Me and Joe went to the store.
This line in a student essay sent me freefalling over the
edge today. I’d only finished grading a short stack of essays, but all of them
had too many basic errors like this one.
Most of my community college students this semester don’t
know that it should be “Joe and I went to the store.”
The thought hit me hard and made me angry. Steam-out-of-the-ears
angry. Then, sad, very sad.
How could these students think “Me and Joe went” was a
proper construction?
I want to blame someone for shortchanging my students, for
not teaching them the basics that were drilled into me at school so young that
I don’t even remember learning them. Even at home, Grandmother, Mother, Dad,
and older siblings automatically corrected my grammar. I was lucky.
But my students apparently didn’t get that instruction at
school and at home. Or, if they did, for a variety of reasons, they didn’t
listen.
These students range in age from 17 to 45, and because we
are in a military town, they were schooled at different places, at different
times, all over the country and sometimes in other countries. They are not a
homogenous group of local 18 year-olds, so the local public school system can’t
be scapegoated here.
Yet they were robbed if their education did not teach them
the difference between a complete sentence and a fragment, a comma splice and a
coordinating conjunction. We had devoted 2 full class periods to a review, with
in-class exercises and homework to these particular basics. I called it a
review, since I was sure this was information they already knew, and they
looked bored. They should have looked scared.
Now that I’ve read their essays, I wonder if there is enough
time left in the semester to bring their grammar up to a passable college
level. I’m not really supposed to be teaching grammar and punctuation. Students
who arrive in this class are presumed to have these basics mastered—it says so
in the state-mandated course description-- and to be ready for me to teach them
how to write a college level essay. This is
the essay writing class.
Well, ha and double ha.
Of course I never find all my students equally prepared, but
this semester is different. They are just as bright as always, but they are
going to have to struggle more than any class I’ve seen in my twelve years
teaching. To bring their basic grammar and punctuation skills up to a level
that will allow them to pass any curriculum classes that involve written
assignments will be a challenge. They will have to scramble, to work their butts off.
Further, do I tell them they were robbed? Do I ask them if
they slept through middle school and high school? Do I read them the riot act
about listening more carefully to my grammar advice?
Do I exhort them to become community leaders, state
senators, members of the U.S. Congress so they can work to make an American education
something to be proud of? (I’ve been known to go off on this topic in class
before, but hadn’t got around to it yet this semester.)
Some of these students are hanging by a piece of dental
floss already. They tend to be fragile. They
are not the golden boys and girls of America, for the most part—not many silver
spoons at our school. They are the ones coming back to school after having
children young, or who had dropped out of college previously, or who’ve recently
left an abusive relationship, or who are wounded combat veterans trying their
damndest to ease back into civilian life. Some of my students don’t even have much food
in the house. Some work two jobs. My students are not overflowing with
confidence that they will make it to the end of the semester, much less to the
end of their degree or program.
Some days I have to remind myself that I’m an English
teacher, not a psychologist or a social worker, although our dedicated campus
counselors know me by my first name. I want to make it right for my students. I
don’t want to make them feel any “less-than” they already do. Some of them are skittish
as rabbits, looking for any reason to bolt from school. So I favor the gentle
approach. I want them to do well. I don’t want them to feel ashamed. Or blamed.
Or heaven forbid… dumb.
But the time we will now have to spend on basic grammar will
take away from the time normally spent on some of the finer points of
transitioning from high school to college writing. This first college English
class is really considered a “service class” to the other, non-English college classes
students will take that require writing papers. They aren’t taking this class
because they want be English majors. That doesn’t mean I will expect any less
of them, but realistically I keep reminding them that what I teach will help
them write better papers for sociology, history, biology—any class.
We’ll try to make the most of the weeks we have left. I will
do what I can to help them, to prod them, to get the ones who aren’t
afraid to work hard ready for the next level English class.
They won’t all make it; even the ones that pass will have
much more catching up to do. And that makes me angry all over again.
