Literacy My History as a Reader

I learned to read between 32 and 33 years ago. It was hard for me to go back so many years and think about it, but after I gave it some time, several memories came up. I remember in Kindergarten learning the letters, but I do not remember having to know the sounds or do any kind of reading at that grade level. Then when I went into First Grade I recall reading simple sight words like I, he, she, is. I remember reading words like hop and mop, top those kinds of simple phonetic words. I also remember reading the Dick Jane and Spot stories. First grade memories of reading in class are fuzzy. My treasured memories of reading are the times when I was reading short stories and books at home with my mom and dad. They were really good about tucking me in at night and giving me a story and letting me read to them. The Dick, Jane and Spot stories were ones that I liked actually. I used to get excited to read with my mom. I remember loving the illustrations and using those to help me understand the stories. It was not until second grade that my memory of classroom reading becomes clearer to me. In my school which was very rural there was only k-6 and it was one class in each grade level only, we were grouped by reading level, and we went to Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Yagami her paraprofessional for reading. She would take a group and the rest of us would be busy doing other things like listening to stories on these archaic machines that we would refer to as SRA and they were like slides put into a machine and stories would appear and then we had questions to answer. I unfortunately hated Mrs. Smith because she was mean and she would humiliate students if they struggled with a word. I hated her and I feared her, but I did love books and love reading despite having such a nasty hateful teacher. I also have fond memories of going to the tiny city library that was located in a basement of a building and loving the smell of the old books. There is one book I still remember about a squirrel who lived in a tree, and I must have checked out that book like a thousand times and I would read it over and over. The squirrel's name was Susie, but I have forgotten the title. I wanted it when my daughter was learning how to read, so I could share that with her. I used to go with my grandfather to the city library, and he was a regular at the library reading everything and anything. I was amazed at the thick books he would read, and I remember visiting him at his house and always finding him reading. I admired him because he could read in English and Spanish, and I thought that was very special. I never struggled in reading, but I don't remember anyone glorifying me as a super reader either. My best recollection of being an early reader are personal ones in my family and not so much in school. I do love reading anything and anything like my grandfather now as an adult. I find myself using strategies that I learned way back in elementary school still as an adult reader when the context is hard for me to understand.