My Autobiography Of Education : My Literacy Of Music

My literacy skills began to truly develop while sitting on an orange and blue tapestry that displayed all the continents and listening to my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Green, read an African folktale, this is when I began understanding literacy. She read slowly and pointed to every word, and used lots of enthusiasm when she showed us the pictures. She finished reading, and now we are at our desks, and singing the alphabet song.

When and where my practices in literacy began was slightly difficult to pinpoint, though I guess I could say it began with my favorite television show as a kid, Between the Lions. It was a children's show that promoted reading, spelling, and writing and aired on the PBS kids network. On the show, there were numerous educational segments that featured real life people, puppets, and cartoon characters that taught about words, spelling, vowels, vocabulary, definitions, and pronunciation. For example, there was a segment that featured a song about the sound, “op”, and by learning how to read “op”, you could read words like, hop, mop, or chop. The lessons on the show were often taught in fun games or in song, so it would be enjoyable for kids. In

Like many children, I learned to read and write around the age of five at both home and school. I learned to read by reading Dick and Jane. The writing was simple, but I loved the stories. That was always my favorite part

Having the Merasi, master musicians of Rajasthan, perform live at Colby College provided students and faculty with a cultural experience unlike any that I have attended. The Merasi, from the Thar Desert in Pakistan, have found great success through their music despite their status in the caste system. As a family group, they have been able to gain the international attention that they needed to establish both music and literacy education for their people back home. Although very few people in our audience could understand their lyrics, the emotion and physical movements of the musicians were effective in conveying the overall themes of their songs. From watching this live performance of Rajasthani music, I was able to observe how the music itself, the behaviour of the musicians and audience, and the function of the music interacted to transport a small part of Rajasthan to the Pugh Center giving the audience a glimpse into its culture.

My literacy journey had begun earlier than most kids, according to my mother. I started reading in kindergarten, with help with the BOB books and the PBS show Between the Lions. I don’t know when I had started writing exactly, but I remember clearly writing short stories about my cat Stormy in 3rd grade. At that time we had to write weekly short stories, and I only ever wrote about my cat. In 4th grade, I had started exploring writing more; I would write plays for me and my friends to practice during recess. Most of them, I’m happy to say, were actually educational, so my teacher had even let my friends and I perform one about early-American settlers in front of our whole class.

Few would argue against the idea that we educate ourselves and our society so that we have adequate means with which to understand and interact with elements of the world around us. Subjects such as mathematics, language, history, and the hard sciences are granted immediate and unquestioned legitimacy in our schools, and with good reason. We encounter each of these elements of our lives on a daily basis. We need to have an understanding of these disciplines in order to interact with them, otherwise they are meaningless to us. I submit that the same can be said for the fundamental concepts of music. Music is something that we encounter in our society every day. It surrounds us. Indeed

Literacy plays a huge role in many people’s lives everyday, whether it is learning how to read and write for the first time or writing a five-page essay for the hundredth time. We experience literacy differently and have our very own unique stories on how it has impacted our lives and had made us who we are today. It is an essential aspect that I use in my everyday life, such as in relationships, daily interactions with others, and learning. It has become such a powerful aspect and human right in which it allows one to speak his/her mind and in some cases express their opinion to the world. My personal literacy history has shaped me into who I am today because without my experiences I would not have been able to gain the confidence and

"Taylor why can't you read this. This is so easy," I remember my younger sister Ashley saying to me. My path to literacy started in Kindergarten when I struggled to learn how to read. We had just moved from Kennewick, WA to Denver, CO a couple weeks before my first day of kindergarten. I had always been into playing school with my two sisters and pretending I was the nerd that knew everything when it came to reading and math. The real shock came to me when I started Kindergarten and everyone could read but me. I felt stupid. I would come home and try and do my reading homework with my mom and my three year old sister could read things that I couldn’t. I tried my absolute hardest at school and I just couldn't read. I could do everything else such as adding and subtracting and could even writing my name 26 times in a minute but it felt impossible for me to be able to read.

My first experience to literacy came as a young adult. I have always been reluctant with my education, because of the family problems I experienced growing up. The harsh treatment our family received growing up made it very difficult to study in school, my body was physically in class but my mind was not. The trials and tribulations I went through growing up as a kid continued throughout my teenage years. Dropping out of high school I believe brought upon literacy difficulty. At the age of twenty-three, I finally had enough of feeling undereducated. Living in my mother’s basement with no job and an 8th grade education, the walls started to close in on me as my frustration became greater by the minute.

