Author: Kcamacho (Page 5 of 6)

2 paragraphs of my literacy narrative

Intro

I have been making poetry and music for as long as i remember. I was the kid in elementary school free-styling at the lunch table, i was the kid who enjoyed learning new words in English classes, one of the only kids who liked being assigned poetry homework or assignments or learning about poetry in class. I remember teachers telling the class we would focus on on poetry in the next class and everyone would get upset except me and when the time came to make our own poetry i remember everyone coming to me for help. It was not until middle school that i started taking my poetry and music seriously. That’s around the time i wrote and recorded a song for the first time. Since then I have only grew with my music but i can easily say the biggest step i have taken to date is when I performed on stage for the first time.

1st body

One summer night i was out on my way to get some food not far from my neighborhood and as im on my way to get that fresh, hot beef patty with cheese and pepperoni over cocao bread that i had been craving all day i see a rap artist who is famous in the underground rap scene that also grew up in the area posted up with a couple of his friends across the street from the pizzeria. I cross the street and greet him and tell him how i like his work he thanks me. I tell him i know its hard to gain traction in the music industry with the type of music he makes because lyrically profound pieces of work arent appreciated today like they once were. He agrees and asks if i make music because he picked up on my passion for what i was saying about music through my tone. I tell him i have been making music for years and he could definitely hear something but that i had to hit the pizzeria first. I ask if he wants anything while im there, he says hes fine, then i make my way across the street.

Body 2

I enter the pizzeria in a bit of a nervous state because there have only been a couple times prior that i have performed a song for people other than my childhood friends. Yea i had music out on diffferent platforms but doing it live is a whole different thing. I told myself this was no time the be nervous and i order my beef patty and contemplate on what piece of my work i want everyone across the street to hear.

Turning point in my education

I went to midwood highschool by brooklyn college and at first i enjoyed it. I did good in my classes, had a lot of friends from freshman’s to senior’s, and played on multiple teams like the football and tennis team. On top of that all my the teachers liked me along with the deans and most of the regular every day school staff. Then sophomore year came and something swithced inside of me and to this day i still dont know what exactly is that switched. I started cutting class in the staircase, started leaving early, and started coming in late. This only got worse throughout the year and by the end of sophomore year i was coming into school at around 11 even though i had classes starting at 7am and staying for a few periods, mostly in the staircase and then i would leave at like 1:30  along with the seniors. When i got to junior year i didnt even care to show up. For a week I showed up to school many hours late , would stay for a period and then leave and go hit my block. After this week i stopped going completely. I would wake up on time for school and get ready so that my mom would see me getting ready to leave. I would leave around the time she would for work, sometimes before sometimes after. She would go her day thinking i was in school and whole time all i did was either go back to bed or walk a couple blocks to my friends house. Some days she would come back home to me on the couch, on some nights she would know i didnt leave, some nights i would straight up tell her and some nights i would lie and say i went. Everyday my school would call and say i was absent and my mom got used the calls and stopped caring. Her mindset was she did all she could for me and i was throwing it all away. This continued for a year… i was dropped out for a year. I realized i couldnt waste my life away… actually i wouldnt say waste because the time i was dropped out, i made a lot of progress with my music and poetry. It was the happiest i was in a long time. To date, i have never been happier than when i got to focus 100% on my music. But like i was saying, i knew i couldnt sit home knowing my mom wanted me in school. I wanted to get things done. I spoke to my friend about a community highschool she went to and i applied. I went back to midwood after about a year to let my past counselor know i was in the process of tranferring an she tried to stop the process. She told me it wouldnt work and that they wouldnt accept me and all this other stuff to put me down but i did it anyway and sure enugh a couple months later i was admitted into the community highschool. I dedicated myself to finishing as fast as possible and with the help of an advocate counselor at the community highschool, and with the help of the sense of cumminity at this community highschool i miraculous graduated before all the students that were in my grade. i graduated 4 months early after having dropped out for a year. Oh and i forgot to mention i was actually valedictorian and my community highschool. They also convinced me to go to college and keep getting an education. Now im at city tech with the help of that community highschool. Now im trying my best here AND i work at the community highschool that got me to where i am today. The story obviously can get a lot more dense than this and there are a lot of factors i left out but i ran out of free write time lol. Id def. like to write more on this topic tho and really get into detail.

I went to two elementary schools. 1 for kindergarten and 1st grade and one for my remaining years in elementary. Im not exactly sure why i switched schools but what i remember hearing is my  2nd school was a better school. Both schools were in my neighborhood so the distance from me house wasnt drastic. It was a bit of a longer walk but  never minded. The area in which the school was in was a bit odd. I shouldnt say odd, it was just different. It was next to a hasidic Jewish community, a few blocks from a housing project commuinity, to the left of the school was a predomanitly russian high income community, and to the right was a lower income neighborhood with many middle eastern and hispanic residents. Oh and i also forgot to mention, last but not least, a few blocks away was also a large strip of houses and bussiness almost all italian-american owned. That neighborhood/area is actually in and or referenced in a lot of famous italian mob movies and shows. So it was a melting pot, a lot of diversity but i would say very segregated within the school. From the classes to recess to lunch. All day every day. Looking back now it is really messed up how it was. For example, we had the classes broken up in levels of advancment. The most advaced class being the “sigma class”. This class was full of russian and italian american students. from there none of the classes had special names but they were broken up in levels of “advancment” and the class you were put in for he most part stuck with you from 1st to 5th grade.  Really what happened is the more advanced russian and italian american kids got the sigma class,  the average russian and italian american kids got class A, the more advanced students of color got class B and the average students of color got class C and got mixed with students that didnt know english, struggled to read, write, etc. My mother picked up on this quickly and at the start of every school year you could catch her in the main office arguing with  a receptionist that would blurt racial slurs and refuse to connect her to the principal. Every time my mom waited in that office because the prinicpal had to come out eventully and every year it was the same thing, she would personally request i be moved up in class. they would move me up one class but that wasnt enough. I would get bored in that class and be ahead of most the class but they hated the idea of putting me in the “sigma class’. Their solution? the school would give me the textbooks that the “sigma class” were using and have me work on them after i finished my regular work …(to be continued)

SUMMARY

“How to Read Like a Writer” by Mike Bunn is essentially about explaining to the reader how to be a better reader. He does this by trying to get readers to look at pieces of writing in a different light. Instead of simply reading a text a reader should consider how it was built. A reader should not just read something, but deeply analyze what they are reading. Its one thing to read something, understanding what you just read is something completely different though.  A good way to ‘read like a writer’ is to ask youself questions such as “what is the purpose of this piece of work”, “who is the targeted audience”, etc.