Once upon a time  when  I was a child  I  really did not enjoy  reading  due to the fact that   I was having  difficulty  learning to read. In my home as a young  child reading was not  encouraged. Neither  of my parents ever read anything except  the newspaper on  Sundays which   they mainly got the paper for the  sales  fliers and the  coupons. We had a few  books in our house which were  given to us,  but they  were never picked up and we (my sisters and I) were never read to as children. When I started school I knew  my  alphabet and  numbers up to 10. I knew  how to spell  my name,  but did not know how to write it. I believe this is part of the reason why  I struggled so much and  why I disliked reading when entering school. I was in remedial reading  classes until third grade then for fourth grade I didn’t have the classes  but  in  fifth grade I had  remedial classes again. In  the remedial reading class  during fifth grade  the  teacher previously had my older sister and did not like her so  from the moment I walked into the class she  had a problem with me! She  made it  her  job each week to  criticize me in front of the  entire class and by the time I left I had tears streaming down my face.

 The  first book  I remember  liking and reading  was a book that was given to  my sister  from one of her teachers. The  story  was “You’re Not my Cat” by Theresa Burns. It was about a cat that always came to a little girl’s house  to play and hang out with the girl I loved the book because I thought it was  so funny that the cat would     go to the girls house every day. When  the teachers called upon  people to read aloud in class I would sink down in my  seat to hide and pray the teacher did not call on me. Throughout the upper grades I did not enjoy  many  of the assigned readings which   continued  my despise for reading. It was not until college  that I started to like reading and really discover what  types of genres I actually  liked and  I started to  foster a love  for reading. The first book that I read that  I truly liked was “Nineteen Minutes” by  Jodi Picoult. The  book was about  a school shooting and  was told by  parents students and teachers that were either in the school or related to the students and explains  how the shooting took place over nineteen minutes. Since I read that book I have started reading  all of the author’s other books and  other books in that genre. I  also enjoy reading the   informational education books that are assigned in classes. I love  learning  about how to teach children and the many strategies, tools and assessments that can be used to help  children attain the skills and information needed to move on .