As I reflect on my childhood, the first memory of literacy I recall is when I was in kindergarten. I was approaching the end of the school year when my mother revealed to me my teacher was considering keeping me in kindergarten for another year. I was extremely upset and felt as if I had failed my first year of school. I felt that I was fresh out of the gate and already defective. My perception as a child was that the adults were already giving up on me. The teacher stated if I could learn the alphabet by the end of the school year I could continue ahead to the 1st grade. The conclusion of Kindergarten was vastly approaching. My mother constructed flash cards to help with my letter recognition. In doing so, she realized I could not see the letters. My mother promptly made an appointment for me to visit an Optometrist to evaluate me. Before I knew it, I was fitted with a big plastic pair of glasses. My world became much clearer after that. My mother was upset that my teacher did not recognize the problem, and that I never spoke up. Fortunately, I passed kindergarten with a lot of hard work from my parents, teacher, and I.

Literacy was introduced to me in the form of a very different language with a very different culture. It came to me in music, in art, in stories unchanged, past down through my mother's family. It came in the sophisticated words my grandfather wove into beautiful poems despite never receiving a formal education, in the mischievous glint of those old eyes as he read them and watched my eyes grow with and twinkle with wonder. It came in my grandmother, sitting with me in her rocking chair, telling me her favorite adivinanza, literally translated as riddles. It came to me in my mother and her 6 other sisters, all of them teachers of various disciplines and various grade levels. It came through their understanding in the importance of a good education, regardless of the language it was taught

The stigma associated with pursuing an education in the musical arts affects the decision of many musicians nationwide. The appeal of guaranteed financial and career stability of STEM and other paths of high demand jobs is very difficult to pass up, even by the most dedicated musicians. Then, the input and advice of outsiders come into play. These onlookers not only encourage study of the hard sciences and a foolproof path to success via university, but they also totally and blatantly discourage and belittle the intelligence, rationality and integrity of not just the paths of musicians, but all liberal artists. Don’t you want to make money? What do you mean you won’t have internships, don’t you want a job? How are you going to survive? This blitzkrieg of questioning and doubt, though theoretically peripheral to the bigger picture, is reasonably common, however, severely unjustified. Pursuing a formal college education in music is easily one of the best things you could do for yourself, regardless of whether or not this is the career path of your choosing. As a student of formal music education, you are actually being trained in more real world skills than most other majors, which will prepare you for many careers, making you stand-out amongst the masses. Being a music major, you learn more than just music, you learn problem-solving skills, how to communicate and collaborate, and how to overcome failure, which are all essential skills to have as a professional in today’s day

Early in my life, my literary skills were already being developed. My best teachers were my three older sisters. They loved to teach me words and read to me as much as they could. My mother recalls that I knew the alphabet by age two and by preschool was learning sight words and nursery rhymes. There was a shelf full of hand-me-down books at home that I would flip through countless times, if just to gaze at the pictures. Regardless, my love for reading was not fully realized until I joined public school.

Reading and writing has always played a vital part in my life. From toddler to adult, pre-elementary to college, I’ve managed to sharpen both skills to my liking. However, even though it significantly helped, schooling was not what influenced me to continue developing those skills into talent. Many different things shaped and influenced my learning, and now reading and writing have become the safety net of my life. I know that even if I have nothing else in the future, I’ll still have my talent and knowledge. To ensure my success, I hope to further develop those skills so that I may fulfill my wishes.

To be literate, is not just the ability to read and write. It is something I think more than that. It involves a very intricate mechanics of linguistics, but eventually form a sophisticated yet beautiful form of language usage. I was not born with literacy sense. I gained reading skills from bedtime stories by my parents and eventually learned formally to read and write at school. From that, I was able to mold my style of writing with the help of the teachers. I believe that most of us have been through similar experience as I did gaining literacy. Even with all the necessary literacy skills I gained from school and at home, I was still wondering the reason behind all the hard work to read and write. Until one day, I was sent to a leadership camp as a representative from my school. From that camp, I knew that all of my gained literacy have now make sense to me because it has change my perspective of the world through literacy.