My Journey Into Literacy

September 11, 2012

 

Literacy used to be writing and reading. But throughout the time and with the development of technology, literacy is not any more writing and reading. It becomes transliteracy that moved to using other types of tools. It is not anymore the pen and the paper, the simplest type of tools, but exceed it to computers and digital tools that serves as advances equipment to smooth and promote literacy.

Thinking about my literacy in this way is taking me back  into a journey to a very early age. Literacy through this journey has two dimensions: literacy at home and another at school. My first literacy is learning to speak the mother tongue through listening, imitating, and repeating what other people around me are saying and then using it for my needs. So, this type of literacy came naturally without any need for schooling.

However, my school literacy is very different and it has its own purposes as well. I remembered that even my childhood games were around teaching and learning. I remember that I was always the schoolteacher that I liked because it shaped my career and my affection for teaching.  Acquiring literacy at home is very different from school.

I remember my first experience with schooling is not that bright and normal like any other kid because my situation as a kid to Palestinian mother and an Israeli father affected my life from the beginning. I am not saying that it is bad, on the contrary, I liked it a lot and it shaped my life later on. When I reached the suitable age to enter school, I was not allowed. Not like any kid, who experienced and lived the first day of going to school to grow up and tell how it was. Holding an Israeli identity in a Palestinian school made this delay because my parents had to get permission from authorities to let me enter the school.

Imagine how it was to miss all the wonderful things that kids of my age experienced to overcome their fear of school. But, I had to face it alone. After two months or so, I attended a female school because there were no mixed boys and girls schools according to the Jordanian educational system which was used in the occupied Palestinian schools. For this, I had no option but to go to a female school. So complicated! Imagine that! A holder of Israeli identity card started her education within a Jordanian system in a Palestinian school. This whole complication made even more complicated when I introduce myself. “Am I Israeli? Am I Palestinian? Am I both? Who am I?” questions kept digging in my head. But in fact I had the privilege to introduce myself the way I wanted and the way my listen preferred it. Sometimes, I used as a strategy to get rid of annoying people if I introduced myself in this way or that way.  “I am an Arab Muslim Bedouin Palestinian Israeli girl” was my identities and I was free to choose whatever I want from them.  So complicated and so weird  in this way saying them in this way! But this is what I am. My identities, my literacies, and my existence are connected to all these elements.  Sometimes it was for good and sometimes it was for bad. 

This experience gave me the determination to learn more languages. My passionate about literacy made me teach myself Hebrew. Amazing how a young girl took her own self-education of another language without any need to do so, and I took it seriously. But, I always had this precognition into the future. Thinking about tomorrow, and not stuck in the present moment, created other perspectives and more opportunities for me. I taught myself to read, write and speak without attending classes.

For me, my father taught me my first letters and brought me books. My first Hebrew book was written in Hebrew letters but the words sounded Arabic. How funny it was to read Arabic in Hebrew letters about Abu Sami and Cohen.  It was my first experience with learning languages and it happened that both Hebrew and Arabic were similar in starting from the right side and had many words in common.

At the beginning, I used to write names of the people around me and read words without knowing their meanings. I liked it. At school, my teacher once assigned me to write the names of  the troublemakers in the class, as it was a role to assign one each week to control noises. I wrote the names in Hebrew and my classmates got curious about it.

 

Strange how kids think and behave when they learn something new. Following my Hebrew self- tutoring, I learned a lot from watching Egyptian movies with Hebrew translation on every Friday night on the Israeli channel one on TV. I also watched Israeli movies a lot and listened to news which helped me connect between Arabic and Hebrew news when both reported the same event. This first experience with language happened before learning English. It was interesting how home schooling with the Hebrew language was equivalent to learning classical Arabic at school.

My journey with English is a different story. After learning two languages from the right side, I had to take my journey to the other side. It was all about drawing circles and lines from the left side. I liked it. It was fun and I liked drawing in which I was skilled as still is. I acquired this talent from my mother who was artistic in embroidery and inventing shapes that women used for their traditional clothes, pictures, table cloths, and many other items. It seemed that I got this side from my mother, who taught me all skills and helped me to embroider my life with my languages later on.

Very soon, it is not fun anymore. The serious work started and I have to acquire the language. I was happy with it at the beginning till I got punished by my English teacher for not knowing some vocabulary. I even forgot what the word was. But I remember that it was painful. Not physically, but emotionally and left a scar deeply inside.  But, frankly speaking, I deserved it. Yes. I deserved it. I could call it now “The Awakening Slap.” The best thing that happened to me came from physical punishment. Ya! Bad things were the cause for good things. It hurted me deeply because the best kid in class was the worst in English. Life was so strange. It directed us to the unknown and shaped us in the way it wanted, sometimes for bad and other times for good. The smartest was the one who could seize the moment to choose the best. And this slap directed me to my future career. From that moment I decided to be an English teacher. Just to tease my teacher and show her that I would be the best in English and I did it. I finished high school with high scores that could send me to medicine. But I just wanted to be an English teacher. I challenged myself and I succeeded as a student and as a teacher.  

My literacy didn’t stop by learning languages. With the development of technology, I taught myself how to use technology and I bought my first computer. The funny thing was that, I didn’t know anything about computers and I had to follow the instructions to even turn on the computer. So, my first literacy started from chat rooms with people from different places around the globe.  I remember that my first use of the keyboard I have to spend long time just trying to find the letter on the keyboard. Imagine three different languages on the same keyboard. How complicated is it? At this point, I was learning to use my computer, but at the same time learning to sue three languages at the same time and remembering where each letter is located and what finger goes with which button. I ended up typing by my two forefingers. From the moment I touched my keyboard, I became attached to it until today.  

Looking back at the journey of my literacy, I can see tat many people affected my it, starting from my family, moving to my school, and ending with technology. All the stage  happened for a purpose to suit different contexts.