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The Beginning
My mother began reading to me as soon as I was born. I have many memories of her reading to my sister and I before we went to bed, we never went to sleep without at least one story. We learned to love reading by sitting in our mother's lap and listening to her night after night. -
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Tiffany Ruiz Personal Literacy Timeline
How the love of literature was fostered in my early life. -
Kindergarten
My Kindergarten teacher was an amazing woman. She encouraged me and motivated me to push myself to higher levels. We had a competition in our class to see who could read all 26 alphabet books first and with her encouragement, I won. I suppose I've always been competitive and that was a moment I will never forget. -
Published
When I was in the third grade, I was qualified for the GT program at my school. One of our assignments that year was to write two children's books. After several rough drafts and edits, our books were published, hard covers and all. We were so proud of our work and I still have those books to this day. -
Accelerated Reader Goals
When I was in the fifth grade, the top AR readers in our school got to participate in welcoming Governor George W. Bush to our school. We also got to meet Jack Gantos, the author, and ride in a limousine. Those were some incredible experiences that I will never forget. -
Camping in the Backyard
Every summer when school was out, my mother would take my sister and I to the library to get books. We would get a huge stack, go home and find a comfortable spot, and read all day. During this particular summer, I remember my sister and I pitching a tent in our backyard. We got pillows and sleeping bags and of course, our stacks of books. We took flashlights out there also so that we wouldn't have to stop reading when the sun went down. That summer we lived outside in our tent, reading nonstop. -
Poetry
In my angsty teenage years, I used journal after journal to write poetry and short stories. I wanted to be an author when I grew up and I would write all of my ideas in notebooks. I found a love for writing, but got frustrated because I could never seem to write the perfect ending to my stories. Writing poetry became an outlet for me as I struggled socially in school. -
Pen Pal
In high school, my English teacher encouraged us to keep a "secret journal" that we had to write in every day. Only she would read it and write feedback to us. We could write anything we wanted and no one but her would see it. I looked forward to pouring my heart out in that journal and enjoyed the feedback that she gave me. -
Scholarships
As I was preparing to go off to college, my parents encouraged me to apply for scholarships as they couldn't afford to pay my tuition. My dad had always pushed me to do better than he had. He wanted me to go to college and "use my brain instead of my back". I applied for as many scholarships as I could, many of which required essays. I actually got my whole school paid for because of those essays. I firmly believe being an avid reader helped me to be a good writer. -
College Difficulties
As I entered my second semester in college, I began to have difficulty reading the textbooks for my classes. I had always loved to read and I was always reading nonstop, but nonfiction bored me. I would find myself reading the same sentence over and over without absorbing any meaning. I had to train my brain to pay attention and understand what I was reading, even when it wasn't interesting to me. I learned strategies to chunk my reading and take notes summarizing what I had read. -
The Legacy Continues...
In 2013, we welcomed a baby girl into the world. Before she was born, her dad and I would read to her. We have made it a point to read to her every night, like my mother did to me. She has a growing library and refuses to go to sleep without at least two stories. I saw the impact reading had on me as a child and I wanted to share that with her as well. I can see already the development in her vocabulary and imagination.
