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Alan-Michael Hales
Lynn M. Raymond
Literacy Narrative
9/15/14
Remember When?
What is a library? Nowadays most kids do not have to go near a library. Really you
wouldnt have to use the library at all if you didnt need to. The internet will find anything you
need, from books to information on something that happened 1000 years ago. But for Kindleization to take over libraries, or even be a signicant threat, the costs must go down
enormously. E-book readers such as the Kindle cost at least $100, and individual e-books cost
around 10$ (Siu-Runyan). You can do everything from your household and even watch videos
on how to do something if youre stuck. As freshman in college, weve all gone through at least
twelve years of schooling but all of us were not taught all the same. Some were taught at private
schools, some were taught at public schools, and some were homeschooled. Preschool is also a
difference for some kids, it all comes down to how much time you spent in preschool or not at
all. I honestly cant remember the first time I read a book until just recently when my mom sent
me a quote from an old book she used to read to me. She said she would read it to me every
night until I was old enough to read it to her. She said by the age of two I could read the whole
thing word by word to her and that I really enjoyed doing it. This was the first book I ever read
and this is where my literacy narrative begins.
My first experience of reading or writing was when my mom used to read me the same
book every night for a good five or six years. The book was called Love You Forever, written

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by Robert Munsch. She would teach me how to sound out each word and took each step of the
reading process and she said one day I hope youll read it to me. I hit a certain age where I got
super tired of her reading it to me and I had finally had enough. Her job was done though. She
had finally taught me to read. When I hit kindergarten, I learned how to spell and sound out all
of these words that my mom had taught me to read since such a young age. I was always
competitive so I had to be the best in my class, so I would have to be the best speller. With the
competitiveness, I was the spelling bee champ from kindergarten all the way to fifth grade for
my school. My mom always told me that it would get me somewhere in life by all this learning
and taking it serious and it definitely did, me being in college.
Middle school hit and the change from my mom being a huge impact on me turned to my
dad. Sports, Sports, Sports! That would always become the main conversation in my household
as a kid. Sportscenter would always be on the main television in the living room for as far back
as I could remember. When I was in about the eighth grade, the University of North Carolina
had this big academic scandal where players were being given grades and given people to take
the SAT for them. There was also a high school in New York caught for cheating. Thirteen
former and current Long Island, N.Y. high schoolers turned themselves in on Tuesday,
authorities said, bringing the total charged in the cheating ring to 20. Four of the new defendants
are accused of taking payments of $500 to $3,600 to stand in for students on SAT or ACT
exams (13 More Students). Basically cheating the system to where they could get in and play
for the universitys athletic teams. At that age my dad always would harp on going to practice or
going to run, even if I still had homework to do, sports came first. After seeing this on TV about
all the people who are getting by with the bare minimum and the College Board cracking down
on who gets in and who doesnt, my dad immediately changed and was all about school first.

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When I hit high school, it was school first, homework first, or go read a book. My father would
never let me do anything before he knew that all of my homework for the day was done and then
he would take me to practice. My dad didnt accept anything less than a B in a class or it was
shame on me. If I had anything close to a C I would be grounded and forced to just sit there and
read or look at the ceiling for hours on end so obviously I chose to read. This is an event in my
life that really shaped my literacy narrative because if it wasnt for my dad making me sit there
and read for hours on end, I wouldnt have done it myself. Baseball was always more important
to me so reading was always last on my agenda. Thanks to my dad, reading was put first.
High school was also when social media became big in my life. I would get on it during
class or while doing homework. Studies show that social media is affecting many kids.
Students are having a harder time getting to communicate face to face with people, and are
losing their people skills, due to that they are spending more and more time talking from behind
a screen. The attention to details, attention to pronunciation and grammar, has declined
drastically, due to that most of the communication that happens online is not proper. Our ability
to retain information has decreased, and the willingness to spend more time researching and
looking up good information has reduced, due the fact that we got used to the ease of
accessibility to information on social media (Riman). Too many people change their way of
talking and writing because of twitter or texting. They use u as you or 2gether as together
and this kind of writing in their papers or even just responses to teachers. This has affected
many peoples literacy narrative but not mine.
Many things can affect a persons literacy narrative and much has affected mine. If I
could remember every single one of mine, we could write a book about it. I have asked my

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parents and friends and family to help me remember. The things listed have really affected my
literacy narrative greatly.

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Citation Page
Riman, Tarek. "The Effect of Social Media on Education." Seomworld. Google. seomworld.com
Web. 15 Sept. 2014.
13 More Students Surrender in SAT Cheating Scandal in NY." NBC News. usnews.nbcnews.com
Web. 15 Sept. 2014.
Siu-Runyan, Yvonne. Public and School Libraries in Decline. 1 Sept. 2011. Web. ncte.org 15 Sept.
2014.