My new year's resolution is to make at least five entries in this dusty webspot before the world ends or before the year ends. The yorld ends.
This is my last academic semester in "real" classes. Next semester I'm thrown to the 8th grade wolves to get (as my professor says) "owned." Next semester I will take another step towards that 6-12 teaching license I've been working for the past few years to get, another step towards being labeled an "English Teacher."
Ugh.
When I introduce my future profession I already get "Oh I have to watch my grammar!" jokes and people asking me to spell things for them. I'm assumed to be a stellar writer and I'm assumed to have a concrete grasp on who and whom (I can get it right if I have the time to think about it for more than half a second) and every single other rule of usage. I do have a pretty good knowledge of our language, how to write formally, and when to use a semicolon. Basically, I'm assumed to be the stereotypical bossypants English Teacher who makes you use correct grammar in and out of the classroom. I'm assumed to deify the old-white-bro canon of lit and I'm assumed to have some cosmic love for prescriptivism and being a complete asshole.
I have a lot of ideas about what English teachers should and should not do but most of those opinions aren't really appropriate for the content of this blog but I will say this:
English teacher or not there is no excuse no excuse to correct someone's usage or to judge their spelling outside of a formal setting. None. Lalala I can't hear your counter-argument. None. None. None. It's rude, it's awful and it makes you a bad person. Same goes for judging someone for "not reading that much" (I have enough opinions on that one that I'll probably make that it's own post).
If my students try any nontraditional usage stunts on their final drafts it's a totally different story but we're talking about speech, facebook, email etc.
I get that I'm supposed to teach my students proper handling of Standard Edited English and to guide them through the nuances of the yours and the its and the theirs. I'm supposed to show them how to analyze mood and tone in Billy Shakes. I'm supposed to hold their hands through the battle of passive voice. I'm supposed to batter their brains with how to identify gerunds, what makes oxford commas special and how to figure out what that poet-man really means when he says his love is like a summer's day. I can do all that. I can do all that damn well. I will teach them all that Boring Ass Crap with a smile on my face and genuine enthusiasm.
I'm not saying it's boring because I think it's boring. I think the difference between adverbs and adjectives is fascinating. Sentence structure and word formation are things I think about in my spare time. On my last car trip I barely talked to my driving partner because I was trying to meter Frost's "Fire and Ice" in my head. I'm saying it's boring because your average 8th grader does not give one single shit about narrative structure in The Witch of Blackbird Pond. I will still teach it but I want all of you to know that that is not the job of the English Teacher.
Listen up:
I don't know about your experience with your English teachers. If they were stuck-up and rude about prescriptivism I'm sorry. If they propped open a genuinely good book and beat that shit into your head then talked to you lecture-style about literary devices I am sorry. We're not all like that. One of the reasons I chose this career is because I remember how my 12th grade English teacher blew so hard that I had to teach myself everything from the syllabus and I ended up liking English. I even figured out how to write pretty good papers on my own. I don't want other students to have to do that by themselves. I want them to be open to the fact that English owns. English is so cool you don't even understand half of why it's so cool and that is why I'm here to help.
I want to be the teacher who sees a boy poring over a note from his girlfriend and asking his friends what they think she means by this phrase and that phrase and how she crosses her t's. I want to be the teacher who lets him keep it because I can recognize original critical analysis in a situation where it's totally relevant to the student's life.
I openly encourage experimentation with our cool language but I also recognize that it is imperative that students be able to write professionally. There is a dualism that's hard to teach to but I'm gonna try my damn hardest. I believe that it's my job as an English teacher to get kids to read and write things that actually matter (this includes writing in SEE). The things we read in English classes mattered at one point a long time ago and it's my job to make kids understand that there are modern-day equivalents of To Kill a Mockingbird, they just aren't in novel-form. I want my students to know that it's okay to say y'all. It's okay to make up words and use them all the time. It's okay to not really think too hard about your usage and spelling when you're writing a status on facebook (or a blog entry sorry if there are usage errors jk i'm not sorry).
This is turning into a rant and I don't have a very good closing statement so I'll leave you with this article that is super cool with a comment section full of people whose English teachers obviously failed to teach them to stand in awe of our language and instead taught them how to beat it with a belt until it behaved:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2012/01/st_essay_autocorrect/
