Literacy Autobiography
[The literacy autobiography is a reflection on my many experiences with words and language.]
Ch.1: The Beginning (the discovery of my talent)
“So, Hannah, what is in the light blue box?” Even I didn’t know. Everyone assumed I did. I didn’t tell them otherwise because I liked the attention. We had writing time every morning in third grade. I sat myself down and started with the line, “‘Miss Hungry’ Sarah said. ‘ I know what the answer is.’” I don’t know where it came from. It just came out of me as naturally as if I were breathing onto the paper. I remember being hunched over my desk every day, diligently spurting out page after page. Twenty full pages (handwritten that is) and that was with my teacher forcing me to finish because we all had to present our books to the class. This was a work of art in my nine-year-old mind: A girl moves to the United States from England; new school, new house, new life. When they’re moving boxes into their new house, Jessie sees a light blue one which her mom quickly grabs and hides. What’s inside it? Nobody knows. Nobody ever will because to this day I don’t know where I could have gone with that plot.
It was my lower school imagination at its best. I ended up adding about fifty more pages to the story over the next few years, but did it over such a long period of time that you can see a dramatic difference in my writing from the beginning of the book to the end. I eventually gave it up. I still have it stashed away in a desk drawer in my room.
Ch.2 Telling a Story to No one (How our thoughts separate us)
Have you ever tried narrating your life in your head? I am the main character of a play that I write for myself. I’ve always thought of myself as a very dramatic person, but when I tell my friends this they seem surprised. I guess it’s mostly in my head. I play out scenes, pretend to be brave enough to do things I know I’ll never have the courage to do, and write out the dialogue in words I will never be able to say.
My friends always make fun of me because I ‘space out’ all the time. They don’t realize that I’m usually writing out a story in my head, narrating what’s happening right then, making observations about the people and things surrounding me, imagining what other people are thinking, taking a life’s worth of notes in my mind for the novel I’ll one day write, or will never write. Many times things seem more eloquent in my head and when I try to transfer the words to paper, the meaning and gracefulness gets lost in translation. It’s strange how there’s a whole other world of invisible thoughts in our minds, but there aren’t always the words to express them. We will never know exactly what someone else is thinking.
Ch.3 Diary Days (there are no rules for expression)
In fifth grade I received a pink-spiraled notebook in the mail. On the inside cover were the words, “Happy Writing, Love Grandma and Grandpa,” scribbled out on a yellow sticky note in my grandfather’s elegant cursive. Over the last four years, I’ve written everything from poems to my bat mitzvah speech in this one journal. I somehow started to write on the pages out of order so that it has turned into a collage of different Hannahs. On one page I may be the ninth grader upset because my older brother is about to go away to college, and on the next I’m an awkward little sixth grader who’s worried about fitting in at school and not failing another grammar quiz. Flipping through these pages is like going through a time capsule. It’s funny to read about some of the things I considered to be problems when I was thirteen, like fighting with my friends over some boy we’d both never talked to. It’s also upsetting to read about some of the real problems I’ve had in my life, such as the death of my grandfather. Whenever something is bothering me, I find comfort in spurting out my emotions in between the thin blue lines of the notebook paper. This is where I write selfishly without the restraints of shyness or embarrassment. I am free to write as I please. It’s important to me to have something that I do completely for myself. Writing acts as my security blanket; I use it when I need to sort out my thoughts and feelings.
I’ve tried keeping a more structured journal where I write down my daily problems on a regular basis, but I feel like it makes writing more of a habit than a form of expression. I make no rules for how to express myself, no specific format for how to show my feelings. I just let them flow out of me onto a blank page.
Ch.4 Religion (what am I really saying when I pray in Hebrew?)
After my bat mitzvah, I had a choice: I could continue on with Hebrew school and get confirmed, or I could drop it all together. I chose the latter. I became what many call a “high holiday Jew” meaning that I only set foot in a synagogue twice a year: for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I think the only reason my family bothered to go was that my mom felt like we should have some sort of religion in our lives. Last year I was sitting with my friend Maddie at Rosh Hashanah services. Our rabbi, probably one of the most long winded people in the tri-state area, stood up to make his annual speech about how we should better our lives in the coming year. My friend and I had a tradition of timing the speech on her watch to see if he beat his record from the year before for the longest sermon. We were so bored by his rambling that Maddie began to count how many times he said the word “sometimes” (it was 52 times in five minutes) and when she got bored with that, she opened up the prayer book and tried counting how many times the word “God” was written in it (about 200 times). Sitting there drowning out my surroundings, it suddenly hit me. Not a single word surrounding me- the words the rabbi was saying, the words in the prayer books, the prayers being sung by the canter and choir, the Hebrew letters scrawled out in tiny hand-written blots in the torah- none of them meant anything to me. When the rabbi’s twenty-seven minute sermon was over, and we stood up to recite a prayer together in Hebrew, I instead spent my time reading the English translation below. Why was I saying any of this? I didn’t even know if I believed in God. I felt like I had been brainwashed all these years to mindlessly recite things without questioning the meaning that lay beneath. That was the last time I set foot in a synagogue.
Ch.5 Grammar (what a 25,000 dollar education still couldn’t teach me)
I sat at my desk desperately trying to remember parts of speech. Was ‘the ball’ a direct object or an indirect object? I couldn’t remember. It had all seemed so simple in class when we wrote out sentences on the board and Ms. Jacoby pointed out what part of speech each word was and why. I found myself at odds with the structure behind these simple English sentences made up of the words I’d known my entire life. Yet somehow I couldn’t grasp how I managed to weave them into the jumbled, knotty tapestry that is the English language. Only five minutes left. Oh, what the hell, I thought. I might as well fill everything in. I underlined random words hoping that by some stroke of dumb luck I’d at least get one right.
