Holy crap, I'm a teacher!

[Azhrei]

I have a contract for the fall!

It's not too far away, so I should be living about 30 minutes from Richmond still, but north instead of south. Yay!

[Klep]

That's great to hear.  Congratulations!

[Joel Rojo]

Congratulations, its good to see your life is going upwards, you so deserve it.

Awesome Fencer? Checked
Awesome Girl? Checked
Teacher? Checked
T1 Magic Legend? Checked
Universe Domination? ..., Im sure you are already working on it.

[rvs]

So.... what exactly are you going to be teaching? Advanced Elitism?

On a serious note: I would like to know what kind of teaching you'll be doing though... since there's a big difference between teaching jobs.

[Azhrei]

9th grade English... Lord, give me strength.

[rvs]

13yr olds? Or how old is the 9th grade in the US?

I wish you good luck dear sir, since you sure as hell are going to need it if you want to keep yourself from tearing your hair off, and bringing your rapier-skills into the classroom

[Jacob Orlove]

9th grade English... Lord, give me strength. :P

Good luck with that. At least you'll (probably) have the occasional competent student to make things worthwhile.

[Triple_S]

What school district?

[Dr. Sylvan]

9th grade is 14-15 years old.

I'd be fascinated to see how different Darren is in a teacher persona from his perverted-AIM-quotes TMD posting. =)

Congratulations!

[Azhrei]

I speak VERY correctly and usually in a lecturing tone, though I'm changing that as time goes on. The hardest part I've found is that I sometimes have to think to find something I CAN say, as opposed to the truth.

Example:

"What seems to be the problem? I'm noticing that you have an attitude lately."

instead of:

"Look, bitch, I don't care if you're on the rag, shut the hell up and stop crying about having to do homework. Oh, and you're ugly."

It's in Spotsylvania near Fredericksburg.

[Milton]

Best of luck.  It is a very, very rewarding profession.

[Triple_S]

Excellent, I went to college in Fred'burg...have fun with the locals  

[wuaffiliate]

9th grade English... Lord, give me strength.

Wow, did you use Moding TMD as a reference?

[Kerz]

I was in 9th grade 3 years ago. Let me tell you, I hope you're teaching an Honors level class. If not... well... you BETTER have more patience than a normal human. Frankly, the average student is well... stupid. Basically, by the end of the year I was the man who everyone went to with their ole "what is a paragraph" and "noun?!" questions,  because the teacher had given up.

[TracerBullet]

Any idea what you're gonna do for coursework?

[dandan]

Mr. Teacher we need you!

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=18638

As someone who has done a spot of English teaching (albeit teaching English to Slovaks) I think you'll enjoy it. I particularly liked preparing my students for exams by telling them what mistakes they would make (because every class makes the same mistakes). It makes going through the exams afterwards much more entertaining.

Any chance of a 'Rules of English' forum for TMD? FAQ - 'loose', 'to/too/two'

[Addolorisi]

Hm, as I recall, my 9th grade English class was more reading than anything else. Then again, most high school English courses aren't so much about spelling + sentence structure as they are about literature. (Though I'm not sure about the validity of that; I've noticed a lot of high school students not being able to spell. It's madness.)

But for Christ's sake, someone needs to be teaching the little bastards rhetoric before they graduate. Just going over the fallacies of rhetoric would be a good start. But I'm not sure if 9th graders are smart enough for that.
</mini rant>

Good luck. You'll probably need it.

[Dr. Sylvan]

But without straw man arguments, ridiculous oversimplification, and overuse of both the superlative form and false analogies, people might actually have to think about their statements in a debate! That's the craziest thing I've ever heard, OMG, are you some kind of fascist trying to crush my free speech?!

My English (often called "Language Arts") classes have been more about literature than linguistic structure since 6th grade. That makes it all the more fitting that 6th grade is the point I stopped reading whatever literature I was assigned to read because I was too busy reading four books a week for pleasure.

And spelling is one of the things which is difficult to teach straight up. What I'd do is make them write in-class essays where spelling affects* their grade. Anyone who complains about that is asking for public humiliation. ("You think it is unreasonable of me to ask you to know how to spell without a computer to autocorrect your errors? Is that what you're going to tell your boss in ten years? Complaint denied, whining session terminated.")

* : Also, tell them about the two kinds of affect/effect. It makes a person sound much smarter just to get that right.

[theorigamist]

My high school taught barely any grammar.  Everything I learned about grammar came from the William Strunk and E.B. White grammar book (which, by the way, is fantastic).

Good luck with ninth graders.  You must be masochistic.

[Jacob Orlove]

My high school taught barely any grammar.  Everything I learned about grammar came from the William Strunk and E.B. White grammar book (which, by the way, is fantastic).

The Elements of Style. It's incredible.

We actually did sentence diagramming and other grammar lessons in 12th grade, mostly because our teacher had had that stuff beaten into her by nuns. Other than that year, english was mostly reading and essays.

[Smmenen]

I was in a progressive public school system that didn't teach grammar.  At all.  I got a 4 on the AP Language and Lit test in High School to get me out of college English classes, so I never learned grammar in college either.

[Magi]

I've found that people who read lots of books tend to have naturally good grammar. This one guy in my class for instance, he's a philosophy nut so he reads mega-fat philosophical works like the newspaper. After one of our papers, the teacher used his paper as an example. It read like it was out of an encyclopedia, it was incredible (if I can find it, I'll re-write it and post it here). Being a first year philosophy class, half the students were fresh out of high school so naturally they were shit. The professor recommended to us to read the Elements of Style, and I was shocked when I learned that the student with the near perfect paper had never even heard of the book! Needless to say, I don't think he'll need to read it anyways.

I myself had never read the Elements of Style, but I feel that I got along decent enough without it. Once I heard of it though, I immediately busted over to one of the computer labs and printed the entire damn thing out.

[Addolorisi]

But without straw man arguments, ridiculous oversimplification, and overuse of both the superlative form and false analogies, people might actually have to think about their statements in a debate! That's the craziest thing I've ever heard, OMG, are you some kind of fascist trying to crush my free speech?!

Not free speech. Just stupid speech.  

[Dr. Sylvan]

My teacher tried to get us to diagram sentences and learn about subordinate clauses and parts of speech in 4th-5th grade. I'm really surprised that you ran into the actual grammar stuff in high school though, Jacob. Most English teachers post-elementary school that I've encountered have been way more intent on short essays and "classic" books.

I'd love to know how Darren is planning to structure his class. Personally, I haven't been a fan of any English class in a long time, so I'd love to know what ideas are in the works to counter the inevitable apathy of worthless 14-year-olds.

[jpmeyer]

I don't remember learning grammar after like 1st or 2nd grade.  I did however end up a lot about how English grammar actually worked while taking German/Japanese.

[theorigamist]

I didn't learn any grammar in high school at all.  My grammar knowledge comes from The Elements of Style and a summer course in expository writing at one of the Johns Hopkins CTY programs.  That was enough for fives on both AP English tests.