but what would have been 11; having so many siblings, my mother never really had much time to teach me many things. I was surrounded by overwhelmingly Hispanic culture and language. As I did learn English I realized it was never going to be easy for me given my circumstances. As a baby, television shows were my life. My mother would plop me down in my crib right in front of the TV and turn on Dora The Explorer for me to mindlessly consume information as she waddled over to the kitchen with her pregnant belly to cook for my father before he got home. Regardless of all the English, I might have been learning from TV shows, all that was really used around my house was Spanish. My parents immigrated from Costa Rica right after they got married in the year 1990 at the age of 23, not having finished college, …show more content…
My freshman year I had the best English teacher I’ve ever had, Ms. Torres. Ms. Torres was the first teacher to actually sit me down and teach me how to write proper sentences and how to construct essays. Unfortunately, the rest of my time in high school was not like that at all. My sophomore, junior, and senior years in English classes were spent listening to teachers talk at me instead of talking to me. Up until high school I had never really read a book on my own and without help, I was the only person from my group of friends that didn’t read any of the Harry Potter books; I felt like an outcast. The first book I’d ever read was Sarah Dessen’s Lock and Key at the age of

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