宅男福利社

How My High School Extracurriculars Helped Further Develop My Literacy Skills
by Sarah Bestwina

Everyone has had writing and reading history in their life, whether it was instruction-based or freestyle. Each experience is an opportunity to grow and develop our literacy skills and help shape our understanding of who we are as a person and writer. Throughout all of my years of elementary, middle and high school, I've had plenty of opportunities where I’ve written and developed stories and essays. With every submitted paper, there was an improvement on my literacy skills. My writing skills progressed through my experiences in theatre and writing for my schools newspaper throughout high school.

The most important memories of my writing and reading history were during high school. The two important events that heavily influenced my knowledge and skill development were joining theatre and writing for my school’s newspaper. I joined theatre at the very beginning of freshman year, so I was immediately introduced to a new world of the arts. Although I mainly worked backstage, I was still exposed to the stage which let me observe classmates who performed speeches, monologues and dialogues, skits, plays, and musicals. While walking into our first theatre meeting, I was amazed with how many people showed up. I was excited but I felt intimidated with the amount of work needed to be done. I felt like I wasn’t confident enough with my writing skills to helpfully contribute to my team. As the meetings continued, we talked about the upcoming shows and how we were going to participate in them. The crew split up into three teams, and each had specific jobs that needed to be done. I felt at ease while choosing one of the easiest roles, thinking I wouldn’t have to use my mediocre literacy expertise. Little did I know, there wasn't such a thing as an “easy” job in crew. I looked around the auditorium and saw everyone having a difficult time trying to figure out what they needed to do. This was a common issue whenever we had started a new production. Every position required an equal amount of writing and coming up with directions, such as stage directions, notes, improvs, and cues. I had a very difficult time at first trying to make up directions and cues because I was always looking for affirmation with confirmation to see if I did my job correctly. My peers saw my struggles and started to teach me the proper skills I lacked to sufficiently do my job. I then started noticing myself helping others with their jobs as they were helping me with mine. The influence never really stopped as I continued theatre all four years of high school. Every time I walked into the auditorium I was able to see and smell the fresh wood being built into the set. I would hear my classmates rehearsing lines and singing their hearts out. I directed lights and moved sets on and off stage. Sometimes, I was able to smell the fog machine spitting out clouds of “smoke” onto the stage. Every day there was something new to be learned, such as vocabulary, confidence while speaking, and different perspectives. Theatre greatly influenced and helped develop my literacy skills by working first hand with writing directions and hearing the speaking techniques used.

Writing for my school’s newspaper also made a huge impact on who I am as a writer and person today. While walking into the first day of journalism class, I was greeted by the teacher who was coincidentally my theatre crew director. I sat down in my favorite seat and started listening to his teachings. I was a little nervous being in a class where I had to write a lot of stories, but I felt comfortable with my teacher and classmates, so I knew I would be in good hands. The first thing I learned was writing for journalism is a totally different style than writing an essay for any English class. For a newspaper, we had to write stories for a large audience. I learned to write short and informative stories instead of writing long and detailed stories like I was used to. This changed my writing habits because I had changed my way of thinking and creating outlines for such stories. To help us create our first story for the newspaper, my teacher let us go through old school newspapers to have us get comfortable with the layout. I flipped through what felt like a hundred pages of what my previous and current classmates wrote. I looked around the room and heard fingers running on paper and the whooshing sound of each page rustle. As I started writing my first story, I had already figured out what my new writing style craved. I needed to find my own creativity and spin on how I wanted to portray my stories. By reading previous stories and receiving feedback from my teacher, I achieved the confidence in writing that I have today. Not only did journalism increase my confidence in my literacy skills, it helped create an outlet for my new creativity.

To conclude, reflecting on my past and current literacy skills, school has been a major key to my development. Between all of my English classes, joining theatre and writing for my school's newspaper, there were countless experiences to grow and develop. I never imagined how much more I would learn outside of class. Theatre gave me a wide set of vocabulary while also showing me different perspectives and styles of writing. Creating stories for my school’s newspaper gave me the freedom to expand my creativity as well as learning important factors on how to write for a large audience. These experiences show how my writing skills have significantly progressed throughout my high school career.