Socorro Valencia
JOURNAL # 1 Describe yourself as a reader
I grew up in my grandpa’s farm in the state of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, when I was about five years old. Before I formally started attending school one of my cousins a little bit older that me, had many magazines or comics for children. I had an intense desire to know what was the content of the magazines, so I asked this cousin to teach me what he already knew about reading. I still remember that he started showing me how to form the syllables, from there I read all the comics from Walt Disney that fell in my hands. At the elementary school the teacher made us read aloud. Since we had a multigrade classroom, after finishing the book assigned for my grade, I used to take the books from the other upper grades and read all of them. When we were visiting the homes of friends and relatives, I was always looking for books and any magazines, and sometimes I had to read the same book more than once. Some of the books that I read were “Alicia en el país de las maravillas” (Alice in Wonderland), a series of books on the Greek Mythology (there were about twelve books), I loved to read biographies, I read about Ulyses Grant, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Edgar Allan Poe; Emiliano Zapata, José María Morelos, Benito Juárez, Maximilian and Charlotte, Sam Houston, Fredrick Douglas, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, among many others, etc. Besides many topics I like the spiritual books, my favorites are Desire of Ages and the Great Controversy, also the biography of missionaries and men and women of Science. I read the Bible stories for my children. I will definitely incorporate reading into my teaching; and it will be integrated with some of the six languages modes.