on my snobbery

I'm a writing snob.  Yes, siree.  And proud of it!

But apologetically so.

A few times a year the first grade teachers I taught with collaborated on big events, such as Thanksgiving feasts and field trips.  At the planning meeting, one of us would volunteer to write a parent letter detailing the event.  Sounds wonderful, this delegating, no?  It saved us all time periodically, so we could pretend to have a life outside of teaching (first grade is a challenge).

But a problem arose for me, coming out of these meetings.  Being a writing snob, I felt teachers had an obligation to send home only well-written letters, sans errors.  After all, we were paid (pretty well) to have a clue about such things!  I never said anything, so as not to offend, but friends, only one of my five colleagues could write a decent memo!

When the group letter wasn't up to par, I rewrote one to send home with my students, making sure to photocopy it on an evening or weekend, so my colleagues wouldn't learn of my snobby ways.  I carefully destroyed any evidence in the teacher workroom.

I should have just addressed the issue with my colleagues, you're thinking.  Right?  Well, it would have been difficult to do so without being annoying.

Since those years, I've seen a few memos sent out by other teachers, including my son's preschool teacher.  Her letters lacked even basic punctuation.

We are not a nation of writers, I'm sorry to say.  I'm not just picking on teachers!  This is a widespread problem.  Some people have a natural gift, true, but the majority of us need direct and systematic teaching over a number of years.  And that isn't happening in our schools.  I had to write essays in middle and high school, but many writing traits weren't taught--just punctuation, grammar, and the basic five-paragraph essay.

I can't fix this, but I do mourn over it.

What I can do is write a post to help homeschooling families tackle the systematic teaching of writing.

Only tonight, I need to catch up on some sleep.

Look for a short post on Six Trait writing later this week.

My older son had a much better day, by the way!  We got down on our knees together twice, begging God to release us from old patterns--during writing time, actually.

I'll address the fits young ones have during writing, also.