Personal Experience

As a young child my parents and grandparents were very hard on me when it came to my education.  Majority of my time after school was spent at my grandparents house. Once I was done double checking my work, I would hand it over to one of them to look over. Even if there were no mistakes, one of them would find something for me to either improve on or work on. By them pushing me to constantly be successful and get good grades at such a young age I became a perfectionist at whatever work I was given. I would spend hours correcting and revising my work until I was satisfied. I wanted my work to be perfect, so when it was time to hand it over to either my grandparents or teacher, they would not see any mistakes or any improvements that could possibly be made. When learning to write as a young child, you’re taught the structure of writing- grammar, spelling, and punctuation. It is likely, majority of students just completed the work given simply because it had to be done. When writing , I enjoyed being extremely descriptive, but that was not what most instructors wanted. They wanted the writing to be straight to the point, answering the question or assignment, and mostly focused on the structure of the writing rather than what was actually being written. I did not like that, I wanted to be able to express what was coming to my mind, keeping a steady flow, and writing down my immediate thoughts. For example, many times I was given a picture prompt and was told to write what I saw in the picture. Most children would write exactly what they saw and be done writing, but when it came to my writing I wrote what I saw in the picture creating a story out of it explaining vivid details like the weather, what color shirt the person could possibly be wearing and all the details that actually make an interesting and descriptive story. You would figure this is what teachers would want, but in this case it wasn’t. I would get assignments back and see comments that the teacher was not happy with what I wrote, so eventually I adjusted my work to match the other students, losing my creativity aspect and simply writing just to meet the teacher’s needs and please them. Progressing through school and grades I believe writing becomes more individualized, many times with my experiences I wasn’t forced to prewrite a certain way, I wasn’t forced to simplify my writing creativity like I was with the picture prompts earlier, I was able to write the way I wanted to of course still following the guidelines and directions given.

Physically holding a pencil, something that most people are taught the minute they can crawl. In most cases, teaching the “correct” way to grasp a pencil or crayon is not a difficult or time consuming task, but in my case, it was. When I began learning to write it was a struggle because of the way I physically grasped my pencil. For years my parents, grandparents, and teachers took the time to try and fix the way I held it, but I would not budge. They tried everything from oversized pencils, pencil grips, short pencils, and the school even tried occupational therapy. It was frustrating because I was comfortable with the way I grasped my pencils, and I believed that my handwriting was fine. Some of my teachers claimed that my handwriting was difficult to read, but what elementary students handwriting wasn’t? It was an exhausting  process being taken out of class just for the way I held my pencil. I did not think that the therapy was helping, the therapist would have me do writing exercises, and play games like monkey flip. The purpose of this game was to take the plastic monkey and be able to flip it onto the large plastic tree that was sitting in the middle of the playing surface. Each player got about five monkeys and at the end of the game whoever had the most monkeys on the tree that didn’t fall off, won. Days where we played games I had a hard time understanding how this would help me with my writing, how did flipping a monkey to land onto a tree help with the way I grasp a pencil. As a child you may not realize why exercises like the monkey flipping game can help your writing, but in my case no matter what they did I continued to hold it the way I was comfortable. Constantly being reprimanded in the middle of my teacher’s lesson was not only disruptive to my work, but the others around me as well. The more the teachers reprimanded me the more discouraged I became. It made me not want to go to school, it made me not want to pick up a pencil, it made me not want to write at all.

The process of the therapy and reprimanding became very exhausting and discouraging. Writing has always been one of my stronger subjects in school, and my love for writing continues to grow as I learn more and more. Over the years, I have had many opportunities to expand on my knowledge of writing and I believe having that, was a very beneficial factor for the writer I am today. When I entered the second grade, my teacher accepted the way I decided to grasp my pencil, she didn’t yell, she didn’t reprimand me, she didn’t try and change the way I wrote. Her classroom was very welcoming, there were bright colors everywhere, educational posters, and it was a very warm environment. The one specific location in the classroom I remember most was the in class library. There was a colorful rug with bean bag chairs and cushions to choose from when we had to sit in read or do assignments there. The book shelves had baskets, with labels and pictures on them describing what types or genres of books would be on that specific basket. When we were told to work independently, we were allowed to work anywhere in the classroom, and the in class library just happened to be my favorite spot. Towards the end of the year we were given an assignment to write a book filled with stories and illustrations. When everyone was finished, our teacher would be sending out our work to be “published”. With this assignment, I remember being so excited about finally being able to write about things that interested me. Many of the other students were struggling to start their stories or go in depth to them. When it came to my stories, I couldn’t stop writing. I had so many thoughts and so much to say. While everyone else was struggling with finishing only one story, there I was finishing all my stories and illustrations. When my teacher looked over my work she had a big smile on her face. She loved my stories and was amazed by how easy writing the book came to me. Coming from previous classrooms who were so focused on how I was holding my pencil instead of the actual content of my work was extremely discouraging, but then walking into such a welcoming classroom who let me be who I am as a writer boosted my confidence. That one teacher made all the difference in my writing. Before her class, writing seemed like a chore to me because of the focus on my grip instead of the actual content, after her class I continued to excel. Eventually when I got to middle school I was moved to a higher level english class which continued through high school. As I progressed through school and continue to progress writing became easier and more enjoyable. Majority of the teachers I had enjoyed reading my writing and had many positive things to say about it, which all in all gave me the confidence back that I needed as a writer.