How I Learned to Read and Write
07/22/2007 11:38 p.m.
I could read before I went to kindergarten. I have an older sister (5 years older in school) who always read and always shared her reading. My father (at that time an elementary school principal) and my mother (from a somewhat intellectually deprived background and therefore very much aware of the influence of media on the family) believed that having books and similar learning materials around was important, so I grew up in a fairly rich environment. My mother often read to me--to us, and we didn’t have a television until about the time I was learning to read. I remember wanting so much to be able to read like my sister. I liked to look at pictures in magazines, but I felt so deprived because I couldn’t read the accompanying material. Really, I remember that burning DESIRE TO READ. And so I learned the basics at home.

I attended Lincoln Elementary (where my father had also attended and kitty-corner from Grandma Hawkes’ house) and my kindergarten and first grade teacher was Mrs. Thelma Kotter (who was old, and might have been teaching there when my father attended--I don’t remember now). Mrs. Kotter had taught my older sister, and was therefore a well known and beloved figure in our family long before I was ever in her class. I went into her class feeling loved and accepted, and along with wanting to be able to read better, I also wanted to please her.

I remember the feeling of being “dragged down” sometimes by some of the slower kids in the class, but I also remember feeling frustrated by attempting to read material that was well beyond my level, often reading of my own choice. It was about this same time that I got my first library card. The town librarian then was an “old maid” cousin of my grandmother Hawkes’ named Lapriel Wight. In my mind she was the keeper of the castle of knowledge for Brigham City, Utah, and with my library card and her guidance, that castle was mine, and we (at first my sister and I, later my brother) used the library both for school and for pleasure, always reminded every time we checked out at book, that Lapriel was our cousin.

Writing simply went along with the reading. I won a poetry contest in first grade, and from then on, I believed that I could write. I won another poetry contest in fifth grade (the “Grand Prize” for the older grades--yet I was “only a fifth grader”), and I won a third prize in sixth grade. And though perhaps only an adequate writer and student, by that time, I already felt rewarded and competent. I believed that I could write, so I wrote. By high school I was keeping a “journal” (it was important for Thoreau, so why not me) which included not only “outpourings of my soul,” but sketches, observations, and poetry. By then, I suppose, I already had the makings of a language teacher.

Add to those beginnings several years of studying French (Not really by choice, mostly by availability, but with a very conscious effort to learn to read and write all over again.), two years in the Netherlands (Again learning to read and write but with the element of “survival in a foreign country” added in.) and finally, time at Weber State (English, history, and German)--where I really did get into the “hard stuff.” And finally beyond that, with a Masters Degree from U.S.U. with a project in "Cultural Journalism," you have the essential literate me.

Note: written for a summer teachers' workshop

I am currently Nostalgic
I am listening to The Swamp Cooler