Updated: Because I'm a big baby and afraid to start drama, I deleted the first part of this post. I couldn't figure out how to make it "friends only".
On to more important things.
I'm getting off to a slow start for school. I did go to my literature class today, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It's a discussion class versus the lecture type of lit class I had last semester. He actually asks us what we think about the selection and we can have opinions! What a concept!
I have an advanced composition class that I'm looking forward to. Despite everything they tell you in high school, you don't write more in college...or maybe you should, but UNA doesn't require it yet. Supposedly that's all changing. I think it should. I wrote a 10 page research paper last semester for the first time in over a year...meaning I had 8-10 classes that did not require me to write at all. I am an English major! Good gravy. I should take initiative and write on my own, though. I want to get used to writing, but I want to be critiqued. I want to be torn down and built back up. I actually want to learn! Ha! So, perhaps this advanced composition class will kick my tail and I can get a lot out of it.
I also have Instruction of Composition, which I think will be a good class. I've had the professor before, but that was my first semester at UNA and it was a lit class. She reminds me of Professor Trelawny from Harry Potter. Either way, we had a long discussion on Wednesday about our job as English teachers. She was explaining to us that we have the toughest teaching job for the following reason: We learn to speak from our parents. We usually develop the same accent, vocabulary, and speed of talking, etc. Our identity begins with our parents. So, when a child enters into an English class and relays what they have learned up to that point, and it's not perfect standard English, we correct them. By correcting them, we are telling them that they are wrong, that their parents are wrong. We are questioning their identity. At a certain point in our lives, we do realize that our parents are usually wrong (ha! kidding...kinda), but at a young age, most kids admire their parents for the most part. With math, a teacher can point out the error and explain why it's wrong. Most wouldn't take offense to that. I always struggled in math. My dad used to help me out a lot, and he would show me a different way of doing the problem that was easier for me to understand. I remember one teacher I had telling me that the way I was doing it was wrong (although I always got the right answer). I took great offense to that because my daddy showed me how to do it. By telling me that was the wrong way to do it, she was telling me that my dad was wrong, and that's not okay. Get what I'm saying?
Also, with writing... the few followers I have on here I know are writers in some form or fashion. I can remember writing my first few essays and thinking they were wonderful and then I get them back from my teacher and they are butchered. Surely you can remember being young and writing a piece or coloring a picture and just thinking it's the greatest thing you've ever done. So when someone "insults" it by pointing out that you went out of the lines a couple of times or forgot a comma, you're crushed. I am training for that job of "insulting" a student's work.
So how do you change that? How do you read a paper that is seriously the most horrible thing you have ever read and try to maintain positivity throughout? How do you know whether the student legitimately doesn't get it or just isn't trying? Hopefully I'll learn these things in this class. I don't want my future students to hate writing or literature, but I don't want to feel like I cannot critique their work in efforts to make it better. Would I be doing them a disservice if I did not correct all of their errors? Should I find the biggest mistakes, address those, and work on the smaller things later? I don't want to make students terrified of a red pen. I want it to be a collaborative process. I don't want them to dread getting papers back. Either way, it's a fine line.
I'm dealing with this in other aspects of my life. I am trying to learn how to be over people, build relationships, and still be able to maintain the power over them. I'm trying to learn to deal with passive aggressiveness without inducing tears by confronting the issue. Rule with an iron fist, but wear a satin glove. Ha! Anyone have a satin glove I can borrow?
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