Writing-- how to fix what's clearly broken... maybe?

How many plates can I keep spinning? We're about to find out. 

I've spent the early part of this morning working on a draft of a schedule to fit in five hours a week at work to start a much-needed Writing Lab. Our kids don't have a study hall, so it'll require lunch times, before school/after school, and other times with teacher permission. I have a meeting this morning with my principal to figure this out. It's a grant-funded position for this year; if it looks like it's going well, it might be something we can put into the regular budget--hope so! I like the idea of working with kids who need a little support, and I also really like the idea of earning a little extra money. 

I've been part-time since Meg was born, so that's 31 years. I had a sweet little gig going when the Frost Place had a physical presence here, but since it's been streamlined, I don't have that office job anymore. So, finding a little side hustle has been on my mind for a while. I can't really do retail (my arthritic feet and hinky knee say no), and there's precious little else around here that I could do fewer than ten hours a week. Certainly, there's nothing I can do from home easily, around my regular work schedule. So, this is a good situation, and I hope I/we can make it "necessary" enough to make it an official position. 

Kids need writing help, that's clear. Even my better students struggle with basic grammar, usage, and spelling, let alone essay construction. Part of it may be pandemic "learning loss" (o how I hate that buzz word, but it's why we got the grant). But I've seen this horrible slide in basic writing skill for a very long time; remember, I don't get these kids until it's almost too late-- juniors and seniors. I can play the blame game all day, but the bottom line is, computers. Spell check. And teachers who can't seem to find the time (?!) to remediate or even introduce the basic stuff, like how to use a semicolon or a hyphen. 

O, there's been reams of vocab words and so on, but slowing down to take care of the marks of punctuation, to explain how they work, not just when to use them, is critical for communication success. I'll do my best, but gee whiz, it'd be a whole lot nicer if I didn't have to have seniors counting syllables and figuring out how to use a comma with an introductory clause. A what? yeah. It's that bad.

I recently had the opportunity to be a part of an ad hoc committee for the NH DOE, reviewing an application for an alternative, video-based English curriculum that has been proposed by a licensed teacher who has started a nonprofit company to offer such things. The application was a mess. It was ironic that the program was to offer a way to really teach kids how to do the very things that were errors throughout the 40+ page document. I wrote my comments and sent them in-- o, likely the Commissioner will approve the dang thing anyhow, but I said what I said, and I'm sticking with it. 

In short, if you can't punctuation, spell, use grammar well, and then proofread your document before submitting it, you are not showing me that you are the expert in helping others to do the same--through a video program with no live teacher requirement. 

ugh.

OK, I'm off to save the world, one Oxford comma at a time.

Take care,

C