Literacy for Life
Now that you are on the brink of graduating from high school, it is time to reflect on your life as a reader and writer, and think about how reading and writing will be a part of the rest of your life.
Write a reflective essay, including the information below (don’t forget the introduction and conclusion), or you can take each section as a piece of imaginative writing, describing in detail how you will look during each time in your life (you can use the headings as breaks in your writing).
Introduction
Create a topic sentence for this introduction to the essay about your life as a reader and writer, and how reading and writing will be a part of the rest of your literate life. Who are you as a reader and writer? After 12+ years in school, what have you achieved as a reader and writer? Are you good at reading and writing? Proficient? Do you still have things you want to work on? Would you describe yourself as a literate person? As an illiterate person? Take these ideas and introduce where you are on the path of literacy for life. You may want to wait and write this after you have created the body of your essay.
In The Near Future: Summer Reading
In this first paragraph about the rest of your life, let’s assume you have graduated, and your first freedom as a high school graduate is to decide what you will do with literacy this summer, in particular, reading.
Create a topic sentence about the overall content of this paragraph.
1. What books are you planning to read for the summer? Are you planning to read any books for the summer? Does your college have a book that it requires all incoming freshmen to read?
2. Will you ever read any books for pleasure, now that you’re graduating from high school and won’t necessarily have assigned reading? If you do like to read books for pleasure, what types of books do you like to read?
3. How do you find/decide on a new book to read?
4. Where and when are the most likely place and time that you will do your summer reading? An airplane? The beach? On a break from work? Before you go to sleep?
5. What is the pleasure in pleasure reading? Why do it at all?
6. Aside from pleasure reading, will you read anything else this summer? College catalog? Dorm room rules? Applications for jobs? Car manual? Driving directions? Guide book? Romance novel?
7. Have you ever thought about reading books for pleasure from a recommended reading list of any kind?
In the Next Four Years: College and/or a Career
The summer is over, and the next stage in your life has arrived. You are on your way to college or a career or both. Picture how reading will figure into the next four years of your life.
Create a topic sentence about the overall content of this paragraph.
1. What type of reading do you think will be required of you in the next four years? Textbooks? Guidelines for classes or procedures? Websites required by professors or employers?
2. When you have required reading, what techniques, strategies, or personal bribes do you use with yourself to get through the reading? Example: When I have to get through a long text for a graduate class, I set mini-goals for finishing chapters by a certain time, and reward myself with a break (I admit sometimes those breaks involve food) if I finish the chapter within the deadline.
3. How do you remember what you have read for required reading?
4. If the reading is required, does that necessarily mean that it will be something that you won’t enjoy? Do you approach required reading with that attitude? What would make you approach required reading with a positive attitude? [Side note: Are you going to major/or get a job doing something you like? If you like it, does that make the reading more palatable?]
5. When does required reading resemble pleasure reading?
6. As a college student or person embarking on a new career, you will often have to purchase books and other texts in order to meet the goals of your classes or job. Since buying books can be a major investment, where will you shop for such books? The campus bookstore? The used bookstore? Borrow them from classmates or colleagues? How will you decide which books are worth buying a good copy to keep for the future? Which books will you sell back to the used bookstore as soon as you are through with them? Or will you buy hard copies of books at all? Will any of your texts be e-books? Do you need to be able to take notes in the text?
Twenty-Something…Setting Up Housekeeping
So, by now you have graduated, established yourself, and at some point, you will be living out on your own, either renting an apartment or saving up for that big home purchase. Perhaps you will have to furnish your living space, either alone, or with the help of a roommate or significant other.
Create a topic sentence about the overall content of this paragraph.
1. Will you own any bookcases? Why or why not?
2. What books or texts will you have in your home?
3. How will you decide which books to keep in your home?
4. Will you ever buy books “just for show?” Will you subscribe to a “book of the month” club? Will you ever log on to amazon.com?
5. If by the time you are twenty-something you have decided that you like to read something (anything) (my apologies to those of you who already do), how will you find out about new books to read? Will you ask friends, seek out like-minded readers, start a book club?
6. Do you think your reading tastes will change? (If so, how?)
7. Will you ever voluntarily go into a bookstore to browse? If so, what sections will you walk through first?
8. Perhaps you don’t feel reading is important at all. Are you worried about the future of reading in this country?
Children in the Future: Yours or Somebody Else’s
It is highly probable that you will have to interact with children sometime in the future, either your own, or those belonging to someone close to you. In addition to changing diapers, buying birthday gifts, playing catch or finger painting, you may want to think about how and what you will read to these future children in your life.
