Noah Parrott

"The Love-Hate Relationship of Reading and Writing"

When I was younger my mom and dad would always encourage my brothers and I to

read. I would read anything I could get a hold of. I remember asking my parents for a hardback

copy of "The Children's Book of Virtues". It made me feel important, lugging that heavy book

around with my tiny little arms, then finally plopping down somewhere to read it. In the

evening I would always hear, "Noah! Come down and eat dinner with us!" echoing up the stairs

and into my bedroom. "One more minute mom! I want to finish this page!". The pictures and

stories held me in place, almost transfixed, until I finished the story.

As I grew older and began to read higher levels of books, I found out that not all good books

had a cool cover and pictures. I started reading the short blurbs on the backs or inside covers of

books, in order to find out what they were about. Eventually I found, and ended up reading the

Artemis Fowl Series, which is probably still my favorite book series today. Out of all the books

that I read back then, those are the ones that stick out the most to me. I remember dropping

my book bag off on the kitchen floor and quickly rushing up to my room after school every day

to read those books. I wanted to be that 12 year old , Irish criminal mastermind that I read so

much about in those books. Devising elaborate plans in order to rob FAIRIES of their riches,

because robbing normal people was obviously too simple a task. Books like that are what made

me love reading.

Books were almost like a vacation, except composed of paper and ink. I would vicariously

enjoy the adventures of all of the imaginary characters, as if I was in the book watching it all

take place. I would have vivid dreams about the places I read about and the scenes that took

place there. But I couldn’t find that in all books. There were countless titles that I read that

couldn't captivate me the way that others could. On the other hand, once you become hungry

to continue reading a book, all the searching was worth it.

Unfortunately I didn't retain that same affectionate attitude for books through the years. As

school began getting progressively harder I found myself with less and less time to read what I

enjoyed. Instead I was given assigned readings about topics that didn’t interest me at all, such

as; Abraham Lincoln, The Hoover Dam, scientific articles, papers on how to write essays,

historical documentations, which are all very important topics to cover I'm sure, but they

weren't interesting to me. It wouldn’t have been as distasteful if we only had to read the

information. I typically didn’t mind just reading about a topic and occasionally answering

questions about it. Once they added writing such as reflective essays, or explaining what the

author meant by the story, I began to dislike the entire subject of English and it quickly became

my least favorite class of the day. I remember sitting in a bleak white room, staring down at the

text I was assigned to read, just dreading every second I had to spend reading it. Hearing the

teacher walking up and down the rows of desks, interrupting the silence with her clicking

footsteps. The clock on the wall would always seem to tick as slow as it possibly could as the

class dragged on. Eventually the unwillingness to read in the classroom transferred into my

reading at home as I picked up a book less and less. I could no longer look at reading as

something fun to do, it was only something used for assignments. Reading had become a chore

instead of a hobby.

Another influence that brought me to not like English was the way that the teachers would

grade my papers that I wrote. I would put a lot of effort and thought, and sometimes my

personal feelings and opinions into my work only to have it handed back to me with a C or D on

it. It was very discouraging. It felt like even though I put forth ,what I thought, was good quality

work, it obviously didn't matter to the teacher. I found that what seemed to work the best was

just writing what they wanted to hear, despite the occasional "Don't write about what you

think I want to see", because they didn’t actually mean it. If you put anything other than what

they wanted to read, you were wrong. This blatant lie caused me much confusion and I lost

interest in writing as well.

I went through elementary school, middle school and most of high school feeling this was

towards English until my last semester of my senior year. I was met with a setting that I had

never seen before in an English classroom. Of course there were the typical teacher-esc

motivational posters strewn about the room, but the atmosphere was much different than

what I was expecting. Among the posters were drawings, not little kid drawings, but drawings

done by seniors from previous classes. "What kind of English class lets you draw pictures. for an

assignment?" I thought to myself. After finding our seats, a tall, thin, light-blonde headed

woman enters the class and immediately breaks out in a smile upon seeing us in our seats.

"Good morning everyone!! I hope you all have had a great year so far. My name is Mrs. Davis

and I'll be your Honors English IV teacher!". I was surprised, I also thought she was out of her

mind, but as time went by I realized that she wasn't actually crazy, she was just extremely

enthusiastic about what she was teaching.

That semester was the quickest one in all of high school. I no longer dreaded the assignments,

or the writing. I don’t quite know how, but Mrs. Davis had somehow taken the chore aspect out

of the class. I enjoyed every part of it, from reading things like Pride and Prejudice, Macbeth,

and Beowulf, to even writing a paper on Macbeth. I had never before wrote a paper without

dreading it and yet, for some reason, I didn't mind. I was able to enjoy reading like I used to, I

would find myself reading ahead in the script of Macbeth because I didn't want to stop. I

remember that she split the class into groups of four or five and assigned us separate sections

of the play to act out. She even requested that we dress up and use props to make it more

interesting. Naturally she assigned a bunch of guys the ending scene between Macduff and

Macbeth, so they showed up on presentation day with Nerf swords. Needless to say they

improvised the fight scene that took place off stage during the play.

Mrs. Davis had taken such a different approach on teaching the material, that I felt more like

play than work. I had never experienced something like that before and it changed the way that

I looked at English all together. It doesn't have to be some tedious labor that you're forced to

do, it can be fun. Reading and writing didn’t have to be something that you hate. It can be

something enjoyable, as long as you look at it that way. From that point on I have been trying to

look at the reading and writing parts of all my classes in a more positive way.