This just in: Yours truly, the high school English teacher who keeps this blog, is boring! You heard it here first, and I give it to you straight from the mouths of about five horses who have to sit in my class every day and be bored, bored, bored! I mean seriously, Pre-Trig is more interesting than this class! Can't you just tell us what we need to know? Why do we have to talk about everything? And why do we have to write so much in English class? For real, time literally slows down in this room...
Ouch. You have to have thick skin to teach high school; not every student thinks your subject area is just fascinating. But what really saddens me is not that some students are rude, or that they don't enjoy reading and discussing literature. What saddens me is that their real objection is not to literature per se, but to anything that requires them to think a little. It's not that they are bored; it's that they are boring and apathetic, and they like it that way.
On to the sentences. As always, these are from student work, and my comments are in ( ).
- During the colonial times during the 1850s...
- China is very family oriented.
- A serpent often symbolizes a snake in Western Culture. (Gonna have to teach symbol again.)
- Men view piercings on a woman as "sexy" and "available." (Nice nose ring; is it seeing anyone?)
- Private prisons are not too happen when their prisoners become ill.
- Paraphrasing without siting is another form of plagarism. (If you're standing, you're ok.)
- Both men are criminals who obviously don't have an issue with lying huge lies.
(The following two are both responses to: Explain how Peyton Farquar is to be hung.)
- because he was a slave
- Being a North dressed up as a South soldier.
- This is the meaning that probes thought and discussion.
- He is left for death by his friend. (Ouch; to be left for another is one thing, but being left for death? That's gotta sting.)
- But nothing can be done unless something is done about it.
- It's not like they sit in Boston and ponder their sins for 7 years, that would make a boring story. (This advanced 11 student is subtly hinting that he didn't like The Scarlet Letter.)
- Note to self: insert fact on boring machine later. (Note to student: see your note to self before turning in essay. Also, he was using "boring" as in "to drill a hole into," not as in "tedious and dull." But if you ask me, either sense would work.)
That's it for now. Enjoy whatever holidays you celebrate!
J
