Thanks for your query, Brock.  The only place I know where my suggestion is
definitely being implemented is in a school system outside of Milwaukee, though
staff in a couple of other places were interested but just haven't kept in
touch.  I'd expect that the needs would be significantly different between,
let's say, a wealthy suburban school district and a low-income inner-city
school district.  Or at least, one would start at different points.

Last spring, I heard a wonderful conference presentation by an African American
teacher who thought, when she began teaching mostly AA middle schoolers, that
it would be easy to convince them to learn our mainstream dialect, since she
herself had learned to code switch.  Wrong.  After a while she had the wisdom
to ask her students why they didn't buy into the mainstream dialect as she'd
expected.  Well, as you can imagine, one answer was that they couldn't imagine
themselves needing it.  But the much deeper answer was that they knew
mainstream culture didn't respect their culture, so they weren't about to
accede to its language demands.  Only when the teacher engaged them in studying
an alternative view of history (e.g. the Columbus story told from the
indigenous people's perspective, etc.) did they gain enough self-respect, and
enough willingness, to try to code-switch to mainstream language.

So you see what I mean when I say I'm sure you'd have to start at different
places and choose books accordingly.  If I remember correctly, the
near-Milwaukee school district (yes, urban and wealthy) has decided to use the
Writers, Inc. and related books.  Personally, I don't see these books as
TEACHING grammar--do you?  Just curious.  I have been very interested in the
teaching ideas recently posted by Carol and by Jeff and maybe others,
especially the idea of creating one's own grammar book.  But we still need a
minimalist grammar, for teachers if not for their students.  At least, that's
what I think.  I would like to see that grammar incorporate the most practical
of the ideas from functional grammar, as I went to a conference workshop on
critical literacy last month and got excited about the possibilities for
teaching.  (I've been using some of the concepts for decades, but am looking
forward to obtaining the practical book that someone recently mentioned on this
listserv.)

I'm eager to hear others' responses.

Connie Weaver
Western Michigan University

"Haussamen, Brock" wrote:

> Connie,
>      Your recommendation here sounds interesting.  Could you say more about
> it?  Do (or would) school systems come up with signficantly different needs
> and plans?  How does (or could) the approach affect the choice of textbooks?
>
> Brock Haussamen
> Raritan Valley Community College
> [log in to unmask]
>
> But I think the most important thing is for
> school
> systems to assess the "grammar" needs of their own students, based upon
> writing
> samples, and plan teaching experiences based on that assessment.