Before this transcript begins, we see a minute of video showing Thomas in class. Then we will see still photographs of Thomas and hear his voice.

Transcript: Thomas Shares His Personal Reading History

Learning to Read

It actually was hard for me to like comprehend reading when I was like in first and second grade ‘cause I couldn’t understand, like, any of what I was reading, but I knew that I was reading something. But, like in the fourth grade, or maybe like third, teachers and my momma and my friends of family helped me actually understand what I was reading.

They um, like, got me to read books and stuff like that and I go, my momma put me up in an afterschool program where they helped me read up in there so, now I like really understand what I’m reading since I practice like every night and all day, reading on the internet and stuff, so now I actually understand what I’m reading.

A lot of it took place in school, too, ‘cause they got me in support classes where the teacher actually helps me with, um, my work and projects and homework and stuff, so I do a lot of reading in there.

Outside of School

Well, my favorite type of reading is reading on the internet because there’s actually a lot of things I can read and some things like C, MSNBC, like the news.

I like to look at the weird news. Like, um, yesterday I looked at a news about the world’s, the world’s hairiest man wanting to carry the Olympic torch for the Olympics. And I looked at um one about a man who sticks crabs on hisself for like, I guess, entertainment. And he say it doesn’t hurt when they pinch him and stuff like that. So they call him the crab man.

That’s how I like get all, mostly all my information. Like today, I might to go on the internet to look up just random things, and I just bring ‘em, just Google ‘em.

Like, I read Jet and People’s magazine. And I also like the newspaper. I give my mom the money so she can, you know, get ‘em for me, but it’s practically that I’m buying ‘em. I’m a big fan of the news, actually. And I like gossip.

Celebrities, mostly. Like the child stars who would have been big today, but are not big now. Like keeping track about them. And people, famous marriages and stuff that is breaking up in divorces. Yeah.

In School

Well, some days I don’t feel like reading, like today I didn’t feel like reading a book for second period, but I read it anyway because it’s actually interesting facts that they have in there. And I mostly, like, go to the library and get nonfiction books and fiction books from the library but I really like nonfiction books.

I get um murders, I get um biography sketches, and I get myth and mythology books and I get thriller books and some Goosebumps books. And actually I have a wide variety of books that I like to get out of the library.

I read in ROTC, my field manual, and that’s, well that’s actually Naval ROTC. And I read um in Ms. Ryan’s class, Academic Literacy, and I read like articles and books like that she have in our binders, the little sheets of paper.

And I read, in my English class we’re reading Shakespeare now, so I’m actually liking that. I didn’t think that I would like Shakespeare, but I actually like the way they talk, like, the way that he had Romeo and Juliet talking in the play. I actually like that, the way that that it’s just talking.