My first blog posting!

Jeanne convinced me that she would be interested in knowing what is going on in my life. Now I find myself with nothing to say... Do I have to have a theme or meaningful message? Or can I just ramble on? Very few people will be viewing this blog, so I trust you all to let me know when I'm violating blog protocol.

To warm up, let's just talk about my morning. It has been a great morning. Aimee spent the night at a friend's house and Scott went to work, so I just stayed (what is the past tense of "lie"?) in bed all morning, reading The Absolutely True Confessions of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Since Aimee moved in, I've been reading a lot of young adult lit books, which would make Sarah proud. Some of them are pretty good. We both just read My Most Excellent Year, which actually doesn't even come out until March; a librarian friend of mine got us an advanced copy. We both loved this book. Three teens befriend each other and a five-year-old deaf kid and have a great year of baseball and Mary Poppins. We also read Slam, which was pretty good. It's written from a 16-year-old boy's perspective when his girlfriend gets pregnant. Great writing, even if I didn't like what he did with time. I've also read four Gossip Girl books. Gossip Girl is a a TV series on the CW--Jeanne, you've probably seen commercials for it when you watch Superman--and it's based on the books. I never thought I would say this, but the show is actually much better done that the books are written. (It's like a teen Sex and the City). I would not call the Gossip Girl books literature in the sense that the writing isn't very good. But I was never really a teenager, so I guess I am living vicariously through Aimee.

After that strenuous morning of lounging in bed, I got up, ate breakfast, and called Susie. She said that she was trying to figure out what to do with her day. She and her boyfriend were going to the Mussel Festival on Whidbey Island. I have no islands around here, so I had to think--what can I do on a Saturday on the Palouse? I think we're going to the Catholic Bookstore in Lewiston. Not quite the same, so I guess I shall have to work on having a life (although I am excited about going--Scott gets confirmed on Easter, so I have to buy him something). Then I called Jeanne and talked about her new baby. I'm not really going to go into what we all said during these conversations since the only two people who know about this blog so far are Jeanne and Susie. But as I said, Jeanne convinced me to start a blog, and so now you've caught up with me and my day. Perhaps a second post will be on how I got dressed considering all my jeans are in the dirty laundry.

I think I remember now why I once liked writing. Now all I do is write emails at work or comment on students' papers. And while I do like my job, I can't say that I ever get excited about doing either of those things. I am such a hypocrite, I fear. I try to energize my students about how great writing can be . . . and then I go make them write a 5-page research paper. Who does that for fun in their spare time? I can honestly say that while I have researched topics for fun, I have never once since I graduated from college been inspired to write a paper on what I've researched. Somehow we have to get beyond using writing only for assessment purposes. But then again, I never liked it when teachers tried to incorporate things I did for fun into class. After my MA, I couldn't read anything--not even a magazine--for 6 months because I was so sick of reading. So maybe I can just encourage my students to do the "fun" writing at home and help them learn the kind of writing they'll need for college and their work in the classroom--and still try to make it interesting and useful for them, even if it's not the type of writing they'll use on their own.

I guest lectured for a class yesterday where we talked about this. I'm auditing a TESOL class (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), and this was my first time teaching an ESL class. I was a little nervous, but I had a really good time. I was nervous because these are students who didn't pass their Jr. Writing Portfolio, so none of them really want to be in the class. The teacher is doing a really good job, but he says that they mostly want to know whether or not something is correct--which you can't blame them for, since most teachers just like to tell them whether or not their grammar is correct (as if perfect grammar is the only thing that makes something worth reading). So the teacher wrote this really crappy paragraph where even if you fixed the grammar, the paragraph would still not be worth reading. I led the students through it, and it turned out that they had a lot to say on the topic, but they get used to not exploring what interests them. It's interesting how some students forget to write on what matters to them--or they've been told so long that their writing is bad that they don't feel there is any point to writing.

This might be where you say, enough, Beth! Talk about something besides work! I guess I'll have to think of something else for post #2.