Literacy Narrative

By Sophia Beck

Interview 1: The first interview that I conducted was with my little sister Chloe who is 8 years old.
I thought it was interesting because she could remember very specific details of early literacy in
comparison to what people normally remember.

1. Try to think of your earliest memories of writing and reading. What do you
remember of reading and writing before you began school? Who helped you with
it and what was that like?
- Her earliest memory of writing: “I was with mom writing a birthday card, and she was
trying to get me to write my name without making the C backwards.”
- The reading she did before school: “I used to like to read the Bob Books I got for
christmas with mom”
- What reading before school was like for her: “It was really hard, I knew just a few words
before I went to school but not that many.”

2. What kinds of writing did you see your parents, siblings, and other family
members doing as you were growing up? What did they read, where, and when?
- “I saw you [her sister] write cursive, and you used to read a book to me called, The
Phantom Tollbooth I think because it was your favorite book.”
- “I saw mom reading, The Girl on the Train when she would be tired and sitting on the
couch relaxing.”

3. What stories did your parents tell you about their own efforts to learn to read and
write? What kinds of values did they place on reading and writing?
- “Mom makes me do 20 minutes of reading every day of whatever books I want. I got to
pick out a book one time that was a ‘choose your own adventure’, which was cool
because it was like you were writing your own book.”

4. How did reading and writing change as you entered elementary school? What did
you do with it?
- “It made it easier for me. They told me to read in my AR level but I can read ahead of
mine because I tested out of it, but really I just chose random answers and ended up
getting a high score.”

5. What are you asked to do with reading and writing at this point in your lives?
- “I have to write in my practice book which is all about practicing what the subject of the
sentence is, and I have to read the class book outloud.”

6. When you were growing up, how much school reading and school writing was
done with computers? What kinds of things did you do? What values did your
teachers place on computer literacy?
- “I only take AR tests on books on the computer for reading.”
 - “There is also LEXIA which is a computer game for writing skills when I go to computer
lab.”

7. In the next ten years, what will reading and writing become? What skills and
understandings about online literacy will people need to have? Why?
- “I think that they are going to be getting me to do a lot of cursive writing and tests. I think
I’m gonna need to be smart to do the stuff they ask me. I think the stuff we need to learn
is going to get way harder… I mean it’s even harder this year and I’m only in third grade.
I mean, are they trying to kill me?” LOL… I love my sister.

Interview 2: The second interview I conducted was with my grandparents. I was originally just
going to interview my nana, but my papa wanted to participate too, so I just asked them both
and they took turns responding. They both had different backgrounds in education, but there
were some common themes that I think are worth noting.

1. Try to think of your earliest memories of writing and reading. What do you
remember of reading and writing before you began school? Who helped you with
it and what was that like?
- NANA: “I remember my mother and my grandmother both reading to me all the time.
Every night it was a ritual, like I did with my daughter. I remember books always being
around. There were always books on tables and magazines. Reading was like
fantasyland. It was like visiting someplace else every night. I remember it as a special
time.”
- PAPA: “I don’t remember much before school; we didn’t have that many books in the
house.”

2. What kinds of writing did you see your parents, siblings, and other family
members doing as you were growing up? What did they read, where, and when?
- NANA: “There was always National Geographic on the tables. The only writing that I can
remember was homework for my siblings and I. My mother used to type note cards on a
typewriter at work, or notecards to me as a teenager. There were dictionaries and
encyclopedias in the house but my mom would read novels. The newspaper was read at
night, and then they [my mom and dad] discussed the paper over dinner. My 98 year old
mother still reads the newspaper from the front to back every single day. She can’t
remember enough to read a novel anymore but she still reads the paper. I think it’s
amazing; it’s still so important to her.”
- PAPA: “My parents would read the paper at dinner every night. I never really read but I
saw them read.”

