A Teacher Trick

If you don't know already, I am an English teacher. I love my job and I love my students but a lot of the time I can't get them to be incredibly interested in my subject.

It's a sad, sorry state of affairs that they have come to view English as something they've mastered since their friends understand them. Forget the fact that the adults whom they hope will employ them may not be impressed by communication skills that include LOL, gr8, and u r anything.

I can't tell you how many times I have tried to impress upon my students the fact that it's NOT just me! I'm not the only one who cares about grammar. In fact, I recently corrected my husband's misreading of a Bible verse - only because leaving out the 'not' completely changed the meaning of the verse - which prompted a woman I'd never met to come up and point out a problem in the church flyer. She's a lawyer and also thought (as I do) it was irresponsible to not proof read before submitting the flyer for publication. It was a pretty huge, meaning-altering error! To my students, however, this is just one other person on my side.

A little too late, I came up with an idea that proved successful in my classroom. I told them that, for extra credit, they needed to "Like" Grammarly on Facebook. I'd pull off the dates and times of carefully selected cartoons, status updates, and picture posts and ask them questions relating to the posts.

Without complaint, students started interacting with the language - and they liked it. It was fantastic. I gave them a reason (extra credit in a difficult class) to chase after meaning and wrestle with the constructs of our language. It was so wonderful that the following happened:

A student, Little Mr. M, came to class one day looking a little puzzled. He had been my student during his Freshman year and was my student again for English III (Juniors) this past year. He said, "Ms, there were so many people talking about grammar!"

"Yes, Little Mr. M, there are."

"No, there are like thousands of people talking about the same thing. They get really into it!" he told me.

"I know. I've seen it."

"All this time, I thought it was just you!"

Anything that I can do to get my students involved in the learning process and any exposure I can give them to understand that there is a larger world out there is 100% worth it to me. I desperately want my students to rise above the challenges that face them and I want them to want it. It's hard, though, to make them see that there is a world out there that operates differently than what they see through their eyes. With Grammarly's help, I feel like I'm starting to do exactly that.


Mrs. V