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"Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!" was the bane of my 2 year old existence because of one single word: drawer. My mom and I would read mounds of Dr. Seuss books when I was tiny, Hop on Pop, Hands Hands, Fingers, Thumb, etc. I loved them. Marvin K. Mooney though....I never wanted to read it because I could never say the damn word "drawer." For whatever reason my tongue and lips just failed me with that one time after time, but my mom didn't give up. She was determined to raise a kid who could read at age 2 and she did just that. We practiced sounds until I could say the syllables, then until I could put them together, then until I could say the word in a sentence without stopping to sound it out first. I will never forget that word and neither will she!

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My claim to fame in 1st grade. We were tasked to write a whole book––super ambitious 1st grade teacher, and super badass. This was a time in my life when I was obsessed with dolphins, so naturally, that is what my 15 page hard-cover book revolved around. Basically a girl (me) was chillin on a beach one day when she heard a strange noise (aforementioned dolphin). She conveniently has a boat to use to investigate this noise, and goes on an expedition to find the dolphin. She sails through a storm, past sharks, and back to the beach with her new friend (the dolphin). If you ask my mom about this book she will brag until the cows come home about how I refused any creative input from her because my 6-year-old brain had such a clear vision for what I wanted this book to be (although I did take ample input on grammar and spelling lol).

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The first time I attempted to endeavor new literacies was when I decided I was destined to be a salsa specialist. I wanted SO badly to make my own salsa, so I just started putting shit into a blender and seeing what would happen. The spice cabinet had endless opportunities. The front yard wasn't out of bounds either. Grass? Free cilantro. It looks similar enough. I think I made salsa every day for like 3 months, and every single time I would force my parents to try it. It was a great acting exercise for them. Finally it got to the point where my mom just had to be frank with me and say that cardamom simply does not belong in salsa. She let me explore for a while though before intervening, and I think that was really smart of her because I went through a lot of trial and error in the process. Eventually she started teaching me the basics of cooking and by age 8 or so I was making a mean ass salsa. By age 10 my specialty was grilled cheese. Age 13 I got into baking, and I perfected my own chocolate chip cookie recipe by age 15. Around age 17 or 18 I was finally comfortable cooking with meat, and I would frequently make dinner for my mom and I. When I moved out I was forced to feed myself full-time, and I love to eat, so I quickly became quite the fluent chef. A few things that I love to make now are Chanko Nabe, a Japanese stew, homemade sushi, Thai curry, cajun shrimp pasta, homemade tortilla soup, I could go on forever. I look to cook, and it all started with my grass and cardamom salsa :)

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This was the first book I ever read cover to cover voluntarily. It was in 5th grade, I had gone through elementary school absolutely hating to read; I never enjoyed any of the stories in the books I was assigned enough to sit down and read it leisurely. This book changed that. I think it was just luck that I chose this book at the library one week (our class took weekly trips to the library and we were required to pick out a book or renew an existing one). It's about a boy who learns about protons and how they are the building blocks to everything that has life, and he compares himself to that with comfort of indestructibility. He soon finds out though that even a proton's life is finite, and the rest of the novel is his journey of coming to accept his own life as both unpredictable and finite. After reading this book I had a newfound sense of motivation to read, and I began finding more and more books I enjoyed.

Somewhere between 6th and 12th grade though I lost my love for books, I'm not sure why, I think I just developed other hobbies and interests that took precedence. I decided to major in psychology for college, but I wasn't very passionate about it, I just thought it was cool so thought why not major in it. Meanwhile there was an English class called 'English 101: Critical Reading and Writing" that was mandatory for all majors, and that class was my Smiles to Go 2.0. We read James Joyce's Dubliners, and my professor taught me how to read in a way I had never known how to before. He taught me to find binaries and anomalies, to look words up in a dictionary that I thought I already had an understanding of, then find synonyms and look those words up to. He taught me to think about why the author chose each and every word they did for a text, and what kind of meaning I can extrapolate from that. I don't think I could ever effectively explain how much that class changed my whole ass life. That class guided me to becoming an English major, and now a Master's student getting my credential to teach English. I will not lie it makes me a little bit weepy. :') After becoming an English major I read books like Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov and The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner which both made my head explode with confusion and frustration, yet determination and perserverance too. I read every Toni Morrison book I could get my hands on because her books helped me to really feel like I began to understand racial injustice on a personal level. Nightwood by Djuna Barnes taught me about queerness and love and liberty. There There by Tommy Orange opened me up to an entirely new understanding of Oakland, and the way that is houses so much Native American history. I could talk about books for days now, and I really never thought that I would be able to say that, but I am so proud that I can.

