I don’t care that your commas are in the right place as long as I know your heart is.

The conversation after last class left me thinking a lot about how we perceive one another through language and the façade that we all tend to put on of grammatical perfection. We become conscious of our own insecurities with language while speaking to someone who has been deemed a “red pen maniac.” While monitoring the miniscule details of speech that don’t make a difference in the bigger picture of the conversation, we misspeak our thoughts even worse then if we just said what we had to. In class as I was trying to make a comment I even misspoke and got all flipped flopped in my thoughts as I stopped dead in the middle of a thought to correct myself, hoping maybe to regain some sense of academic credibility to the class. It’s been really interesting to read all the pet peeves that the dear abbey column brought up. What is perhaps even more interesting is hearing my classmates talk about their own pet peeves with grammar usage. I can only think, “How many times do those individual criticism probably make the same mistakes?” For me I really don’t see the use in being such a stuck up person about grammar. I would much rather pay attention to the person I am speaking to rather than the way the person speaks. How can I ever get to know someone, let alone know my students, if I am constantly correcting them and saying that the way they speak is inadequate for my “well conditioned” ears?  After reading the article as well I must say I was a bit disheartened to think that people really criticize so much others way of speaking that language can now be perceived as a sign of class. For those people I would love to see them correcting and criticizing the way my 12^th grade inner city New York class speaks to their faces.  Talk about attitude adjustment. I came across this youtube video of Taylor Mali reciting a poem about speaking. He comments on how people fear him because he is a teacher and they have a prejudged image that all English teachers will whip out a red pen and start correcting the misspoken words in the air. (If I ever become that teacher please someone tell me to retire). But, he left the poem at this, “I don’t care that your commas are in the right place as long as I know your heart is.” If some teachers truly had this mentality kids would open up and talk and write and legitimately like English more. Isn’t the true purpose of teachers to support and encourage?