Grammar Godesses

Ehrenworth, Mary and Vicki Vinton. The Power of Grammar: Unconventional Approaches to the Conventions of Language. NH: Heineman, 2005.

I have always loved teaching writing. The catch, though, is that I loathed teaching grammar. I know -shameful admittance for an English Teacher/ Reading Specialist –but it was true. Teaching grammar lessons to high-school students became a methodological chore that I think I dreaded more than my students. I’d have constant flashbacks to diagramming sentences that turned into doodles of my eighth grade teacher’s facial expressions and passion for a subject that I knew at twelve, would never be a source of enjoyment for me. For a long time, I avoided it like the plague or danced around its structurally abhorrent box of entrapment and rules.

I finally swallowed my fear and challenged myself at the 2005 NCTE conference in Pittsburgh, PA conference and sat in for an hour of what I assumed would be a masochistic means of proving to myself that I could beat this nasty fear. The program was called something ridiculous like, “The Love of Grammar.” Okay Mesdames Ehrenworth and Vinton –prove it. I sat back, sarcastically clutching my notebook and pen, doubting there was anything worthwhile to diagram… then Mary started to do something strange. She started to talk about stealing a shirt when she was a kid.

I listened as she began reading her own experiences from the overhead. Wait a minute –was this a grammar lesson or a writing class? Assuming I hit the wrong venue, I loosened the grip of my pen, listened to this writing presentation, and was mesmerized as I slowly realized that it was, in fact, a grammar lesson. Using her own writing, Mary showed teachers how to teach grammar through student writing, using her work to pick apart so as to not put students on the spot… teaching paragraphing and punctuation as choice and not a rule. Wait a minute. Until then, I thought of writing as choice and grammar as rules. I loved writing and hated grammar. Throughout the hour, the two women blurred the polar divide through ideas of apprenticeship and ownership, freedom and choice. Needless to say, I was actually turned on to grammar.

The next day, I bought their book and talked with the dynamic duo, running through some minor ideas and my own trepidation. They gave me some suggestions and told me about other places I might look to refresh my outlook on teaching grammar. I read the book, tweaked and taught some lessons, and actually began to revamp my lessons to incorporate grammar rather than to compartmentalize it as a foreign entity. Their ideas on writing apprenticeship has helped me to teach parts of speech, their reminder of the importance of modeling teacher writing samples has inspired me to become more vulnerable with my own writing, and their concept of taking a different approach has inspired my teaching beyond the grammatical gridlines. They have truly taught me to embrace grammar as a friend, and gotten me past an age-old phobia.

(Originally published in NHCTE in April, 2007)