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This video is a segment of a song I learned in quarantine during May of 2020 :D

It feels super cliche to write about being into music, like yeah so is everyone else and their mom. But whatever it's true. I love music. I take stupid pride in the end of the year when Spotify tells me how many minutes I have spent listening to music and it's beyond everyone else's. Sue me. When I was 5 years old my mom put me in piano lessons. When I was about 10 I quit. Not playing piano, just the lessons. I was tired of learning made up songs that were just designed to teach standards; I wanted to play songs I knew. So I went rogue and started teaching myself, and eventually it became a sacrifice of losing my ability to read music, but learning how to play by ear (which is a controversial debate, but for my own personal reasons playing by ear was much more valuable). I was finally playing songs that my friends could sing and dance to, and that was such a cool feeling––it felt like a superpower.

Throughout both middle school and high school I was involved in theater, choir, dance, you name it, and oftentimes I would be the point person for running vocal warm-ups on the piano and call me a nerd but I ate that shit up. I loved having that agency because of my literacy with music. I started composing my own music in my free time and it became such a huge emotional outlet for me to just pour my heart into a piano then walk away. It has never been something that has faded; although I have much, much less free time now, I still make music. Recently I have introduced myself to electronic modes of music production and that has been super exciting. I would not at all call myself fluent in that realm, but I hope that one day I can, and that I will have something to show and share for it.

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My first attempt at teaching critical literacy would be through Shakespeare. I think his work is such a potent paradigm for establishing a critical lens and using it to make meaning, subvert meaning, interrogate meaning––what have you. The same professor I took my critical reading and writing course with, I ended up having for my first Shakespeare class, so his personal influence and expertise are definitely a huge reason why I feel so passionate about English, and I hope to help cause Shakespeare to leave the same impact on my future students. Shakespeare is studied in the English discipline, but it can serve students of all pathways and interests. His plays are simply about the struggles and experiences and nuances of life, which is something that every single person can relate to, they just have to discover how. He was so wildly ahead of his time that he was talking about queerness in the 1500s in a plethora of his plays, he was talking about dismantling oppressive racialized structures and Black power, he was talking about feminism and the inner workings of patriarchy, and so so so so so so so (SO) much more. These concepts should not be limited to the English classroom, they are too important to have boundaries. But as a future English teacher, I am so excited to be the one to teach kids the power that is Shakespeare.

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This is a photo of me with my French professor at Sorbonne University receiving my certificate of proficiency. :'D

I studied French on an accelerated path for 2 years and spent part of it actually full-time in Paris. I took phonetics classes, oral language classes (even a course on French slang!) and lots and lots of writing classes. We also had a French culture class which really was just daily excursions to coffee shops and museums and restaurants and gardens where we would learn about French culture and history while practicing the language. I took Spanish in high school and was pretty good at it, but it was really just learning and practicing vocabulary. My journey through studying French in my first two years of college was so much more than just vocab words. I became so immersed in absolutely EVERYTHING French (this was also because I had an outstanding professor who made sure I excelled) and I can confidently say now that I do enjoy escargot. I overcame the brutal period of practicing French with real French people who absolutely fit the stereotype of scoffing at Americans, especially those who are at a beginner level of French, but that is all part of learning. It made me tougher––being tough is essential to survive in Paris as a foreigner. Aaaaanyway, I learned so much about literacy through this whole two-year long process, and it has contributed immensely to the person I am today.