The further I dug into the Christiansen chapter, the more excited I became about the prospect of teaching writing in the schools. When I look back on my writing experiences during my time in high-school, I remember nothing but writing research papers. I wrote research papers for my college biology class, I wrote research papers for my college history and government courses, and I wrote research papers for my English courses. As I jumped right into my college composition coursework in 11th grade, I remember the goal was for us to be "college ready," meaning that we were to be professionals in regards to academic tone and citation formatting, specifically MLA. I was able to write some fun papers in these courses (I remember that my senior paper was 15 whopping pages of "Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams" nonsense, which culminated in the line "God bless America"), though I was far from a creative writer. I did not start writing creatively until college -...
I do not remember the last time I have read something as moving and as powerful as the introduction to Tom Rademacher's book. If you think I'm being dramatic, I'm not. Day after day we have slogged through countless theoretical readings from the aforementioned "white-haired dudes with PhDs" with seemingly no end in sight. These readings, while informative and certainly telling of a dedication to betterment of the educational environment, have oftentimes seemed disconnected from any practical application. I have written about this phenomenon before, specifically in my final for CI 5441 (which I incidentally did not do too well on) - I can have all the theory I want shoved down my gullet, but at the end of the day it is my lived experiences and my human to human interactions that are going to define me in the classroom. Tom is right here - students aren't gonna care if I'm super articulate and effective teaching them about the intricacies of Shakespearian ...
Grammar is weird. Especially as a future English teacher. I've heard plenty of people advocate for ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CORRECT GRAMMAR ALL THE TIME. Those people are nerds. It's a fickle concept. Coming from someone who knows grammar & usage fairly well, I oftentimes intentionally misuse it. Not so much in things like, per-se, essays and other academic writings (like this post, perhaps), but I freely misuse and omit grammar in social media and text messages. I do this in an attempt to articulate different tonality and delivery in my messages, and I'm certainly not the only one that does this. A lack of total grammatical correctness, to me, articulates a certain warmth and familiarity in speech. It is comfortable, unregulated; I would even go so far as to say that it is free-flowing. People that are stuck in the rut of typing EVERY SINGLE THING WITH 100% CORRECT GRAMMAR come off as stuck up and standoffish (to me) (and others, I'm sure) (undoubtedly). I think...
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