Schneiderman 1 Rebecca Schneiderman Miss E.

ENGL 1101-067 10 September 2013

Observations and Interpretations: A Personal Literacy Narrative Everybody does not see what you see. Everyone does not feel what you feel. Interpretations and observations are what make people unique; this is the beauty of individualism that grows from reading. My Grandma is the person who taught me how to read and the importance of reading. She liked to read books that were true stories, religious stories, funny stories and historical stories. Every family vacation or a weekend visit she would always be reading. When I was younger, I asked, Why do you always read? She always said, The smart people are the ones who read, and who doesnt want to be smart?! Before I was born, my mother would read to me. She had read studies from articles on Google showing how children exposed to reading while still in the womb were smarter than those not exposed to auditory stimulation. After I was born, I had colored shaped blocks and letter blocks to encourage learning and reading at an early age. When my Grandma read to me, I was able to summarize what she had read. My favorite book was Thumbelina. I would always hold up my right thumb whenever her name was read. My grandmother told me a story of when I was visiting her. I was two years old and watched a TV show about dinosaurs with great intensity. When it ended, my Grandma asked, Where are you going?! as I ran off to my uncles room. I did not answer, I just went to get the little toy dinosaurs and remade the whole show with almost every detail. My Grandma thought I was the smartest two-year-old ever. As time

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went on I learned to read chapter books such as Magic Tree House, Junie B. Jones and Judy Blume books and I was always reading. In kindergarten, I was the best reader in my class and because of this I was asked to read an excerpt of Tiger Woods over the intercom to the whole school. As I stood shaky and nervous in the principals office of Morehead Elementary School with my mom and Aunt Jennifer beside me, I uttered the words from the paper. They were proud of me, but most importantly I was proud of myself. I remember finishing the speech and having a smile from ear to ear. I had chills and butterflies because I had never done anything like that before. Being chosen to read this made me so proud and confident. This particular experience is one of the reasons I am who I am today, a strong confident leader. My Grandma has always been the proudest of me. She liked to show me off to all her friends. But deep down she knew that it did not matter what others thought about me, because she knew I would always be her little one. At about age three or four, she started taking me to plays. We would go to the Childrens Theatre in Charlotte, North Carolina and see plays such as Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, and the annual holiday shows. At Beauty and the Beast, I questioned why the Beast was so scary at the beginning; at the annual holiday shows I questioned why there was not any Hanukkah shows and only Christmas productions. At Sleeping Beauty, I was asked what I wanted to see more of and I replied, More brown people. These brown people happened to be the stagehands that were supposed to be hidden!! I would watch the play with great attention to detail so I could relay everything that happened in the play. When I was nine, my grandparents took me to New York where I got a little history lesson when I did not understand why the Russians had to intrude on Tzeitls wedding in the Fiddler on the Roof. This was one of my first history lessons of the Jewish people being tormented. This started

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to make the play have more of a personal connection and as I was enriched with the additional knowledge. It was almost as the plays were a quick educational lesson of some theme they were acting out. The thing that I liked more about plays than I did books was that it was like the books came alive. As a child with slower comprehension skills than other kids my own age it was nice to have everything acted out so it was easier to visualize and see what was happening. If a character was angry you could understand their anger by the way they acted versus the words on a page. At about the same time my Grandma and I would buddy-read. This helped me understand the books better. Every night I would call her and we would discuss what happened in the book. My favorite books we read together were the Judy Blume books. There were over thirty books, so we never ran out. Judy Blumes books were about relevant experiences that we shared. We would discuss our favorite parts, the worst parts and the parts we did not understand. We would interpret the meaning of the book and how it related to our everyday lives, which was usually not too hard to do. This past year I completed my Girl Scout Gold Award. The Gold Award recognizes Scouts who have led a project of their own creation to something that meaningfully affects peoples everyday lives, just like meanings of a book. My project was Rebeccas Corner. My Project created a permanent connection between Jewish teens in the United States with the teens in Beltsy, Moldova. By leading the creation of Rebecca's Corner I hoped to foster international support and Jewish culture. Jewish teens in Beltsy are "sheltered" and do not have connections with other Jewish teens around the world, or a strong religious connection within their own community. Rebecca's Corner was to help them in developing a comfort level both socially and religiously in their own community as well as helped them establish permanent connections with

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youth in the United States. Rebeccas Corner is a bookshelf that I established at the Jewish Community Center in Beltsy, Moldova. As a Jewish teen from Greensboro, North Carolina I have a strong community. I wanted to share this with other Jewish brothers and sisters around the world. It is not just a bookshelf, but so much more. It is a symbol of hope. It is a symbol of community. It is a symbol of learning. Rebeccas Corner was filled with books, games, movies, religious teachings, music and much more donated from people all over the Greensboro community. As part of the American culture, English and schooling are required but in a third world country such as Moldova, they do not come as easily. I wanted to share the gift of reading, learning, observing and interpreting. Seeing these children and teenagers of all ages get together to play a game or read a book is magical. Helping them read the books in English, which is not their first language, is inspiring. Whether you like to read or not, whether you like to go to plays or not, or whether English is your first language or not we all see things through our own individual lens. We grow based on our observations and interpretations on what we read or see. We grow based on what we can teach others. And we grow as individuals based on our unique experiences including the literature that bring into our lives.