麻豆传媒高清

鈥淒igging Deeper in Literacy鈥�

By Paul Cimino

It was April of 2021. I sat at my kitchen table in front of one of the Chromebooks my school had issued to every student to enable online homework and attendance of Google Meets during COVID lockdowns. I was finishing up my essay on John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, diligently looking for and replacing any instance of “and” with “in addition to,” swapping “1,000” for “one thousand,” and the other classic tips to pad length. How did Mrs. McCluskey possibly expect us to write a full page about a book as short and uneventful as The Pearl? I had already talked about everything that happened in the book: Coyotito was stung by a scorpion, but Kino could not pay for treatment. He then finds a giant pearl, which the doctor tries to steal. The next day, Kino tries to sell the pearl, but because all the local dealers lowballed him, he sets out for the capital. Juana wanted to just get rid of it, but Kino refused. Along their route to the capital, they are found by a group of trackers, who end up killing Coyotito. Kino disposes of the pearl upon their return home. What more was there to write? 2026 Paul clearly sees that 2021 Paul should have written about the themes of greed, parental responsibility, and guilt present in the novella, but my 13-year-old mind simply could not comprehend doing that. Until high school, I never engaged with the themes and deeper ideas of a text, but in my freshman year, I began to engage with the things I read and wrote on a more thoughtful level, ultimately enhancing my literacy.

It was August of 2021. School was finally back in person. I was starting high school. I got through all the icebreakers in my other classes and I expected more of the same in my eighth period English class. I was, however, mistaken. To my horror and disbelief, instead of simple questions or games, I was met with an overview of the syllabus for the class. The presentation detailed the books and plays we would read. It explained that, as Mrs. Weimer was 8 and a half months pregnant, we would have a substitute, Ms. Sullivan, from the start of the next week through the end of the semester. She closed by saying that we would be expected to analyze themes and create unique ideas in our reading and writing assignments, a nearly unheard-of concept for 14-year-old Paul.

The first book we read as a class was Animal Farm. Due to the themes being as subtle and understated as the colors of a poisonous frog, understanding Orwell’s point that totalitarianism can happen quickly and seemingly innocuously was pretty easy for me. On the test over Animal Farm, I flew through the questions about the symbolism of the dogs, what Boxer represented, and the importance of the pigs becoming bipedal. That led me to be a tad overconfident during our reading of Romeo & Juliet. I didn’t really understand what the point of the play was. They fell in love and died. Big deal. During the Socratic Seminar about the play, my classmates were consistently making excellent points I had never considered and barely comprehended. Michael talked about how, despite the deaths caused by their relationship, the titular couple’s relationship brought about positive change by ending the Montague-Capulet feud, and I was silent. Amanda brought up the conflation of sex and love, and I was quiet. Jakub made a joke about what Amanda said, and he was promptly sent to the deans’ office. Will commented on the ideas of fate vs. free will, and I had nothing to add. It continued like that for the entire class period. I just didn’t know what to say at any point.

A similarly cataclysmic event happened in November when we had the first essay of the year. It had a 45-minute time limit, and the prompt was going to be one of three we were told a week prior. In accordance with those prompts, I heavily studied the respective shifting tone used to describe Sydney Carton, the reserved tone for Charles Darnay, and the ominous, yet sympathetic tone used for the Jacobians. I had improved my reading ability since the disaster that was Romeo and Juliet, so I was confident that my interpretation was correct. I got to class and opened the Google Doc that was the only tab that could be open. Thankfully, the prompt was the Carton one, which I was the most confident in. I spent the first 5 minutes typing my MLA heading, giving it a painfully generic title, and adding page numbers. Once that was done, I clicked onto the first line of the doc and froze. In all my studying of A Tale of Two Cities, I had completely neglected to remember the HOT-APE-RIP format that the essay was required to be in. My first thought was to just google what it stood for. As I clicked the new tab button, I realized that it was a terrible idea because Ms. Sullivan was watching our screens remotely, so I closed it and prayed she hadn’t noticed my screen flash my bright yellow Chrome theme. I then sat for the next 20 minutes trying to remember the formula. I remembered that HOT stood for Hook, Overview, Thesis. The A and P in APE eluded me, but I knew the E was explanation. From there I was able to realize that I would need evidence. Maybe the P was proof? No idea on A though. RIP was for the conclusion but I had no idea what it meant. I started writing my essay with twenty minutes remaining. As such, I couldn’t really convey any of the ideas I knew were part of it. My introduction was okay I guess, my body paragraphs leaned towards summary, and my conclusion was in the “In conclusion, [summarize everything in the essay]” format which was not supposed to be how it was written. I got a D on that essay.

It was clear I needed to improve. As mentioned previously, I first improved my reading habits. I noticed my friend Jakub was scoring well on the reading check quizzes. I asked him how he was doing that, as he regularly talked about not reading. He said that he was using SparkNotes, a website that contained summary and analysis for pretty much every popular book; I realized that I could use it as an answer key to check my own interpretation of each chapter after reading. That led to me being more confident in the material I read, which in turn made me more willing to share my ideas during class discussions, which both served as a second check on my understanding and helped me get better at conveying the ideas I had. I also improved my writing habits. When Mrs. Weimer returned, she held a one-on-one meeting with every student to see where we were and how we felt. I told her about my struggle with the essay format, and she told me to focus on the content more than the format, and that she would grade an essay with thoughtful analysis but poor formatting higher than the opposite. The specific structure would come later, but the ideas needed to come now. I also had a lot more essays to write and books to read, and, as the saying goes, practice makes perfect. 

It was May of 2025. I was in Room 138 of my high school, typing away on one of the Chromebooks my school had provided for AP testers to enable the taking of digital AP exams, hunting for spelling and grammar errors and any use of informal English in my essay about The Great Gatsby. I had already talked about everything I needed to: Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom’s respective memories of the past, how they shaped each character’s worldview, and the impact it had on the Nihilistic ideas presented in the novel. I felt like I had expressed my ideas well and expected to see a passing score on apstudents.collegeboard.org come July 7th. Four years earlier, I would never have written something about themes or even noticed them as I read, but after my literary mentality shifted from words to ideas in my freshman year, it never went back.