Inspired by Paolo Freire’s ideas on “reading the world.” I wrote this for my Teaching Reading Across the Curriculum class. I am working toward my MA in Educational Studies in Workforce Development with a specialization in Career-Technical Education at The Ohio State University.
When I was kid, literacy was a puzzle to solve. I was a very serious kid. I wanted to do what the grownups around me were doing. I saw my parents read, and I wanted to be taken seriously. Learning to read was a natural byproduct. My mom and dad were in school and when my stepdad came around so did lots and lots of books.
My earliest memories of reading were reading VHS tapes. My mom would make me read the VHS tapes myself and I had to figure out which was which if I wanted to watch what I wanted. I still remember what Shrek looked like in print on that black VHS tape.
Environmental print was an early part of learning how to read. Learning to read the words “McDonalds” or “Kroger” or “Westland Area Library.” These are my first memories of how reading the world and reading the word converged into one.
My mom was studying early childhood education and we always say that I was her “guinea pig.” She tested what she was learning on me. She taught me how to read before kindergarten and she read to me every night. By the time I started school I was reading at a second-grade level. When I started reading early chapter books, she’d read a chapter, and I’d read a chapter before bed.
My mom would take me to the library or to the McDonald’s play place to entertain me. She was in school and had little money to spend. At the library, she would practice what she was learning in class by reading leveled books with me. The library was one of my favorite places growing up. At McDonald’s, my mom would do school work while I played. The McDonald’s play place on West Broad Street was another one of my favorite places.
My mom and dad split up when I was four years old. At my dad’s house, literacy looked a bit different. My reading material became video game menus and instructions. Video games bookended each night of my biweekly weekend stay. The last thing I’d do before falling asleep was play video games. The very first thing I’d do in the morning was play more. Video games were like books with agency - I could inhabit digital worlds and become someone else or lose track of time beating the computer in sports and racing games. They were a playground for troubleshooting and problem solving and reading was often a part of that.
Writing stories was another important part of my early literacy. I would dictate stories when I was three or four and my mom would write them with me. I remember writing my own stories in first grade. The Adventures of Caleb and Janavi. Janavi was my best friend. I had a crush on her. (I still remember the heart break when I asked her to be my girlfriend and she said no) Our adventures were similar to Magic Treehouse books, or the Secrets of Droon series. I remember being inspired by Indiana Jones (which was another frequently watched VHS tape at home). We’d travel to Egypt or the Amazon and we’d overcome some danger and somehow make it home safely at the end of each story.
As I got older, music was another way I learned to read the world. I started piano lessons when I was in fourth grade and my dad bought me a guitar around the same time. Learning to read music was another puzzle to solve. Playing an instrument was like writing with sound. In sixth grade, I joined band and played French horn. In high school, marching band, choir, and Drama Club became my community. Reading sheet music, lyrics, and scripts and performing them with my peers gave me confidence and lifelong relationships. It’s how I met my wife and some of my best friends. Performing helped me understand connection, belonging, and emotion in a way that words alone couldn’t.
Literacy has allowed me to explore and express myself. Literacy has helped me improve my habits. It’s allowed me to gain knowledge in school, get a degree, and work toward another. It allows me to connect with and understand other people on a deeper level, and gives me the means to make a difference — at home with my two kids or at school with my students. Literacy has helped me start to grasp what it means to be human and to make some sense of this crazy, improbable world we live in.
Now I teach College & Career Readiness, Financial Literacy, Drone Discovery. My students need literacy to navigate job applications, financial decisions, and drone regulations, but they also need to read the world and their place in it. I see myself in my students (and no, not just the nerdy, musically-inclined ones): they have their own puzzles they aim to solve, the need be taken seriously, and they’re all looking for community. I hope to give them what literacy gave me—not just skills, but the tools to understand themselves and shape their own lives.