Bumgarner

3"

Mason Bumgarner
Professor Lynn Raymond

uwRT

1103-038

2 September 2A$

A Look Back to the Beginning

From as far back as I can remember, I always had access to some sort of book. Whether it
was one about.learning the abc's, or a book that all

little boys love about monster trucks or long

trains. I was surprisingly not into reading that much at a young age, but at about the age of three,
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my mother set it upon
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kindergarten.
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When I was born,'rny grandmother had given me a book called

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BiblC I

always been interested in looking at the pictures in it, and asked my parents questions about

em, but

it wasn't until this

age that

started connecting the bible stories from Sunday School to

the content inside that book. This ended up being the game changer in my motivation to read.
there was a story mentioned in church,

If

I would go horne and immediately look in my Bible for

explanation andnaturally have someone read it to me. Over the next year or so I used this as my

basicfoundationforreadingandwriting

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Even though I had the motivation to succeed,

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I still struggled in the reading category.

When it became the time that I move oflto pre-school, my mom told rntsthat I absolutely had to
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that I attended was conveniently located on the bottom
learn to read this year. The
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floor of the church that my family attended, so this just added fuel to my fire. To make things
even better, one of my teachers happened to be the nicest old lady in the congregation, Ivfus.

Bumgarner 2

Georgia. She took it upon herself to help us however she could. She proceeded to teach us the
alphabet and some basic words we all needed to know, but somehow she always found a way to

incorporate a bible study related to the day's lesson. I'm not sure how or why these things have
stuck with rne this long, but I can still remember vividly how excited I was walking into the
classroom every morning and hearing her ask "Are you ready to see what God wants you to learn

today?" That hit me. God wanted me to learn about him and to read and write at the same time,
and we were all extremely excited to Ao

it. ..\\ J

From that point orq the child inside me took this as a mission to do the best I could all for
God. I then began to teach myself to the best of my ability, while trying to get as little help as
possible from others. However, was very lucky to have had the guidance and leadership of the
church, my family, and my loving teachers because afr.er all, it is impossible to fail when you
have the Lord by your side.

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