3. What stories did your parents tell you about their own efforts to learn to read and
write? What kinds of values did they place on reading and writing?
- PAPA: “My father ran away from home when he was 14, so he never completed school.
He learned everything through trade. He rode the rails and he picked crops with the
migrant workers. He hated plums from picking them too much when he was young. My
 mother completed high school but never went to college. They both wanted me to make
sure that I did everything that I needed to do to get through high school and college.”
- NANA: “My parents placed a very high value on education, even though neither of them
went to college. My dad was drafted for WW2 during his second year at UC Berkeley
and never went back to finish. Education wasn’t needed for them; everyone worked in
trade. Both me and my brother went to private school because they thought we would
have a better chance at going to college. Ironically, I didn’t go to a four year until I was
35 but I did go to a junior college and got a degree in nursing. Literacy was not only
important, but it was assumed. The books on the table weren’t just there for looks, they
were meant to be read. The idea of being literate was always assumed, and that would
carry you through life to be successful.

4. How did reading and writing change as you entered elementary school? What did
you do with it?
- NANA: “I went to catholic grammar school. The three R’s (reading, writing and ‘rithmatic)
were the 3 pillars of catholic school and they were very important. We learned cursive in
the palmer method. Every birthday and every christmas we got books. They were
treasures. We got nursery rhyme books, golden books, encyclopedia books, The Boxy
Twins, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Peter Rabbit; all of those were a part of our
childhood. The very first thing I bought when I was first married was an encyclopedia set
and a set of classic children's books, which became part of the decor in my daughter's
room.”
- PAPA: “I can remember doing all my homework and reading. I had books in a bookcase
at this point: golden books, dictionary, a book of maps. I got these for birthdays and
christmas. People would come around and sell you encyclopedia sets. They sold you
one volume at a time… I ended up with half a set before my mother couldn’t afford it
anymore. In 5th and 6th grade I started reading The Three Musketeers, Tom Sawyer,
you know, the things a boy would be interested in.”
5. What are you asked to do with reading and writing at this point in your lives?
- PAPA: “I’m asked to read all the instructions on things that everyone buys, contracts and
technical stuff. At work I am expected to research things that I don’t know. I didn’t have
fingernails until the end of college because I had to read so much and the only way I
could concentrate was to bite them off.
- NANA: “As a nurse, I am required by the state of California to have 30 units of continuing
education every 2 years, which requires going to classes and reading the material and
getting tested. It’s not required, but understood that you subscribe to the AJN (The
American Journal of Nursing) to stay informed about the profession. I used to be
teaching, which required a lot of preparation for the college level. I do pleasure reading
every night and I read the paper every morning to keep up on things, but I watch the
news more than I read it now. There is something to me personally about holding a
book… I want to hold the book, turn the pages, I like the smell. We used to spend a lot of
time in the library because there was no internet, so that was where you met people. I
save reading for the end of the day; it's like dessert for the day.
6. When you were growing up, how much school reading and school writing was
 done with computers? What kinds of things did you do? What values did your
teachers place on computer literacy?
- PAPA: “I did not have a computer like you know it until I was 20 years out of college.
Everything I did on computers was done on IBM cards. You couldn’t read on it [the
computer], it was all data type things. The only thing we had was typewriters. When i
started writing my own programs, I used Teletype (like a dumb typewriter) where you
could punch out characters… I had a program that was 100 feet long that took hours to
load.”
- NANA: “The first job that had computers, we used for lab work and that was it.”

7. In the next ten years, what will reading and writing become? What skills and
understandings about online literacy will people need to have? Why?
- NANA: “I think more things are just going to merge into robotics. We will have less
analytical work. I think that books will still be around, though, because there are still
people that value that. My commitment to literacy is to buy books and sell them for a
dollar in my antique store so people and children can still have them. I think that there
still will always be people that will want to hold a book.”
- PAPA: “It won’t happen in 10 years, maybe 20, but I think your brain will be hooked up to
a computer. Paper is expensive and damaging to the world… it’s going to get nothing
but more expensive over time, so mostly everything will be digital. If it’s not completely
gone it will be minimal and really expensive.”