My husband and I just can't seem to catch a break. I'm sure this is everyone's story and that right now I'm just hung up on feeling sorry for myself, but honestly, it seems as though it is always something. Back in November, he and I attended a wedding in his hometown (about an hour and a half away from where we live now). After leaving the wedding, we decided we would go see his mother and have a late dinner because he only sees her once a month (which honestly would be way more often than I'd care to see her, but that's another story). Anyway, he had been having some problems with a minor oil leak, but he had been assured that it was minor and could just be repaired the next time he had his oil changed. All of a sudden, his car began smoking. Now, I don't know much about cars, but even I know that smoking from the hood is a negative. We pulled over at a gas station, bought a quart of oil and $17.00 coolant and got the car ready to go. We made it to his mom's house and then it began smoking again. One of his friend's fathers came over to look at it, and the oil that was pouring out the bottom of his car looked like chocolate milk. We ended up having to stay with the mother-in-law with only the clothes we wore to the wedding. The next day, my sister's husband drove all the way there to tow the car, and us, back home. We were hoping for blown head gaskets. We got a completely ruined engine and replaced it to the tune of $2500.
After we got the car back, we drove it to a town about 30 minutes away to do some Christmas shopping. While in traffic, the car ran hot, so my brother-in-law again had to come tow us home. Apparently, when the mechanic fixed it, he forget to plug some fan or something back in. Fantastic!
The next week, I was meeting the members of my carpool when it was my week to drive. Because they are always late, and I am always early (which is another topic altogether), I switched the car off to save some gas. When the first rider got there, she got in the car, complained it was cold, and I turned the key to crank the car. Of course, nothing happened. My battery had to be replaced and my cables had to be professionally cleaned. It was great, really.
Add in a $113 doctor's visit, around $500 of dental work for the hubby, and Christmas shopping. We thought we were finally at a happy and safe point.
But then this weekend, my husband decided to visit his mother once more. Why? I can't answer that. I have no idea. While his car was parked in the driveway at her house last night, in a neighborhood where there has not been a break-in in seven years, someone broke into his car and stole everything out of it. Please note, his car was locked. His mother and his grandmother's cars were also in the driveway and were sitting there unlocked. His car was the only one that was bothered. So today we've dealt with police and insurance and all that jazz.
We could really use a break.
"Students cannot become facile at writing in general and using conventions in particular if they do them only now and then--no more than I can get thin by dieting on Fridays."
-Janet Angelillo, A Fresh Approach to Teaching Punctuation
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.
I didn't VOX much in 2008. For me, it was a year of adjustment and change, turmoil and stress, and while I really enjoyed parts of it, I'm wasn't sorry to bid it farewell last night and begin a new year. As a lot of you know, I got married at the tail-end of 2007 (Dec. 29th to be exact), and I began my 2008 with angry in-laws who intentionally made my life worse than pure hell, a confused husband who was attempting to play all the roles he'd played his whole life while adding on the role of husband, and me, little ol' me who did not know the first thing about how to be a wife and maintain a household and all that jazz. Bundle that with my first year of teaching and you can probably see why much of 2008 was a doozy (as my Nanny likes to say).
Around March, I decided I'd had about all I could take, called the mother-in-law and really just explained how I felt. Just to back-track a moment, she didn't even say one word to me on my wedding day. Not "hello" or even "I hate you." Just nothing. When I called, I simply told her that I felt like her son could have done a lot worst than me. I care about him and put his needs before my own. I have an education and work a steady job in an admirable field. I have a good family that raised me well, and I have manners. I don't go on drunk binges, and I've never been a whore. And in the end, he chose me. There was no forcing him away from her. He picked me.
Things got a little better until June/Julyish when his whole family went bat-shit crazy again. Now, we don't speak all that much, nor do I really find the need/opportunity to with them conveniently located an hour and a half away. But somewhere along the way, I realized I was focusing much too intently on my relationship, or lack thereof, with my inlaws, and not nearly enough on my relationship with my husband. We figured a lot of stuff out in 2008--lessons that will hopefully make 2009 not only bearable, but more enjoyable as well.
But of course, it wouldn't be a new year without some resolutions, which I'm hoping to keep.
1. Start my graduate degree. Application goes in next week. I should have no worries about getting accepted, it's just going to be difficult fitting it all in the amount of time in which I want to accomplish it.
2. Be better at life. This is a broad one. I want to take time for me, eat better, move more, love more, write more, etc.
3. Save money. Obviously, this is not the easiest time in the world to save money, when we're stretching our budget paper-thin as it is, but we're going to try our best.
4. Spend more time with family. As I sat at my Nanny's New Year's Eve bash last night, as I have every New Year's Eve except two (one of them I was eight and at home sick with a virus and the other we all went to a family wedding on New Year's Eve), I looked around and was so happy to be surrounded by my large, boisterous, and somewhat obnoxious family. My mother's family is HUGE, and we ALL get together at least once a month for a family dinner. We are pretty tight-knit, and it made me happy to be with them last night. I realized, though, that I want to be with them more, so I'm going to work on that in 2009.
I have a feeling it's going to be a good year. We shall see.