When Ms. Jacoby handed back the white paper bleeding with red ink letters, my heart sank, my eyes started to burn, and my throat felt like someone had come up and begun to choke me. “32%” was written at the top of the page. Being the model student in lower school, I had never failed anything in my life, and I was definitely not prepared to start then. While holding back tears of disappointment, my friend Jenny, who was sitting next to me, leaned over and looked at my paper. She smiled, gave a little giggle, and shoved her paper in my face. When I saw the big red forty one written on the top of her paper, I looked up at her and out came what was halfway between a sob and a laugh. We both burst out laughing, and with that laughter, the tension in my chest eased away, the tears retreated back into my eyes, and the invisible man choking me loosened his grip on my throat. Sometimes friends can help by putting things in perspective, like making me realize that failing a thirty-point grammar quiz in sixth grade was not the end all and be all of my academic career.
Author’s Afterword
[For the author’s afterword, Mr. Franek (my English teacher) asked me to list all of my teachers from kindergarten to 10th grade, the reflect on what qualities make a good student.]
Teachers from Kindergarten to 10th grade:
Kindergarten:
English and Math: Ms. McNichol
English and Math: Ms. Anthopoulos
Science: Ms. Burtnett
Library: Mrs. Singer
First:
English and Math: Mrs. Morrow
English and Math: Mrs. McIlvaine
Science: Ms. Burtnett
Library: Mrs. Singer
Second:
English and Math: Mr. Kaesshaefer
Science: Ms. Burtnett
Library: Mrs. Singer
Third:
English, Math, and History: Ms. Dzialowski
Science: Ms. Burtnett
Library: Mrs. Singer
Fourth:
English, Math, and History: Ms. Romeu
Science: Ms. Burtnett
Library: Mrs. Singer
Fifth:
History: Mr. Rentschler
Math: Mr. Burnett
English: Ms. Aichenbaum
Science: Ms. Burtnett
Library: Mrs. Singer
Sixth:
English: Ms. Jacoby
History: Ms. O’neil
Math: Mr. Brown
Spanish: Ms. Zamora
Latin: Ms. Stowell
French: Ms. Peysson-Zeiss
Seventh:
History: Ms. Bateman
English: Mrs. Jones
Spanish: Ms. Morris
Math and Health: Mr. Phillips
Science: Ms. Michel
Religion: Ms. Judson
Eighth:
Civics: Dr. Ford
English: Mrs. Jones
Spanish: Ms. Morris
Math: Mr. Brown
Science: Ms. Michel
Choices (health): Mrs. Coombs
Ninth:
History: Mr. Zuccotti
English: Mr. Dziedzic
Spanish: Mr. Yates
Math: Mr. Sperling
Science: Dr. Klein
Foundation Arts: Mrs. Noone
Foundation Arts: Ms. Ruen
Foundation Arts: Mr. Schilling
Tenth:
History: Mr. Payton
English: Teacher Fred
Spanish: Ms. Zamora
Math: Mr. Hitschler
Science: Ms. Charry
Health: Mrs. Foley
Religion: Mr. Rickards
Physical Education:
Lower School: Mr. Erdmanis
Sixth Grade: Ms. Alexander
Eighth Grade: Mr. Mellor
Swimming: Dr. Cash
Ninth and Tenth Grades: Mr. Clarke
Band:
Middle School: Mr. Wilson
Upper School: Mr. Schilling
Chorus:
K-6th: Mrs. Kaesshaefer
7th-10th: Mr. Fitzmartin
Art:
Lower School: Mrs. Riedlmeier
Lower School: Mrs. Spadaro
Middle School: Ms. Mcgee-Barrett
Tenth Grade: Mr. Granger
Computer:
Lower School: Mrs. DeGennaro
Lower School: Mr. Miller
Middle School: Ms. Sukoneck
Upper School: Mr. Moulton
Coaches:
Basketball: Ms. Ketler
Basketball: Ms. Alexander
Soccer: Mrs. Roberts
Soccer: Mr. Brown
Track: Mr. Rentschler
Track: Mr. Fiorile
Soccer: Ms. Morris
Soccer: Steve Bean
Soccer: Coach John
Plays/Musicals:
Middle School Director: Mr. Roche
Upper School Director: Mrs. Noone
Choreographer: Paula Minacci
Three Qualities of a Great Student:
In order to be a great student, I’ve found that one needs to possess many qualities. Some of the most important ones are diligence, organization, and enthusiasm. Diligence is the ability to see the task at hand and persistently work to complete it. Organization refers to not only having all your materials in order but being able to manage time well so that everything that needs to get done is actually completed. Enthusiasm helps in general because if a student is interested in his or her work, he or she will be motivated to work harder and will be able to learn more easily.
I think that generally I am a good student, but I often fall behind on all three of these qualities because of my tendency to procrastinate. I can be diligent and get all my work done when I am pressed for time, but often I wouldn’t be pressed for time in the first place if I hadn’t procrastinated before and not kept up on my work. This year is slowly teaching me that if I keep getting in the habit of stalling on my work, I will deeply regret it later on. There is no such thing as procrastination when you are taking two AP courses and two advanced courses. I try to keep myself as organized as possible and I usually am concerning my binders and keeping track of my schedule. I do though have a problem using my time effectively, but I’m working on it.
This year I’ve been very enthusiastic about most of my courses, despite the heavy workload. I’m most excited about biology because it’s a course that I’m really interested in and I’m enjoying Doctor Lynch as a teacher. I also love doing work for English because it is the one subject that I am naturally good at and can easily succeed in. I’m often overwhelmed by the amount of work I need to do in order to do well in my classes, but in general the classes I’m in are interesting enough to make it worth the effort.
