Mike says that after going to a UC, that my expectations are just too damned high, but I think that if you are going to college to be a teacher that you ought to have a rudimentary grasp of how to write a fucking paper, or at least, how to use fucking grammar and spelling checkers. No, Virginia, "there" does not refer to whose thing it belongs to, but rather functions as a stand alone subject substitute or a stand alone place as in, "There is a lot of noise in the hall" or "I threw those horribly written papers from the licensure requirement course over there in the recycling bin." What interests them does not constitute there interest, but rather their interest, stupidhead.

Nor does that someone owns something constitute owner ship, but rather ownership. Nor is "alot" a spelling variance I have a lot of patience for. Sentences that span for four lines damned well better have some punctuation in them or a really good excuse, OK? Authors that use sentences that are all 2-5 lines in length with little or no punctuation deserve a slow and painful death. Students who turn in first drafts as final drafts to an instructor, who told them that they were expected to write a grammatically correct paper, should be beaten to death with a keyboard.

An introductory paragraph should tell me what you're going to write about. It should start with a general statement and get more specific from there. For example, if you are asked to write a personal perspective paper on your view of special education, then perhaps, you would start with a historical remark about people with disabilities of any kind were often abused, institutionalized and generally marginalized in some manner for centuries, but that now, those same people are being included in regular classrooms, workplaces, and the real world. That evolution has come about because of many changes, but the three or four I will focus on here are : 1, 2, 3, and 4. Then you have a paragraph or two each for items 1 -4, then end the essay with a paragraph that says how you covered these salient points 1-4 and that you're sure glad things have changed and that your duty as a teacher will be to perpetuate changes that continue to include folks that learn differently in your classroom, your life, and your world.

How fucking hard is that, people?!

I told my assessment class that writing is very mathematical. I guess what I mean is that it's very formulaic. I thought teachers would know the formula, so they could teach it. I am very upset to see that I'm wrong. I think that it fundamentally upsets me in ways I can't entirely articulate. It also makes me think twice about my place in the world. Maybe I should be teaching high school English. Maybe I am just too damned smart for my britches. Maybe I'm just full of righteous indignation and should be smacked with a gummibear.

Maybe the schools really are failing our children and my sole mission in life will be to save each child, one child at a time, so that they can all be literate and intelligent humans.

Okay, where are the gummibears?