Teaching English

The L-Town College students I have in English 101 taught me a lot already. Yes, they taught me. Even though I may be the one in charge (er ... most of the time), I think I'll often learn almost as much from them as they do from me.

Here's a sampling from this week:

I'm a slave driver. Not really. But I have been informed that I assign more homework than the rest of the students' teachers. It was said a couple of times, in varying forms. Hmm. Sorry, guys. I don't see that as a bad thing. Need I remind you that this is a class about reading and writing? I'm going to make you read and write. And, in all fairness, I'm really not assigning them all that much work.

These kids have been through a lot. They may be young—most are fresh out of high school—but they've experienced plenty in their lives already. Many have recently lost parents, close friends, or both. Strangely, quite a few have been hit by cars or vans while riding their bikes or crossing the street. Quite a few moved around a lot as children, or grew up in far-from-nice neighborhoods (which is my nice way of saying they've been threated with guns on the street where they played), or come from broken families. But you know what? As honest as they've been when they've written about these things, they aren't asking for pity or whining. They've just written honestly. Which brings me to my next point ...

These kids can write. You know how I know they can write? Because we started writing in class from the very first day. We've done in-class writings, journal entries, reading responses. Sure, some are better at writing than others. A lot of them could use help with some fundamentals of punctuation, spelling, sentence construction. But get them going and they can tell a story or a paint a picture with their words. A lot of them don't think they can do it, have probably been told they can't in the past. But they can. The fundamentals they're missing will come, as long as I can keep them interested and keep them writing.

These kids live for Facebook, MySpace, and text messaging. Enough said.