Young+Adult+Lit+Reading+Memoir

====//**Context:** One of our first "mini-projects" was to create a multi-modal memoir about our history as readers and writers. I chose to make a movie to supplement my actual written text. As you can see below, my actual memoir is divided into two sections. I found as I completed this assignment that encompassing my history as a reader and a writer was more difficult than I expected. As I have reviewed my memoir, I now know that the difficulty presented itself not because of the assignment, but because of the history I have with reading and writing. //====

Multi-Modal Presentation
 media type="file" key="YA Multi 3.mov" width="300" height="300"

Reading Memoir
There are two parts of my reading memoir, and there is a definitive link between the two. I had a very difficult time choosing between which one to use as this part of my portfolio, so I decided to showcase both. The column on the right, in blue, is a very low point in my life that turned into a positive, and the column on the left, in green, is the effect of my experience in high school.
 * I really do not have a “definitive” moment in my life where I remember starting to read. Reading was like walking to me – I don’t ever remember not doing it. However, I did have an epiphany at the age of 18 when I realized what I should do with my professional life and it revolved around reading and writing. I guess that most of my teachers in middle school and high school didn’t really notice or hone in on the fact that I forever had my nose in a book. (My 11th grade English teacher actually yelled at me for reading a book in class.) I had always read, but it never dawned on me to even consider being an English major, that is until I started my first English class in college.

I came to Gardner-Webb dead set on being an elementary school teacher. I had worked in a pre-school with the kindergarten class my entire senior year of high school and loved it. However, I quickly learned that elementary school children for eight hours a day was not exactly my cup of tea, so I was out on the hunt for a new major. I had Dr. Land in Composition 101, and every class we had a reading assignment due with a reflection. I soon realized, and learned, that I was really good at analyzing and synthesizing information to make it applicable to my own experience. We turned in our first essays and got them back a week later. There was a note on mine that said, “Please talk to me when you get a moment.” In the back of my head, I’m thinking the horrible thought – “She hated my paper!” I went to her regardless of the sinking feeling I had in my gut, and to my surprise, she tried to persuade me into becoming an English major. She praised me on my ability to look past the concrete and read between the lines to see the deeper meaning in the texts I was writing about. I decided to mull it over in my head for a few days. That night, I sat down to read a novel my mom had sent me the day before, and that was when I had my “Ah ha!” moment. Why not use my love of reading and writing? The only question that I had in my mind was, “What in the world am I going to do with an English major?! Surely I cannot teach – I did NOT like high school English at all!” And then, I met Dr. Gayle Price.

Dr. Price opened up a window that I didn’t think I would be able to squeeze through. Dr. Price showed me that my past experience in my English classes didn’t matter all that much; what mattered was how I was going to be different from them, how I was going to make a difference where they didn’t. Dr. Price pushed, pulled, and stretched me in ways I didn’t know where mentally, emotionally, and pedagogically possible. She helped me reconfigure my thinking about reading and writing from the perspective of a teenager. (Unbeknownst to me, not all teenagers were like me.) It was through that relationship with Dr. Price that I learned my greatest weapons, teaching supplies, and encouragements came from words – already printed or written by my own hand so sloppily sometimes it was hard to decipher my words. I learned quickly that I had more “teacher” in me than I originally imagined, and that first year of college, still as an adolescent, taught me that like breathing, words would forever be a part of my life.

I write to understand. I write to learn. I write to make sense of the world. I write to make sense of myself. Sometimes writing and reading are the only things that make sense to me. Dr. Land and Dr. Price helped me hone my love for literature and writing and create an arsenal of tools and weapons for me to use to help encourage young adults to create and discover and learn through the study of literature and writing. I’ve learned while writing this memoir that deep in the crevices of my brain, I think I always knew I wanted to be a teacher, but never an English teacher. But then, as I sat back and thought about my development and my education, that is the only thing that makes and made sense. Through writing about myself and about my reading, I have completely made sense of my world and validated my choice to be an English teacher. || High school is supposed to be “the best time of your life.” My freshman year was the worst. I felt worse than I did in middle school. I felt like I had no purpose, no direction. I was invisible. I didn’t have any friends. I tried to fit in and make myself something I wasn’t, and I was even more unhappy, but I didn’t understand that being myself was as simple as coming to terms with the fact that “normal” is all relative.

My sophomore year, my best friend Harry practically saved my life. He had noticed that I was upset, and he wrote me a letter that I still have at my parents’ house, deep in a box filled with my journals and books from my childhood and early adolescence. I can visualize his handwriting, and I can even hear his voice in my head telling me: “I’m here. You’re my best friend, and I’m always here. I know that no one else has been around, but I promise that I will always be here. But one day, if I’m not, and you need someone, think of this journal as my ear that will listen later. Write in it. Drop it off in my locker. I’ll write back. Every time. I promise.” Harry’s words, and the journal he gave me, saved my life. It was then that I learned that much like the characters in the books I had read and the things I wrote about wanting to be able to feel, Harry was giving those to me in a form that was always familiar to me. He taught me I could be comfortable with who I was and not be ashamed of who I was.

Harry showed me that I could connect with people, just like the characters in my books, and that I DID have a reason to exist and I DID have a place in the world. Harry’s belief in me as a person, as an individual, as a friend, gave me hope that I needed so desperately in a time where I didn’t believe in myself. His faith in me carried on through high school. It wasn’t until I got to college that I realized that I could use Harry’s wisdom and advice along with my love for words in literature and writing to help spark young minds, and maybe offer them hope in their darkest hours. ||