Sherrie Jones
October 1, 2004
Intellectual Autobiography
It is amazing what a large impact literacy has had on my life. I have been through many changes in my life some small, some big. The one thing that has never changed is my love of reading. From the reading I have to do in daily life to getting lost in a new novel of choice, reading is a part of most moments of my day.
My earliest literacy memory is my mom reading to me There’s a Monster at the End of This Book, a little golden book starring my favorite Sesame Street character, Grover. Not only did my mom read it to me many times each day, but she read the book using her “Grover voice”. She then proceeded to use my favorite stuff animal, Grover, as a puppet who climbed the long ladder to the top bunk of my bunk beds. Grover of course was very dramatic falling down when he almost reached the top and he had to start over. It became a bedtime ritual to tuck me in and Grover, too. Unfortunately, my mom forgot to share the “Grover voice” with my first babysitter, Michelle. She called my mom in tears trying to figure out why I was telling her she wasn’t reading the book correctly. Michelle survived the event and went on to be the world’s best babysitter. We would read fairy tales and design paper grocery bag costumes to resemble the characters. We would then use my records of the fairy tales to act out the stories. Little Red Riding Hood was my favorite. My father joined every child’s book club imaginable from Dr. Suess to Sweet Pickles. He stocked every bookshelf in our home with exciting children’s literature. My parents read often and read to me every chance they got. It comes then as no surprise that I began “reading” (memorizing books) before I entered school.
Not everyone read to me however, my grandmother liked to lay in bed with me and tell me stories. I didn’t realize until I was an adult that she was not a good reader and therefore being a storyteller was much easier for her. The stories she told were often spin offs of familiar fairy tales I knew. I loved them and I thought how cool it was that she could tell me a story without a book. I look back now at my grandmother’s life and realize that she was an incredible woman. She did not finish school and went to work at an early age, very common during the time. In the years before she passed away she spent a lot of time reading. She took what she knew and just kept building on it. She taught herself, with help from my mom, to be a better reader and truly treasured the accomplishment in her last years of life.
I remember attending half-day preschool and kindergarten and loving it, but I do not remember literacy being part of things. I remember my first grade teacher, Mrs. Matthews reading to us after lunch as we sat on a large rug. I remember giving speeches in second grade and reading basal books in third grade. In fourth grade I got glasses, the first in my class. Reading was the only time I didn’t have to wear them. I remember a green phonics workbook in elementary school, but in all I have few memories of the teaching style used. I remember reading a story during my intermediate years in school out of a blue basal about a child getting stuck outside in a tornado. I learned the word flashback in that story. I wonder if the memories are vague because reading came very easy for me. I loved to read and I don’t remember any struggles during my early school experience.
During my elementary school years I would play teacher like so many kids do. I loved when teachers would give away textbooks and old worksheets at the end of the year. In my house, school was a year round thing and I loved to play the role of stuffed animal teacher. I lined them up and taught them about the world. Throughout my elementary years I met some great people. Ramona Quimby, Peter and Fudge Hatcher, and Laura Ingalls became real people to me. Later on Judy Blume became my favorite writer and it wasn’t until eighth or ninth grade that required reading for school became an unpleasant thing. We had to read Julius Caesar, the Latin version, and I just didn’t get it. We learned about mythology and it just didn’t excite me. It may have been our teacher, with her red hair and unshaven legs (the hair was so long it came through her pantyhose), she was as boring as boring could get. That is the year I discovered Cliff Notes. I also discovered romance stories, the Teen Silhouette Collection. They managed to keep my love of reading alive, despite the books I had to read for school.
Academically high school was not enjoyable for me and upon entering college I planned to double major in psychology and criminal justice. Although I didn’t dread school, the love for learning I had in elementary and middle school was long gone. It was not until the summer of my freshman year that I rediscovered my joy of learning and teaching. I spent the summer with a group of kindergarten, first and second grade students at La Petite Academy. They had been through several teachers. My job was to tame them and make their summer enjoyable. It took all summer, but they were the best group at that daycare. I loved them as much as they loved me. That fall I applied for a change in my major to elementary education. When I made the phone call home to inform my parents that getting my degree would not only now take an extra year, but also be taking a completely different path, I feared the worst. My mom reacted with “I knew you would become a teacher, even when you were little”.
I enjoyed my classes in college and student teaching, but it wasn’t until my first year of teaching that I fell in love with teaching literacy. I ended up with a job teaching kindergarten at an Equity Plus II school in Charlotte Mecklenburg. Most of the students were poor and came from rough homes. Thanks to my summer experience with the daycare group, classroom management and discipline was a snap. My college concentration was in math, so although there were no math textbooks for kindergarten at my school I managed well. However, I didn’t know how to teach kids to read. It was then that Cathy Capps, the angel of literacy, appeared in my life. She was the literacy facilitator at our school and had taught kindergarten through third grade. She helped me to establish a wonderful balanced literacy program in my classroom. I loved watching her model techniques for me. She was amazing with the students and I took notes on her every move.
With practice, prayers, and constant professional reading I managed to become a good reading teacher. I completed the National Boards for Professional Teaching Standards in the spring of 2000 and my favorite entry was the literacy one. I loved to look at students’ samples and based appropriate mini-lessons to take students to the next level. In the spring of 2002 I decided to begin pursuing my masters in reading education.
Teaching is the most wonderful job in the world and I am fortunate to have such young minds entering my door each day. They are so eager to learn and they take every little bit and soak it up like a sponge. It is amazing that they enter as young preschoolers with only exposure to print and leave readers and writers. My biggest goal each year is to help each and every child see themselves as a reader and writer no matter where they are at in their learning. I just hope that their love of learning will continue to flourish as they grow and move throughout their school career.
I am not only a teacher, I am a mother too. I am now the one who curls up each night with my daughter to read stories in entertaining voices. She has her favorites and loves our weekly trips to the library. As both a teacher and mother I am able to daily share my love of reading. It is a priceless gift that both my daughter and my students will have for the rest of their lives. One day they will pass down this gift just like my grandma, mother, father, and teachers passed the gift down to me.