Student Literacy Narratives

From Literacy Narratives...

In my sophomore year of high school, I found Teen Ink Magazine, a writing magazine for high school students. Every year they would host a trip to London for two weeks to practice writing. Thirty girls would be accepted into the program based on samples of their writing, teacher recommendations, and a phone interview with the owner of the magazine. I saw this as an opportunity to challenge myself and to learn more about writing. BUT, it was in London and I knew my mom wouldn’t be crazy about the idea of me traveling alone. So I did what any normal teenager would do, I wrote her a persuasive essay on why I should apply. Of course my mom started to question my sanity and my nerd level upon seeing said essay. She agreed to let me apply (thinking I wouldn’t get accepted and that she would have to pick up the pieces after) and if I did get accepted I could go on the trip. Sure enough, I got accepted and her exact words were “Oh shit!” when she realized that she would have to pay for it. I had done something that we never thought was possible for me.

The next week at school was a something to remember. The school principal came on the intercom and announced to the entire school my accomplishment. My homeroom, full of honor students, stared at me the entire time in shock. Before the principal could finish telling about the program, everyone in my homeroom was on their feet, clapping for me. I was never so proud of myself. That entire day was filled with classmates coming up to me to congratulate me and honor students glaring at me. But of course, I had to remind a few people from my past of me, so I sent both of my old schools a copy of the news article about my acceptance into the program and the acceptance letter I received from the magazine. From that point on, I haven’t heard anyone tell me what I wouldn’t be able to do. (Maria)

I’ve always been pretty fucked up in the head. There are a few suspect causes, though I think the top ones being that I grew up listening to Green Day’s Dookie, with a sarcastic father and a mother obsessed with the macabre as well as the cute and fluffy. Before pen and paper, I was finger-painting on the inside of card-board boxes and taking VHS videos of my then best friend, Cassandra, eating dog- food. (I wonder if she still eats dog food. I should call her.)

My interest in writing sparked at the approximate time that I received this cool battery-operated diary type thing, that unlocked by voice/word recognition. I mainly used it to whine about my mom making me wear ugly clothes and Rob Carr, the blue-eyed dreamboat in my geography class. By middle-school I had started writing fiction based on events in my friendships/flourishing love life. (I sometimes think I peaked at thirteen.) I wrote a story called, something along the lines of: “How I Fell in Love with a Giraffe and Then He dated my Best Friend, Et Cetera.” It was about this six-foot-five crust-punk guy Stephen, who was awesome and, as one may assume, subsequently broke my heart by hugging a different girl in the hallway between classes. Asshole.

The stories of Stephen and Rob and the like became public domain when I began typing my observations and exaggerated creative non-fiction into word docs on my family’s ancient HP desktop. During one car ride to school, my father told me I had a gift for writing and he was really impressed. Needless to say I stopped saving my stories on the computer; if I did, I’d save them as “Danielle’s Geography Paper,” because I was stealthy or whatever. (Danielle)

I'm still not a writer quite yet. Something hasn't clicked into place that needs to, although, I feel as though I'm on the cusp of that revelation, of maturing from a writer-wannabe into someone who can write pulchritudinous lines of thought, utilizing BIG words. Words to be my agency, and my being. Upon reflecting on what has led me to this juncture, I have determined that through the vicissitudes of time and fate, throughout my life and education, events have culminated into a strong desire to be a writer. The following is a summation of the experiences, the people and events, which molded me into the writer-wannabe I am to this day.


Writing has always been something I've enjoyed for as long as I could do it, first in class, then in a journal, and eventually everywhere. Being creative and original or fantastical or motivational or any number of things that my writing has been or could be, is what keeps me doing driven. And although I didn't intentionally join the writing community, at first, when I did it hit me so hard I didn't just see stars I wanted to be among them. High school was a rather ambiguous time for me when I didn't know what I wanted or where I'd end up. I found my desire to be a writer in a class I took in high school because that I took because I thought it would be easy. It was taught by a rather exhausted looking women, who's name escapes me, that happened into the class for the same reason I did, to get by. She admitted that her area of expertise was history teacher but she had needed a job and when she applied at the school, there were no openings in the history department. Perhaps it was because she didn't do a lot as a teacher that her class had such an impact on me – for the first time my assignments were so open-ended I could do practically whatever I wanted. Creative writing, and the freedom it offered me, hit me so hard I still haven't landed.


