This is a blog post assignment that I wrote for a graduate seminar course on theoretical backgrounds in teaching community college reading at SFSU.
I grew up in a home with two college educated parents—my mom has a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Northwestern University, and my dad holds an MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. I didn’t even realize college was optional until I was probably 14 or 15. Failure was most definitely not an option—and a “C” grade might as well have been an “F.” My parents are products of the early Baby Boomer generation, which means that we talked a lot about “good” schools and “bad” schools, and how education was the only way to get a “good job.” I never heard that someone might actually grow as a human being due to what they learned in school. I learned that one must do well in 5th grade so as to be placed in the “advanced” classes in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, which would set one up for advanced placement in high school, which would pave the way for admission to a “good” college, from which graduating would guarantee that one would not die poor and lonely.
For reasons that may or may not have been related to the desired long term outcome, my parents started reading to me really early; I think around when I was 12-14 months old. My mom still talks about how, at 2 years old, I’d wake up in the middle of the night, turn on my bedside lamp, and “read” my picture books. They also told me bedtime stories at night, usually about a fictional girl named Suzi. Through following along while being read to by a parent coupled with using my imagination to picture Suzi on her adventures, I think I learned to associate words with images quite early. This made learning to read chapter books relatively easy; I think I was reading Little House on the Prairie by myself in first grade.
More than anything, I remember reading being a source of comfort for me. Socially, I had a tough time as a young person. I was always taller and heavier than my peers, and was often teased at school (today, we would call it “bullying”). The library was my escape. During lunch, I would read and reread books about girls who had friends, most of whom also rode horses: the Babysitters Club, Saddle Club, and the Thoroughbred series were my favorites, though I also occasionally read the Goosebumps books and the Scary Stories trilogy, and probably some Judy Blume. The librarian eventually started harping on me, telling me I needed to novels of higher literary value, rather than rereading the stories I was comfortable with. I just wished that she would leave me alone. Now, as an adult, I recognize that the familiarity I developed with the characters in those stories was a substitute for real-time social experiences. I actually learned a lot about social interaction by reading the fictional stories of other people.
It was a good thing that reading was a source of comfort for me because I struggled–horribly, painfully–with nearly every aspect of school other than language arts until I was finally diagnosed with a learning disability in 10th grade and provided with extra support. My adequate performance in language arts was always contrasted with my exceptionally awful performance in math.
If reading was a source of comfort, math was the bane of my existence. I remember sitting at the dining room table with my dad after dinner, trying to understand whatever math problems we were supposed to complete for homework. As an adult, I understand that the several gin-and-tonics my dad would consume while cooking dinner probably didn’t help him keep his patience with me, which likely contributes to the feelings of panic that I still, to this day, associate with math. Even at 33 years old, just two short years ago, I sat in one of my graduate seminar classes in my MA communication studies program at SJSU. The course was focused around quantitative media studies. Trying to follow along with the professor, who was calculating ANOVAs or Z-scores or reliability or some equally foreign statistical concept on the board, I suddenly had to fight back tears because I just didn’t get it. I couldn’t. It was like being in 3rd grade, trying to learn how to “carry” and “borrow” in addition and subtraction, or long division in 4th grade, or the mother of all classroom anxiety: fractions in Ms. Raymond’s class. I had worked so hard over the years to make myself believe I wasn’t stupid–I couldn’t be, right? I had a 4.0 GPA as a second-semester grad student, I was in the top 10% of my class. I knew, intellectually, at 33 years old, that it really wasn’t going to matter that much if I didn’t understand statistics. I hadn’t used statistics in the 10 years since I’d finished my BA until that class at SJSU, and I knew I could drop the class (I didn’t–lord only knows why). With the help of a very patient professor who spent many office hours with me, I managed to pass that class with an A-
I also gained valuable insight into how I’ve internalized academic progress to represent my self-worth, and where the idea that grades are a reflection of my value as a human being actually comes from. It also gives me some idea of the very real anxiety that my adult students might experience around reading and writing. Although I associate the panic attack with numbers (and sometimes letters mixed in), I know that many people experience these feelings as associated with the subject of English. I want to let the people who experience this anxiety know that their self-worth is not defined by academic performance; that education is so much more than points and grades. Reading can be comfortable, even stress relieving—but humans do not learn well when we’re stressed. I was lucky enough to learn to read in a context that was not stressful, but I can certainly empathize with those who experience anxiety when reading is assigned.
Alex Naeve 