Children left behind and passed along

In many ways, my summer Grammar 200 class spoiled me. There were eight students, all of whom were motivated to learn about language, and few had obligations outside of our class. The result: active class participation, thoughtful questions, and noticeably-improved student understanding in just six weeks.

One would expect that the students enrolled in a fall grammar class would be of a similar, if less pure, ilk. In the class of eighteen, about three of them are competent writers curious about the language. The other fifteen took the course in a desperate attempt to compensate for a lifetime of lack of instruction, lack of effort, or both.

As I grade their first set of response papers, I can see why they were so eager to sign up for a class that promised to teach them more about language. But the problems in their writing are not what I expected: yes, there are missing commas and errant semicolons, but misplaced punctuation is far less serious than poor organization and underdeveloped ideas. These students signed up for a course on language when what they really needed was a course on writing. They need to take 101 and 102.

But they've already taken 101 and 102. And considering most of them are upperclassmen, they've already written several papers yet have been able to stay in college. Somehow, students with murky writing (stemming from unclear thought) have been passed along from one grade to the next, then to college, where they were passed from one course to the next.

At our department meetings, there is often a professor or two who remarks that it's not our job to teach grammar or mechanics or MLA format, and therefore, we shouldn't have to teach it. Before us, the senior English teacher also decided it wasn't his job, and so he didn't teach it, and so forth. The result? We've cut our proverbial losses on a generation of writers, and there is no foreseeable end to this course.

There's just a group of eighteen students who know that they should be better writers than they are, and they were confident (or demented) enough to sign up for three credits on grammar. And so we go back to the basics, because they have to learn it somewhere.

Professing Respect

"Do you teach elementary school?" My butcher asked. He, like most people who learn I'm an educator, assume I teach little ones.

"No," I replied. "I teach college writing."

"Oh," his eyebrows chased his receding hairline, "a professor!"

I still am unaccustomed to the word professor. Perhaps because I'm only a lecturer. Still, the culture on campus is that any instructor who isn't a TA is addressed as professor. Like a little girl trying on her mother's jewelry, I don't feel comfortable parading the title, but I do feel flattered by it.

Since then, my interaction with the butcher has changed. I imagine he talked to his coworkers—now all of the guys in the shop ask me how classes are going, how my students are this semester. And in their tone is a quiet respect reserved, inexplicably, for college professors and no other educators.

***

Last week, I was at the butcher shop buying a cut of beef when I noticed pork shoulder was on sale. I placed my usual order—I love that my butcher knows my "usual"—and came back two days later to pick it up. When I did, the sack he handed me was labeled not with my name; in thick black marker, it read Prof.