Through my life as a reader/writer there have been events and people that influenced me greatly but, when I think of people that directly sponsored my literacy growth three names come to my head: my father Miguel Angel Batista; my mother Margarita Amadi; and my high school Spanish teacher Fioldaliza Mateo. They served as guides, role models and sponsors shaping my literacy skills at different stages and at the same time helping me grow as an individual.
Of my three most prominent sponsors, the presence of my father has been a constant in my life. He has been the main sponsor of my learning, not only because he has financed it but because he has been a propelling and motivating force that has made me push the limits of what I can do. “I have nothing to leave you when I’m gone but education” he has said time and again and if anybody understands the value of this, it is he. Coming from the poverty of the cane fields of the Barahona province in the Dominican Republic, my father and his nine other siblings were raised by my grandmother Mercedes Batista, whose only concern was sending her children to school even though to this day she is still illiterate. My father had to work during the day and finish high school in the accelerated night program his local school offered in order to help support his family.
While my father was a teenager in the mid-60s and early 70s the country was going through a lot of political turmoil. In a short period of time the population saw the end of the 30 year dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo (1930-1961); the first democratic elections (1963); the coup d’état of the elected president (1963); and a civil war that ended with a North American invasion in 1965. This and other events made my father and his generation very involved politically and socially. During that period and after he moved to the capital, Santo Domingo, to start college and to help his brothers and sisters move out of Barahona as well, my father participated in community organizations, promoted cultural and educational activities and took part in political activities that helped shape his view of society and made him appreciate education and what it can do for a country and its people.
Some of my earliest memories are from when I was four years old in 1990. Perhaps because during that year I was learning the alphabet and my father took me to the “Feria Nacional de Libro” (National Book Fair) for the first time. The fair took place in the grounds of the National Music Conservatorium where all the vendors set up shop in long tables, filling them with old and new volumes of books, just like fishermen and butchers would do on a market. And it carried all the buzz and excitement of one. Magazines warm off the press, old books with yellowish pages aged like good cheese, children’s books full of color like the brightest vegetables. I loved it. Even though the place was only lit by single light bulbs hanging from the wires above the tables and it looked crowded and cluttered, the possibility of taking books home fascinated me. That night my dad bought me comics, children’s magazines, and short stories and even though I couldn’t read yet they were incentive enough to make me want to learn.
That same year I started kindergarten at the small private school of Nuestra Señora de Lourdes (Our Lady of Lourdes) and in Miss Dorca’s class everybody started to learn phonics. I was obsessed with identifying letters and syllables I already knew, to the point that I was driving my older sister Vanessa crazy whenever we went out. The day I was able to put a couple of those together and identify my first word I ran from the living room to the balcony, were my father was, yelling “Daddy, daddy I know how to read!” and kneeling on the floor to be able to open the newspaper I pronounced the word, syllable by syllable, aloud. I don’t remember the word but after that moment I sat by my father when he read the newspaper every day. He always handed me a section of the paper for me to look at. It was like being admitted to an exclusive club; the readers club.
After my first reading experiences I felt that I had always known how to do it and my learning process progressed smoothly from phonics to syllables to full sentences. During first grade, Miss Dorca taught us morphemes, word families and word endings. I remember word endings particularly because to me it was eye opening that with one ending you could create so many different words. One time, during the last lesson of the week we learned the ending “landia” which translates to “land” meaning that is the world or place of something. I was fascinated by this and that following Sunday, during our trip back home from visiting my grandmother, I was in the back seat adding “landia” to anything I could read. My mother turned her head and asked what was going on and my sister Vanessa, already annoyed with my game, answered “words are driving her crazy.” I remember my dad laughed and said that was a good sign, and I couldn’t agree more.
My father was not the only one to have an interest in my literacy development. Another sponsor of my literacy was my mother, Margarita Amadi. My earliest memories of her include a manila envelope and a folder, which she typed at the office she worked at as a secretary, with the psalm 23 from the bible and other prayers. Every night she would sit with us and read from it and have me and my sisters follow along. I knew all the prayers by heart by the time I started to read full texts at school. My mother came from a family of religious farmers of the Bonao province in the northern part of the country. The seventh of fifteen children, my mother was taught to read and write by her maternal aunts, who had all been novices in catholic convents. Thus to her, literacy and faith have strong bonds; she was taught to read with the bible and the catechism.
Reading and writing activities had a different meaning with my mom. She worked as a kindergarten teacher for a few years and she understood the importance of exposing children to literacy through different methods, so she would make me and my sisters color story books, she would sing us songs and she would make us write. My most fond memories are from the latter. It was through these exercises that I came to love writing. With her I didn’t have to write the letters of the alphabet or simple sentences like I did in school. Instead she encouraged me to use my imagination and write short stories, poems, songs and even letters to my relatives on their birthdays or the holidays. I still remember that the first letter I ever wrote was to the “Tres Reyes Magos” (The Three Kings) when I was eight years old in 1997. The Dia de Reyes (Kings’ Day) is a Dominican tradition celebrated every 6th of January in which children receive toys from Melchor, Gaspar and Baltazar, the wise men that brought presents to Jesus on the night of his birth at a farm in Jerusalem. As tradition goes, on the eve of the 6th you had to put under your bed a stash of hay or grass and a glass of water for the camels they rode in and candy for them. But the Three Kings only passed by your house if you sent them a letter with your wishes beforehand; so the week before my mother had me and my sisters write colorful letters with what we wanted for the Día de Reyes. I told the Reyes Magos my wishes were health for my family and a doll with blond hair and a closet of clothes. When I saw exactly what I wanted under my bed on January 6th I thought it was pure magic.
