It's the Little Things, Grammatically Speaking

The teacher struggle within me starts making itself known, as one of my freshman girls talks excitedly about any of the many things freshman girls get excited about to the point where their voices are raised to a preternatural pitch that even dogs cannot hear. As she giggles endearingly, she ends her conversation with "anyways." I can no longer keep my red-inked tongue from staying its course: "K..., 'anyways' is not a word; however 'anyway' is." She takes it in stride, and now, anytime she says "anyway," she says it loudly enough to catch my attention, with a sly and knowing look on her face. It's become an inside joke with her and her friends, and not least importantly, me. One small step for K, and one giant step for helping save the English language, one student at a time.

Being a teacher in today's changing climate of education, where one must always take into account the political movements sweeping the region of the country in which one lives, is a tricky business, indeed. Issues of immigration, political sensitivity, educational institutions moving towards an insidious notion of a "customer service" industry rather than an educational industry, and educational and political leaders not acknowledging the tough issue of discipline within the school system are all issues that impact the teacher in the "trenches." And it is that reason why teachers are trying persistently to instill a love, knowledge, and respect for the content they teach to their students. It becomes ever more sacred, as traditional notions of what education should be fall to the wayside.

And even though as a teacher, I might fall sway sometimes to the idea of "correcting equals hurt feelings," I still correct gently because I hold reverence to a language that enables its speakers to use a vast array of words in a dizzying multitude of ways just to express one clear thought. And the speakers that are in today's classrooms should understand and acknowledge that grammar, vocabulary, and syntax are all tools one needs in order to shape roughly hewn ideas, lingering in shells, into liberated pearls of wisdom.

I fancy myself an English commando, as I maneuver my students through the tricky labrynthine mazes of "good" vs. "well." I see them stealthily climb over the walls of "their," "they're," and "there." I watch with pride as my freshmen can recite the differences among homonyms, synonyms, and antonyms. I feel the impact that I make, and not the impact that the educational tides have on me, as I watch my students correct themselves over something I've taught when speaking to me. And, when I go home at the end of the evening, I know that I have done not good, but well. Grammatically speaking.