More class stuff.

After 2 more full days of class, I’m both very excited and very terrified of this semester.

In the class I already wrote about, English 345, we’re essentially learning how to teach "grammar" or what people interpret "grammar" to be.  It’s the class that’ll probably depress me the most.  The first thing the professor seems to want to get through our heads is that the reason we teach things like sentence parts and that kind of crap is because a) government will fire us if our students don’t know it well enough to pass the standardized tests, b) the parents will be mad if we don’t teach it, and c) it’s always been taught.  There have been studies that show that learning these things don’t make you any better of a writer.  If anything, they make you worse, cause you’re thinking more about "Okay, does this sentence end in a preposition?  Is it ‘subject-verb-object?’" more than what you’re trying to say.

So yeah, it’s making me even more cynical than I already was.

The class that I think might give me some hope is my "Reading for the Teacher of English" class.  The last 2/3 of the class is actually going to be us teaching students a book via online discussion.  The students are coming here to give presentations for a day, and we are expected to go to their respective schools (we’ll have students from 2 different schools on this project) and meet them for a day before they come here.  I have to set up lesson plans and facilitate discussion and grade final projects and respond to the students as much as possible online… plus work my job and keep up with my other classes.  It’ll be hard, but I’m actually really excited, especially since the books we’ll be studying are going to be really good.

Last night I had my first "Young Adult Literature" class, and I think that’ll also be my nice, happy class.  We’re reading young adult books, discussing the merits and flaws of teaching them, doing a project on censorship/banned books (HOLY CRAP YAY!!!!), and a whole mess of other lovely things.  I’m super duper extremely excited.  I have to do some more observation/practicum hours in a middle school this semester, which sounds fine to me, but it HAS to be in a middle school, so I can’t just go hang out with Eilene Stevens back in Germantown over spring break like I did last year 🙁

Sorry this entry is so "English Education" heavy, it’s just all I have on my mind at the moment.  I’m not 100% sure what to make of my literary theory class yet, seeing as I’ve only been there once, and we really just got lectured at about the class expectations.  I do know that the readings we had to do for today were mildly confusing.  We’re supposed to do reading journals, but I’m not really all that sure about what I was supposed to write about, so I haven’t done them yet >.<

Anyway, in more interesting news, Nathan and I definitely needed a new vacuum cleaner.  Every time we used ours, it smelled like burning, hairy rubber.  We went to Target tonight to buy me a new backpack since the zipper broke on mine, and we just so happened to see some lovely little vacuums on sale – Roombas.  So, we are now the proud owners of Rory the Roomba, our androgynous floor sweeping robot.  I’m actually kinda pumped, especially since it was kinda cheaper than most vacuum cleaners.

I also have some painfully exciting news, at least for me.

Pat Rothfuss emailed me yesterday, and I’m officially beta reading the next book.  Like, tonight.  Obviously, that’s really all I can say, since I’ll be signing a non-disclosure agreement, but I’m so totally completely psyched.  I will be so completely distant during work this weekend, it’ll be ridiculous.  At least I don’t have anything to do on Fridays, so I’ll be able to spend the whole day reading 🙂

So, enough about my rockstar life.  I think I’ll go eat breakfast and make a pass at those "literary theory" journal entries.