I think about what I should wear—maybe more formal than my kid-ready, summer volunteer kit. Slim pants and an airy tunic, closed toe shoes. No volunteer badge; feels too officious. The thought of being in a cafeteria full of teachers on their first day back is laden with memories of my own back-to-school journeys: seven times a new kid going to a new K-12 school; getting dropped off at college (no connections from high school); first teachers’ meetings in California, then Colorado; first university faculty meetings in Florida…

I pull into the parking lot at 8:30, already late because I fussed too long over getting ready. The main office door is on my left, and my heart sinks as I see the sign, “Closed (happy face) be back at 10 am.” There is not a soul in sight. There is no way I can get to the cafeteria without someone letting me in…

Well, there is a chain link fence to my right, and the gate in front of me does not go all the way to the ceiling, and it does not have barbed wire or spikes at the top…. I can throw my bag over the top, climb up the chain link until I can get a leg over the top of the gate…. maybe need to take my shoes off to get enough of each foot into the chain link to hoist myself up… Egad. This is a really daunting idea at this stage in life.

Just then I hear voices behind me. I turn to see two adults, probably parents, knocking at the door with the “closed” sign. They are clearly frustrated to be turned away, expected to come back another time. I greet them in my enthusiastic but limited Spanish, I explain that no one is in the office now, and perhaps I can help them. With enough patient back and forth on their part, I figure out that they need to get the records for their daughter who went here last year but is now enrolling in a new school. Of course I have a pen and a pad of paper and am happy to take down their information. I assure them that I will give this information to the registrar when the office opens. Two parents walk away, smiling.

I am chuffed. I feel this way every time I can ease someone’s—anyone’s— experience with any aspect of schooling.

I return to consider my odds of climbing the fence and the gate. Then I see a custodian wheeling a large trash bin down the breezeway. I start banging on the gate and yelling, “Ayuda me! Ayuda me! Por Favor!” For a long minute he looks at me and I keep shouting for help. Then he turns his bin left and disappears. Another custodian-looking man is coming up the same breezeway—a large ring of keys jangling at his side. I resume banging on the gate and yelling. As he looks toward me, in the same motion he is unlocking the door to the first portable on the right and shuts the door behind him.

A fierce ire, labeled “women ignored by men,” grabs my chest…

I steep in my conundrum for a few more minutes. Before I commit to just going home, I see movement through the glass doors of the main office. Relief!! An energized blonde woman, flanked by the first custodian, opens the door a crack and frowning, incredulous, asks, “You want something!?”

I explain that I have been invited to the teachers orientation meeting by the principal, and that I don’t have my volunteer badge, oh, and I left my drivers license in my purse in my car…and she is not having it. She shakes her head in disbelief at my audacity. I keep pleading, making good eye contact. Eventually she says, “what time were you supposed to come?”

“8:15”

“Well it’s 9:15 now! What are you thinking!!”

Somehow, begrudgingly, she overrides her number-one-basic-school-safety-system locked-in-rule, and she lets me in. She walks ahead of me, efficiently, and I rush to assure her that I can get to the cafeteria by myself. She nods curtly and steps over to a side table where she quickly turns the pancakes browning on a hot griddle. Waiting on either side of her are two large bowls dripping with batter.

Teacher Orientation Meeting

The cafeteria is a sea of tables and chairs, bright paper table cloths, centerpieces of live plant cuttings, and at least sixty people—mostly women—talking amongst themselves over cups of coffee and plates of scrambled eggs with bacon alongside stacks of perfect, fluffy, golden brown pancakes.

The big screen is lit up with the principal’s slide show. She lights up the room herself with her energy and her well-cut dress in the beautiful blue and green colors of the school. She is just now taking the stage—I am not so late after all—and gives me a nod as I find my way to an empty seat at a table in the back. The former student that I was re-acquainted with this summer is up to greet me with a hug and I am feeling great.

Every seat at every table has a pen and a copy of this year’s faculty handbook. I scribble down the names of everyone the principal introduces—our new home-school liaison who speaks seven languages (and serves another school in addition to ours, which has an enrollment of over 600). Officer Joe. I even get an introduction as the new Volunteer Coordinator for the school with the opportunity to say a few words. More names follow for key district and community support contacts, and then a lot of celebration for the school’s new A grade by the state. The room hums with a confidence and an energy that feels fantastic to me.

And then on to the required safety training for lockdown procedures.

I slip over to the food table and help myself to a stack of cinnamon crunch pancakes, butter, syrup. Out of this world. I must tell the blonde woman in the office who made all these, single-handedly, how much I loved them when I tell her again how grateful I am that she let me in, against all the rules. Then I start checking in with the people at my table.

Young man, maybe mid-thirties, to my right is beginning his second year at this school, his second year teaching fourth grade. Since 2023, anyone with a college degree who passes the background check can get a teaching job in Florida with a temporary certificate and five years to complete all the specific state requirements for a full credential. I have long grumbled about these low standards, but meeting—let’s call him Ryan—meeting Ryan really opened my eyes to the silver lining: instant access to people with rich life experience who really want to teach. Ryan was a police officer in another east coast state for nearly a decade before becoming a school resource officer (SRO) and eventually the head of the SRO program for his jurisdiction. Wow. He is strong in science and math, rotates groups for English Language Arts, takes certification exams and required coursework at night, and is a very fun table buddy.

Then I met all the other women at our table—the librarian and the other fourth grade teachers. I felt such positivity from all of these charming people. Each one settling in for another long, tough grind of a school year and not wishing to be anywhere else.

Do you remember me?

As if I wasn’t already high enough, one of the women at my table asks, “Do you remember me? Sandy Sheller. I took your ESOL class in 2005.”

I look hard…and, gasp, the sound of her voice and the shape of her face are a ringing a bell.

“And do you remember Barbara? She was in that class too” and the woman next to her leans forward to better make eye contact.

Yes! