How I fell in love with reading…
I owe my love of reading to a horrible second grade teacher.
Mrs. Adams, was a scary lady. She shouldn’t have been teaching. She was mean and yelled a lot. She seemed to hate kids.
One day Mrs. Adams made us sit a reading circle. We were each to read one sentence in the book and pass it on the next kid. I took my turn, but when I came to the word “as” I stopped reading. I knew what an “a” sounded like and I knew what an “s” sounded like and I knew when I combined the two letters in my head, it sounded like a bad word. No way was I going to say that word in front of the terrible Mrs. Adams. The threat of what she’d do if I said a curse word paralyzed me. (I didn’t know “ass” was spelled with two s’s until much later).
“Sound it out!” Mrs. Adams screamed at me. “Are you stupid? This is easy. Sound it out!”
I couldn’t say anything.
And that’s how I ended up in the slow readers class.
I LOVED the slow readers class. There were only two other students in the class, so I got a lot of one-on-one attention from a nice teacher—Mrs. Knickle. I blossomed. Partly because I didn’t have a reading problem, and partly because I had a teacher who treated me with kindness.
Mrs. Adams’ class became bearable, only because I knew I’d be able to escape to Mrs. Knickle’s class for part of the day.
Early on, Mrs. Knickle realized I didn’t have a reading problem and said I shouldn’t even be in her class. I begged her to not send me back. She didn’t send me back. Thank you Mrs. Knickle! By the time the school year ended, I was reading books meant for sixth and seventh graders!
From then on, I devoured books. Books became my coping skill and my escape. I read on the bus ride to and from school—an hour-long trip each way. I read at home. I read in the car. In the bathtub. Everywhere. As I got older, I got in trouble because I was in my room reading too much!
Books have been with me in good times and helped me get through the bad times. They’ve given me knowledge, soothed my soul, inspired me, taught me how to recognize true love, and been a constant companion throughout my life. I couldn’t have survived without them!
How did you fall in love with reading?
How has reading changed your life?