I think that people’s experiences shape their views of reading and writing. Some, like me, were fortunate enough to have people that encouraged them to explore reading and writing in different contexts. The reason I consider myself fortunate is because not only did I have my parents as sponsors of my literacy but I also found a lot of inspiring teachers throughout my school years. Of all those influential professionals I consider my high school Spanish teacher, Fioldaliza Mateo, to be not only a guide but a sponsor of my literacy. Prof. Fiol, as we all used to call her, constantly challenged me with her assignments to give an extra mile. She encouraged me to read new titles on various topics and was always willing to modify assignments to satisfy my interest in them or lack thereof. She would ask questions, spark conversation topics, recommend books and events and encouraged my participation in events that would enhance my learning experience. My favorite assignment was on the 11th grade when following mine and other classmates’ suggestions she allowed us to put together a newspaper. We divided in groups and the sections of the newspaper were distributed according to the interests of each group. I got to be editor of the lifestyle section and it was while creating the layouts and assigning topics to cover and writing my own articles that the interest that led to pursue journalism as a career sparked. Prof. Mateo had a special way of connecting with students and mentoring them. During my senior year in high school I remember her telling me that no matter what chose to do, words would follow me and I would not be able to ignore them. So far she has been right; all my choices have led me to pursue letters and write them, read them and teach them.
All my sponsors have had a tremendous influence on my literacy. Their participation in events of my life outside or inside the academic environment has determined how I acquire language and how I use it. I believe that if it were not for their interest in the development of my literacy skills I would have never consider language nearly as interesting as I do and my career path would have taken a completely different direction.
I believe that the sponsors of my literacy did an excellent job. Even if not all of them were professionals in the education field they made sure I acquired all the necessary skills that would both facilitate my learning and enhance it.
As one of my main sponsors, my father made sure that he preached with the example. He understood that children learn and copy what they see more than anything else so he would do his part and read habitually, often inviting me to join him with a book of my own. As a kid I always wanted to be like him and do what he did, so when I saw that he sat every night in the balcony with a book, a magazine or a newspaper I would find something to do to imitate him, even if it was coloring a book. That created in me study habits that I still have today and I think is what is responsible for my preference of studying at night when is dark and quiet outside. My father’s interest in my education went beyond him wanting to be a good father. One day after I questioned him for pushing me to do an assignment I hated, he told me that the only reason that he pushed harder on me and my sisters than what a regular parent would was because he needed us to succeed in a male dominated world and be independent women. His cultural and political background, as well as his experience in the corporate world allowed him to see firsthand the positions that women were given in society as nurturers and caregivers, always dependent on men.
To my father success meant stability and independence. It meant doing something that brought satisfaction but that also gave the freedom to live a comfortable life without having to rely on somebody else’s income. He constantly stresses that he is only getting older and that he is not “going to be around forever to provide for you.” “I cannot leave you fortune,” he says, “but you’ll always have the education I’ve tried to provide for you, and that can take you everywhere.” Literacy is the only power he could give and if I fail to use it he too as a parent would feel he failed.
On the other hand, my mother as sponsor of literacy served other purposes. Reading and writing were a way to indoctrinate me and my sisters into the catholic faith and a way to convey emotions. When we visited the Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection at the Columbia University Library and saw the picture of “St Anne Teaching Blessed Mary to Read” and I remembered the stories of my mom being taught to read with the catechism and her in turn teaching me prayers, I understood how certain roles are passed one from one generation to the other consciously or not. It was important to my mother that I became literate because that was her way of passing on not only her religion but also this “feminine” side of literacy so to speak, connected to emotions and nurture, not necessarily to critical thinking or power. Dad would bring home the paper and hand me the culture and politics sections, but she would give the lifestyle and fashion ones. Even if in the surface this can seem like mixed messages I understand that this combination provided me with a balance. Through different texts I was able to learn about roles and how they can be combined instead being segregated by gender.
While my literacy experiences at home where shaping my understanding of society, Prof. Fiol was making sure that I developed critical thinking skills that would help me question what I read through my writing. Her constant probing led me to research, to criticize, to analyze and understand language and how it can enrich and develop thought. Her interest as an educator was not only to fulfill the requirements of the curriculum, but also to prepare me and my classmates for the uses of language, read and written, on the higher education field and on real life. Looking back to how I have been taught, I learned to read and write by learning the grammar rules and sentence structure first and then moving on to writing composition but it was during my four years of high school with Prof. Fiol that I was able to develop my reading comprehension and critical thinking skills to a much deeper level and at the same time translate them to written form in different kinds of formats.
As a learner I was not only motivated to read and write to satisfy my own curiosity, it had been set clear by all my sponsors that acquiring literacy had a higher purpose. Not because reading and writing had practical applications but because literacy is also the vehicle of thought and literacy helped shape more wholesome individuals. My sponsors made it very clear that they had high expectations and that I was to meet them not because it was their desire but because I was the one that would reap the benefits of my work.
One of the consequences of my literacy experience is that I was able to acquire reading comprehension, writing proficiency, critical thinking and application skills that have helped navigate the classrooms of higher education if not with ease, with confidence. I have encountered daunting tasks but understanding that reading and writing are processes that evolve with time I have been able to complete them, perhaps at a slower pace but, with tenacity.
Another consequence of my literacy experience is that I was immediately attracted to the power of words. The biggest changes in the world have been brought about by the ideas spread through the written text and by empowering people with reading skills. My experience as a learner, to be able to play with words, read them silently, aloud or write them motivated me to pursue writing professionally as a journalist, now as a writing tutor and hopefully as a writing instructor in the near future. I believe that my positive literacy experience enables me to help others understand that reading and writing are processes that take years to master but that they are skills that will take them far.
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