Create a topic sentence about the overall content of this paragraph.
1. What were some of your favorite book titles as a child? Do you remember any that you wanted someone to read to you over and over and over?
2. Did anyone ever read to you before bedtime, curled up in bed with you with the book open between you, pointing out the pictures and the words? Can you picture yourself reading to future children in your life? How will you make the experience exciting and memorable for each child?
3. How will you make the public library a welcoming experience for the future children in your life? How often will you go?
4. How will you know which titles to choose for reading? What about all the new books that have been written since you were a child? How can you find out about those?
5. At what point will you know that each child is ready to read for himself/herself?
6. As the future child in your life gets older, will you ever read to him or her again?
7. How will you provide for the future child’s reading needs? What if he or she absolutely loves reading and would like nothing better than to stay inside all day and read? What if he or she finds reading tedious, boring, or impossible, and avoids it at all costs?
8. As the child grows older, attends school, brings home reading and writing assignments–how will you involve yourself in his/her school life? Will you end up building that California mission model out of sugar cubes or constructing that volcano that bubbles goo out of the top (please say no)? Just how much will you re-experience your own school years though the future child’s eyes? How will you draw the line between aiding and abetting? When will you turn the child loose to learn on his/her own?
Words, Words, Words…Language
Literacy also includes writing. In your life, you will have to write things that were never assigned to you in high school: the annual holiday letter your wife insists must be mailed to every relative and friend, the eulogy at your mother’s funeral, the speech at your boss’s retirement party, the poignant love note to reconcile you with someone you may have hurt.
Create a topic sentence about the overall content of this paragraph.
1. What have you learned in high school that will prepare you for any writing that you will have to do in the future?
2. How did this class help you with your writing, if it did at all?
3. What do you think you would have liked to have learned better in order to improve your writing?
4. How important is it to you to write “correctly”? Does it matter in an e-mail? How about a resumé? A letter to the president? A letter to your six-year-old? A grocery list tacked to the refrigerator?
5. Are you a snob about language? Do you look down on people who say “ain’t” or mispronounce a word?
6. Are you ever worried about how you pronounce a word? Have you ever avoided writing or saying a word because you weren’t sure how to spell it or pronounce it?
7. Have you ever written for enjoyment? Poetry? Stories? Do you see that as part of a future career, or simply a method of venting or recording personal history?
8. What’s the difference between personal writing (letters, journals, etc.) and formal writing (reports for work, etc.)? What do you do differently to prepare for and accomplish each type of writing? Is the contrast similar to reading for pleasure vs. reading for information?
9. In the use of language, do you have a different register (word choice and choice of tone) for different occasions or situations? Do you talk differently to your classmates at lunch vs. your parents at home? During school hours vs. at a formal wedding reception for a distant cousin? How do you know when to convert “registers” from casual to formal? How do you choose your words for such situations when you write?
Reading and Writing and ’Rithmetic…Continuing Education
Is it all over? Have you learned everything you need to know? Or will there be things in the future that you need to know? What kinds of things will you have to learn in the future?
Create a topic sentence about the overall content of this paragraph.
1. How will you deal with the changes in your life? Attitude? Supportive friends and family? Spiritual faith?
2. How will you go about learning new things?
3. Will you ever enroll in a class “just for the fun of it?” How will you go about finding such a class? Where are you likely to take such a class?
4. Are there other ways to learn new things?
5. Will there ever be a time when you are unwilling to learn new things?
6. How unwilling were you to learn new things while in high school?
7. Is there a difference between learning things that you want/choose to learn, and learning things that are assigned to you to learn? How do you know the difference? What attitude do you bring to each type of learning experience?
8. How do you feel about curiosity? Are you ever curious to learn something? How do you appease your curiosity? For instance, if you are curious about the meaning of the word appease, how do you go about satisfying your curiosity to know what it means?
Conclusion
Here is your last chance to say a few words about yourself at this point in your life. You have spent the rest of the essay talking about what you do, or what you will do. You can use this part to talk about how you feel as a senior on the point of high school graduation. Are you overwhelmed? Excited? Terrified? So ready for it to be over? How do you feel about education in general? Your education in particular? Although it may see that this conclusion is on a different topic that the rest of the essay, it gives you a chance to capture and document that moment in your life that will never come again. I hope that this moment, in some way, relates to the fact that, as a high school graduate, you should have had some experience and feelings about literacy. Give specific details that capture your opinions and feelings. That’s it!