How could I not love what I do?

An email I received from a former student:

THANK YOU!!!!!! So much for all your support and encouragement and letters (o so many letters) this year. I have been invited to join Teach for America Memphis Corp as a History Teacher for next year. I look forward to inspiring others to be better as you have inspired me.

Recruiting for the Dark Side

I've recently written about the mixed feelings I have when students want to study literature, or not. I'm often tempted to lure a beloved student away from his chosen major to come to the Dark Side. But I stop myself—I don't need a good student's lifetime of struggle on my conscience.

***

Recently, I recalled Mrs. Dorsey, my TA for a CORE class in Women's Lit. Mrs. Dorsey was a returning student—she was probably in her early sixties—working toward her Ph.D. After the course ended, in an email I revealed to her that I was majoring in architecture. Her reply was almost immediate: why architecture? She knew I had a love of literature, so why not make it my life? She ended the email with a sentence I'll never forget: "I guess English's loss is architecture's gain."

Over the next day or two, the seeds began to germinate. Well, I wrote, what could I do with a degree in English, anyway? Her response was lengthy and bulleted. Her campaign had begun.

By the end of the summer, I had decided to change my major to English and figure the rest out later. I thrived in my lit classes, I was accepted into the creative writing concentration, and I excelled as a peer tutor.

I should have been an English major all along.

***

Ten years later, I remember Mrs. Dorsey with fondness. I give thanks to the Fates for leading me on that wayward path to an English degree, and eventually to a career in teaching. I can't imagine doing anything else.

So maybe ours isn't the Dark Side. Maybe I need to be someone else's Mrs. Dorsey and plant those seeds of change.

For Dad, con amor

It's not unusual for people to identify with others who speak the same language. One of my college roommates spoke to her sister in Spanish, although each of them spoke English fluently. It was a connection they shared and embraced.

My students, many of whom are multilingual, tell me similar anecdotes. Even children who do not speak their parents' native language retain some of its words and expressions. My mother, who doesn't know more Italian than she can find on a menu, swears in her ancestors' language with fluency. Our lexicons so often reflect our experiences, and even the experiences we have with others. Language is an emblem of shared experience.

Although I have always thought of the Italian-American idioms as being the language I shared with my family (and the greater Sopranos-watching community), I recently realized that I participate in another language with a much smaller number of speakers, population: 2.

A few minutes ago, I sent an email to my father. I forwarded him an attachment of my director's observation for my reappointment. The body of my email:

I thought you might enjoy reading que tu hija hace. Te amo, xoxo

I'm not a native Spanish speaker, but my father technically is. (He speaks it fluently but doesn't read or write it.) Our emails and text messages are often an assortment of English and Spanish phrases cobbled together, often misspelled, using only the words we can summon as we type. As a writing teacher, I would call it reckless composition, but as a writer, I recognize this as language representing a shared experience—and a fondness that transcends language.

Improving on self-improvement

Last night I chatted with the assistant director of our department (and the instructor of our graduate seminar). I have tremendous respect for this young Ph.D. for his passion and scholarly accomplishments. I've even been thinking lately that I would take advantage of the university's tuition remission to pursue a graduate certificate or even a Ph.D. After all, why not?

But then the AD confessed to me that he no longer enjoyed reading—students' papers ruined his taste for it, and his nights, weekends, and summers filled with scholarly research don't leave much time for it.

I was awe-struck. How could someone so passionate have lost his love for what drove him into the discipline? After all, writers are nothing without their readers.

Since this conversation, I've been rethinking my goals. Besides the fact that earning additional degrees will monopolize my spare time for the next several years, I hate the idea that it may also dictate the rest of my life—and alienate me from the reasons why I became a teacher.

Does it make me a bad teacher for not wanting to pursue my own education? I of course value education highly, but perhaps I've been tainted by the belief that I need formal education to be well-educated. It's my hope that having my own hobbies, and my own reading list, will make me a more complete person and therefore a better teacher.

A Matter of Priorities

Recently I spoke with some graduate students who asked me about my diet. I explained that being gluten-free is challenging, but it helps that I make so much of my food from scratch: chicken stock, sausage, pickles, cheese, the yogurt I was eating at the time. One of them asked, incredulously, "How do you find time for all this?"

I replied, "I make time for my priorities."

As I said it, I thought about my blog—my poor, neglected blog—that's only had two new posts in the past two months because I just haven't had the time. My heart sank a little.

The Smartest Person in the Room

In the course of my regular blog reading, I came across one titled "Stop Thinking You're the Smartest Person in the Room." I expected it to discuss the humbling experience of knowing the students sometimes are smarter than the instructor.

But the article wasn't what I had expected. The title of the article comes from a student's course evaluation. The author of the blog, a self-described feminist scholar, attributes the comment to the Internet-induced democracy of learning; her Ph.D. weighs more heavily than the students' online pursuits. This may be true, but is "smart" synonymous with "educated"?

I've taught many students who were clearly smarter than I. Intimidating, yes, but also an opportunity. Especially in the humanities, we work to teach students to think. Because I've had more training and more practice, I can help them think in ways their bright little minds hadn't considered. No true educator laments the intelligent student; we're always eager to provide more of a challenge for the students who seek it.

I needn't be the smartest person in the room to help those students learn.

Evolushun or Ruin?

As an instructor in general—and a grammar instructor in particular—I often have to consider the difference between prescriptive and descriptive grammar. I teach prescriptive grammar rules (what's "right"), but my students often consider instances of descriptive grammar (how it actually works). I have to concede that in certain contexts for certain audiences, the rules of Standard English may—or should—deviate. All great speakers and writers know how to bend language to their purpose. But those speakers know the rules and when to bend them.

Writers and speakers consult resources to learn or confirm those rules. My husband reaches for Garner's American Usage. As a poor speller, I frequent my dictionary. I've long held a good dictionary to be an ideal of knowledge; I expect its entries to be thorough and accurate. Why wouldn't I?

Today, a colleague shared this article with me. It chronicles incorrect pronunciations that have become commonplace (licorice oughtn't be pronounced lickerish) and how modern dictionaries perpetuate poor pronunciations. Even this Language Maven will concede that pronunciation changes—knight was once pronounced as it's spelled, after all—but the other examples listed triggered my gag reflex. Online dictionaries now provide audio pronunciations of li-berry, ek-setera, and ath-a-lete, pronunciations we'd call quaint at best. (These are reminiscent of the Brooklynese chim-in-ee.)

I suppose the issue here is not whether these pronunciations exist—I'm certain they do—but whether we should acknowledge nonstandard examples where English speakers seek the standard. When we compromise those standards, Merriam-Webster begins to resemble Urban Dictionary.