Good grammar goes a long way

The other day I was lucky enough to have lunch with my friend Rachel who also teaches high school English. We got on the subject of grammar, or at least the overwhelming lack of grammar our students seem to understand, know, and apply. Rachel teaches mainly ninth graders. Those of you outside the realm of secondary education might not understand what a feat that is. It takes a special person with a lot of patience, stamina, and entertaining teaching practices to be able to teach ninth graders, and Rachel does it successfully. At my school, I only teach eleventh grade, and I love it. There is a huge difference between ninth and elventth graders. My juniors are more mature, follow the rules because they've been doing it for two years before they get to me, and for the most part, they really want to buckle down to make sure they graduate on time. In ninth grade, graduation is so far away, it seems surreal. However, the one thing that my juniors and Rachel's freshmen have in common is their misuse, or in some cases, their neglect of grammar rules in their writing.

I'm not sure how it happens really. I learned grammar from second grade until my senior year of high school. I know the parts of speech like the back of my hand, can identify the purpose of a comma and where to place one, and know more about making nouns plural than I'd ever want to know. And I learned all that before I got to college, and most of it, before I got to high school. One of my friends is teaching eighth grade in my district now, and she's having to teach basic parts of speech. Her students can't even identify the subject of a sentence.

I would blame it on poor education, but the district in which I teach is considered to be at the top of the totem pole academically for this area. In a lot of ways, I think we deserve that reputation. Our kids outscore students from other schools on AP exams all the time, and a pretty big chunk of our senior class gets state scholarships that require a good SAT score. Most of the kids I teach write pretty well. So I don't understand how grammar is overlooked as frequently as it is.

I found two really great books this year to help me incorporate teaching grammar within my writing instruction because teaching grammar in isolation is definitely not a sound teaching practice. I'm using The Grammar Plan Book and Mechanically Inclined.

What do you guys think? How much did you learn about grammar during your high school years? How did your teachers incorporate it? I'm looking for ideas, and at this point, I'm getting quite desperate.