writing on the wall
I’ve been slacking with my blog posts recently, though I have a good excuse of being really busy at school. This is the last week for my learning support students; they take their standardized grammar test next week, and today I’ll see how many of them passed their final written exam. I have a lot of thoughts about this semester: teaching to this particular population of student, teaching grammar, creative writing. Despite how much I was fed this hyper-ideal pedagogical ache with caring composition teaching style in graduate school, nothing I learned prepared me for students who are simply not prepared (in primary schooling) to be in college. In fact, all of the new composition theory presupposes students coming into college who are able to write complete sentences, who can read. Students who somehow went to high schools that escaped the No Child Left Behind requirements or entered high schools as readers and writers. Almost all of my students were about 11 years old when George W. entered office with all of his great ideas for education reform.
My naive ideas have really been slapped into place this semester. Now when I go and retrieve my student’s final essays, I’ll be so happy if most of my students were able to utilize complete sentences in their essays. Honestly. I’ll be really thrilled if they wrote thesis statements and correctly spelled most of the words. I really have so much respect for the people who work almost wholly with these students. I don’t know if I could do it again.
Next semester I’m teaching six classes, though no learning support. I can’t believe that I somehow feel relieved.
Anyway, it’s warm here, though very lovely and very fally. It is in the mid 60s and should stay here for the next few days. I’ve never experienced this, though it’s quite nice. Now that the weather has moved past the burning, it’s very pleasant. I’m going to try to get some random pictures up later.