For the longest time as a kid I've had a pent up urge to create – not short stories or in-class writing prompts, but complete narratives. I wanted to write long arcing stories; wanted to create worlds. I've asked myself quite a bit “Why wasn't that fostered?” “Why is the education system so rigid that when I displayed an interest in something different, but related, and continued to do so over several years in middle and high school, that the teachers deferred my enthusiasm.” Creativity cannot be stemmed, it can be slowed but never stopped. My friend since third grade, and partner in crime was Joe. He and I found ways around the teachers and finessed our work into their curriculum. When we went to art class Zane or Kyori or the countless other characters we had created, their lives and families and love interests, came alive. When we went to wood-shop class we used the architecture paper to design the buildings our characters would live in. When we were separated into different math classes (Joe into advanced math and myself into regular) we would write our assigned character bios and story arcs, and then on the weekends would pull “all-nighters” working on combining what we wrote. This went on for years. The teachers were successful eventually in preventing our ambitions because despite the 2,000 plus pages of story and drawings we compiled, we never finished. Proof positive of how pedagogy has historically turned its nose up at anything based in fantasy.

Fantasy, my passion, lacks legitimacy to some people – I don't think it should though. I can't explain why I choose to create worlds with little bearing in reality, or, why many people choose fictitious futures or alternate realities in the stead of more realistic reiterations of the imaginative realms. But perhaps it has something to do with a reader's control, of being able to completely immerse oneself in the imagination, with no strings to reality attached. There's nothing more our brains like to do than imagine things


I don't fully understand why I love writing so much, not yet, or why I have such a drive to create. That even now as I type this feeling wells inside my chest like some creature trying to emerge – like the adrenaline boost I'd get when I was on the soccer field, about to shoot for the net, or when I found out I was going to college. It's part anxiety, part excited anticipation. When I write I want to inspire my readers, so the process is entirely selfish. It really is all about me for now. (Hayden)

One night, lying on the floor with my favorite dolphin book, I began copying word for word onto computer paper. It took me three days to fully copy the entire book and when I was finished I knew what it felt like to hold something in your hands and feel like you created it, even if it was copy write. At the age of eight I thought no one would ever know and I could pretend I had written such a lovely book. My parents often looked at me as I was writing away and would ask me what I was working on, conversations often starting, “Morgan, what is with all the paper? What are you working on?” And me saying, “I can’t show you until it’s finished.”

Realizing that my writing was not the neatest, I moved onto the computer. I had a file that my father had set up for me, which I could save all my stories too. All my stories starting off with a pair of twins and then deleting them to sisters who hated one another and on and on the vicious cycle went. I would write about things I wish I had, such as a sister or a large family filled with brothers and sisters. Often times I would hear my dad call from the other room, “Morgan, stop banging on the computer keys,” I would smile to myself and yell back, “Dad, I’m typing a story.” I formed my own way of typing that I still rely on today-never bowing down to the traditional home row form of typing. I loved typing my stories on the computer downstairs because I loved reading them aloud to my parents, announcing ‘I’ve started a new story’ and them pausing the TV to listen. Now that I think back I think I wrote purely for my parents to listen, to hear their compliments and praise over something I now know was juvenile writing. Those moments when I had my parents full attention were the only things that mattered, and perhaps knowing that for a few seconds they weren’t focusing on my brother. Thinking back now I know I probably forced my brother to listen to everything I had ever written down, I was the self-centered writer of the family and I took my role very seriously. (Morgan)