Service Learning Reflection, Part 1

Connection to your own literacy experience

I was an only child for five and a half years, before my goober brother decided to come along and mess up my perfect little world. I had a lot of attention from my elementary school teacher mother and my engineering father. They were, and still are, to of the most opposite people who have every lived. My Mother creative and bubbly, my father, serious and analytic. Their choices for bedtime stories always mirrored their differing personalities. My dad would advocate for the book where I might possibly learn something. My Mom would choose the book that rhymed or had beautiful literature. However, there was one book that they would fight to read to me (not kidding, it was a battle over whoever was the one lucky enough to read it to me). Matlida brought my family together in such a beautiful way. One of my fondest memories is curled up in my white iron bed, smushed between both of my parents because neither of them had been willing to back down from the fight. These kind of experiences are what made me fall in love with reading. My parents sacrificed time for themselves to sit and read with their child.

I began to think about the sacrifices that parents made after my session with a mother from Thailand. She had been in the United States for over 20 years, however, she still struggled with English. However, she had somehow raised two children who were incredibly successful in this country. One child was studying business at New York University and the other was getting ready to go to the University of Tennessee to study biomedical engineering. She had sacrificed so much of herself, giving up her family and friends to come to a country where she knew no one just for the opportunity for her children to have a better life. Her struggle with literacy came because of her sacrifice for her children; my literacy and love of reading came because of the sacrifices of my parents. Literacy is not something that is just given or received. It is something that must be worked to obtain and many times we must make tough choices, give up precious time and energy in order to obtain it.