Throughout my 14 years of school, I’ve always been ahead in of my peers when it came to literacy. I always passed both my MSA’s and HSA’s with advanced, my lexile score was always at least two grades higher than the grade I was in, and each year I always ended English with at least a B. If it weren’t for the tools and teachers that helped me along the way, I wouldn’t be the proficient reader that I am today.
August 22nd 2000, Richmond VA. Looking back, preschool was the easiest school level to be in. The Learning Playhouse, now owned by Mrs. Milette Allison, is where I got my literacy start. The playhouse wasn’t always the big beautiful daycare that it is now. It used to be a tiny building that had six rooms.Each room was a color of the rainbow. The Red Room (the reading room), The Orange room (the lunch room), The Yellow Room (the play room), The Green Room (the lunch room) The Blue Room (the nap room), and last but not least The Purple room which were just the bathrooms. Throughout the day we’d all transition rooms depending on what time of day it was. We would always start out in the reading room. This room always reminded me of reading a book on a hill under an apple tree on a bright beautiful day. It had lots of reading posters that always had an encouraging message and smelled like warm cinnamon apple pie.
“Okay class, pick a square”. Mrs. Milette would say. “Today we’re going to read Dr. Seuss’s ABC book together”. She said cheerfully yet with a stern determined tone. Typically, every one in day care knew their ABC’s but this time we’d also have to read the words that followed the big bold letter. Reading seemed like a challenge for most kids, but with me, I excelled faster than the rest.
The following year my family and I moved to Hampton VA, to a nice area called Willow Oaks. Right up the street from my home was a catholic school called Gloria Day. I started and finished both Pre-K and Kindergarten there before we came to Maryland. There I was introduced to the book that taught me to read on my own without any assistance. 
Bob books were books that allowed pre-k through K level to master the literacy skill without any help. Every night we were required to read at least three Bob books to our parents and get a signature when we finished. Once we finished the first volume of books, we had to start the second level. As we moved on to the different levels, the reading became longer and more challenging. However, the great part about the tasks is whoever finished all five volumes of the Bob books would earn a gift card to Toys R US. Of course being one of the highest readers in my grade, I was a proud owner of the Toys Are US gift card.
In 2004 my family and I had our last move. Aberdeen MD, is where I began the first grade. The transition from two different states didn’t settle that well with me. I didn’t like my new school and because I had a high score in the reading department in Kindergarten, I was placed in a higher reading course that was pretty intimidating. Coming home from school every day with a book bag full of reading material that was hard to comprehend, began giving me head ache to the point where I no longer wanted to be in the class. However, my mom who is an educator, didn’t believe in dumbing down material because the course work was too hard. She believed that one could learn from the material if it was taught a different way. So my mother and I made flash cards, we had reading time, and we go to the library every Friday to pick out a new book. Having my mom patiently work with me to increase my reading comprehension is the reason I scored so high on all of my standardized testing in the reading category.
The process of learning how to read will determine my future because it taught me the basic ways to tackle any new task. Looking back, I see the determination it took to learn material I was very unfamiliar with, and I was able to feel and see how proud I was to earn all advanced scores and be placed higher than my peers felt. This prepares me for life because if I use the same attitude and skills that I used to learn how to read, then I can learn how to do anything in my profession in school and my career to be successful.
was your mother harder on you in school because she was a teacher?