Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Everyday Grammar Excellence

Remember that post I wrote a few weeks back about crazy reoccurring dreams I have? Well, one of them has come true... I am officially back in high school!

Ah, how the social networking sites have brought us all back together. When I first heard about Myspace and Facebook I thought, nah. I'll never sign up for one of those sites. They were all so intimidating and overwhelming at once. And, as much as I'd like to see what everyone ELSE was up to, would I like to share my own personal life with the world? Well, my pregnant BFF and her hubby were visiting us oh, about 2 1/2 years ago now (I can't believe it's been that long!) and she suggested I join Myspace. She was on there and told me about all of these old ghosts from our past she'd reconnected with. This piked my interest, and that afternoon I created a Myspace account and subsequently opened Pandora's box.

I had been timid about trying to re-connect with a lot of these people. Not so much high school friends, but college friends. As a lot of you know, I left Pi Phi with a very very bitter taste in my mouth. Bad things happened and there were a lot of people who I never wanted to see again. It me took several years to get over what had happened. And, joining myspace actually helped in the healing process. Re-forming old friendships was wonderful and actually lead to me meeting up for lunches and dinners with a lot of these old friends.

Well, the luster of Myspace has somewhat worn off for me. I don't really post anything to my account anymore. I'll just check in a couple of times a day to see what people are up to and update my status.

However, Facebook is a whole 'nother beast. I joined Facebook about a year and a half ago, when no one was on. After I signed up, I'd log in from time to time to accept friends who found me, but I never actively participated. Until this summer. Suddenly EVERYONE was on Facebook, and it was a whole other group of people to catch up with. I even (reluctantly) put a friend request out there to someone who I left on bad terms with. She accepted, but has yet to write back. I'm crossing my fingers that I can at least exchange a few friendly emails with her.

And, in addition to old friends, you know who else lurks on Facebook? Old high school teachers! Seriously! I about had to take a step back when an old religion teacher found me and requested me. It was actually pretty cool... a teacher who knew me all those years ago actually remembered me. I mean, we all remember our teachers, but really, they have like hundreds of students. How can they remember them all?

Well, to come to the point of this long-winded post, a high school friend referred me to another teacher on Facebook. I was excited to see this teacher, for I hadn't heard anything from her in years. For old LuHi alumn, this is our dear Miss Butz. Well, Mrs. Kolva now - to be correct. Every freshman at LuHi from the late 80's through the mid-90's had her for English class. I've never met another person like her. Somehow she had a magical ability to demand respect from every student in the room.. even the trouble makers. She was kind of like a "Mary Poppins". You wanted to please her and impress her with your knowledge. And, beneath her proper and formal exterior you could tell that she deeply cared for each and every student in her classroom. We all loved Miss Butz and around my senior year she got married and moved to Salt Lake City. I was one of the lucky ones who got to attend her wedding.

Anyway, suddenly "Miss Butz" was my friend. And, Miss Butz has now gathered several of her old students together into a "group" called Everyday Grammar Excellence. She hands out assignments and grades them. It's a bit intimidating, but I love it! And so does everyone else. It has me re-thinking about my grammar and the casual way I talk in my blogs. I definitely don't take the time to see if my sentences are correct and, although I'm relatively confident in my spelling, I'll do things like this..... in order to add a pause. Or, I'll break up words into sentences that don't really make sentences. For example... FOR REAL?

This is too much fun and I encourage any old LuHi alum to find Miss Butz and join her group. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must think about how I am going to use "lie, laid and lain" in a paragraph :).

2 comments:

Andrea said...

I bet you'll thank your teacher for her continued lessons on MySpace once Brett starts repeating every word you say. I realized the other day that Hannah adds "for" at the end of some of her questions (such as "what are you doing that for?"). Who taught her that? Oops, guilty as charged. I don't do that constantly but obviously enough for her to pick it up. It certainly has made me really start watching my grammar these days!

amypfan said...

How inspiring! Your post has me thinking about creating a similar group for my old students.... but I think they're all such recent graduates that they don't have the perspective to appreciate it yet. I need to find a group like that for me!