According to Google, literacy means the competence or knowledge in a specified area.

You can have literacy in anything from sports to education. We all have our strengths and weaknesses in these aspects of our lives and it all depends on your background. Most people think of literacy as just your ability to read and write. This is true but literacy is not limited to this. For instance I have a high level of literacy in soccer. I know how to play and I know the rules. I have obtained this literacy by playing soccer since I was six. Growing up playing with my sisters helped improve my level of this literacy. I could go on about the different things I seem to be literate in but I will stick to my literacy in reading and writing. There are so many so factors that can affect the level of someones reading and writing. These factors range from education to social events in a persons life. The surroundings in which a child grows up in and the role models they have help or harm their level of knowledge. Family involvement in a childs life is another factor. Influences of literacy can come from the classroom background that a child gets. Not all children get the same opportunities and this leads to kids concern about there education. If there opportunities are fun and engaging it will lead to a positive reaction of learning. But this can also have the negative effect. The amount of teacher support is an additional factor along with peer influence. These are just of a few of the issues that could and do affect literacy. A child is most influenced by the world at a young age, so the people the support and surround the child influence him or her the greatest. I grew up in

what I thought was a big family. I have three older sister and loving parents. I also live very close to my extended family like my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousin. We are a very close family and we are always together. Needless to say the majority of my childhood was spent with my large, crazy loving family. My family holds a really high value of education. Since my sisters where older than me they always read to me and helped learn. They all were very smart in school and this gave me something to live up too. I was known as a Keranakis Girl and I took that, as I had to be smart and well behaved. I did not want to disappoint them so I worked my hardest in school. My aunt was a teacher and she even ended up teaching me. She would always ask me about school and make me show her what I had learned. This aided my growth in education because I wanted to learn to impress my family. The positive support and influences they increased my literacy level. I worked hard to improve my reading and writing skills for their approval. Parents are seen to be a childs first role model. Both of my parents are very smart and hard working. They pushed me to do better and I wanted to for them. Every night before going to sleep my dad would make me pick a book out of our bookcase to read. He would help me along in reading. This made me enjoying reading as a young child. I looked forward to my read session with my father. My mom reads a book every night before she goes to sleep and I always wanted to be like her. So when I finally learned to read I would go cuddle beside her and read my book while she read hers. Sometimes she would make me read aloud just to test my ability to read. If I came across a word I did not know she

would make me write it down and look it up. It was a game for me and I loved sharing these moments with my mother. Along with family involvement, the classroom environment plays a key role in the literacy level of a child. Some children get different levels of learning. My familys support and teaching helped me have a high knowledge level and in return allowed me to get into AG classes in elementary school. During the normal reading and math time in class some students, including myself, were pulled out of class to be taught by a special teacher. We were taught at a higher level than our classmates that stayed in class. The teachers said that we were not being challenged enough in regular class so they gave us harder work. I adored AG classes, my teacher was the best and her teaching style was remarkable. It was more of a free learning ability. Instead of sitting in a classroom of twenty kids it was usually five students to one teacher. We were able to do more interactive learning. The entertaining quality of learning helped us take more out of the lessons. This was a positive factor to me because I got a higher education, but this was an unfair advantage to my classmates. They did not get the same opportunities as I did. The unequal chances helped me rise above the average students. My AG classes helped me not only to learn better but also to make connections to other smart kids. I became friends with the other AG students. Since we spent so much time together we had many things in common. This helped me towards a higher literacy level by giving me other to inspire me to work harder. We all had friendly competition against each other and we found it

fun and amusing to push each other. It made learning a lot easier because I had peers persuading me to work. The friendly competition is still with us today. My friends and I still to this day talk about grades and how well we did on things. This improved my literacy level by giving we something to work up to. Plus having smart friends was good too when I needed help. I was strong in math and would help them if they helped in English. We made a support system that truly helped us all improve our literalness. Teachers seem to notice my improvements and because of this they gave me more support. They would push me to what they thought was my level. All of my teachers appeared to do this but none of my teachers pushed me as hard as my senior high school English teacher. Mrs. Urbanski (Mrs. U) was by far my favorite teacher. Not only was she my English teacher but also she had been my soccer coach all four years. I was also the manger for the boys team she coached too. She watched me throughout high school grow in literacy. When I found out she was going to be my senior English teacher I was nervous because I knew she expected a lot out of me. I was smart student but English was never my strongest subject. I did not like reading aloud and I hated writing. I knew she thought I was a smart kid and I knew she was going to push me. Our first assignment was to write a paper about our life. I wrote what I thought was a nicely written paper that was not completely thrown together at the last minute, but when I got my grade back I was shocked. She had given me a 70 on it. I looked at some of the other papers in the room that scored higher than mine and I could not understand why I got such a low grade. I finally managed to muster up

enough confidence to ask her why I got the grade I did. Mrs. U said, You did not try, you simply just threw meaningless words on to paper. To be blunt you bullshitted the whole thing. I was shocked to hear her say that but it made me think. I had but little to no effort into that paper and I see that it showed. Every paper after that I tried my hardest to improve my writing. As a result I slowly saw my grade increase. Her push and motivation caused me to want to better my writing. Having her belief in me and that I could do better, boosted my view on how I saw my own writing. It made me take risk and write some rather good stories while in her class. She is my main positive influence towards the literacy level that I am today. Even though I have had so many positive influences of literacy, I am still not where I want to be. I still to this day do not see myself as a strong writer. I have trouble with getting my point across in writing. I never am able to coherently put my thoughts together. It takes me awhile to write because I cannot seem to find the words to say. My weak spelling also plays a roll in this. The fact that I cannot spell every well makes me a safe writer. I am often afraid to take risk in my writing so I keep my words short and simple. However I am working on becoming a better writer. In my Engineering major I need to be literate in writing and reading. The ability to get my point across in writing is vital to my success. I also need to be able to understand others writing. A person never stops learning. I must continue to try to improve my literacy level.