Since you are preparing to present at NTCE, and your presentation includes teacher preparation, I thought I would take the time to share with you my recent experience with student-teacher grammar instruction.

I currently have a student teacher from my local college here in rural south-central Colo, and I am dismayed at her lack of grammar knowledge. In Colo, a secondary language arts license allows one teach 6-12, so I would think that some grammar knowledge might be beneficial to anyone wanting to teach at least at the middle school level. My student teacher's grammar knowledge is abysmal--she can't even explain to my students the simplest of concepts such as pronoun case or pronoun-antecedent agreement. She doesn't know what a comma splice is, nor can she explain such punctuation errors to my students. I do not think the fault lies within my student teacher--the college simply does not incorporate secondary grammar instruction prepartion anywhere in the English degree.

I know this is just one isolated example of teacher preparation, but if your presentation at the NCTE conference can in any way impress upon this influential organization the need for better grammar preparation amongst teachers, then I, along with many parents and students, would be most grateful. If colleges are not even providing prospective teachers with any grammar knowledge, what does that say for the future of teaching English grammar?

thanks

Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

I am proud and delighted to help represent ATEG, with fellow ATEG
members Barbara Stanford, Cornelia Paraskevas, and Deborah
Rossen-Knill, at this week's NCTE conference in Nashville. Our panel,
"Standards, Assessment, Teacher Preparation, and Curricular Practices",
is scheduled for Friday (Session E04) from 4-5:15. We will talk about
the Scope and Sequence project as a work in progress and discuss why
and how standards, assessment, teacher training, and curriculum need to
change in order to be more in harmony with each other.
We look at Scope and Sequence as an ATEG project, so please feel part
of it and join us on Friday. Give us your perspectives and your
feedback. Perhaps more importantly, let's help NCTE understand that
there is a pressing need for more thoughtful approaches to grammar,
including approaches that embrace knowledge rather than shy away from
it.
If anyone is else is presenting, please let us know. Please introduce
yourself if we haven't already met. I look forward to meeting new
people and seeing old friends.

Craig

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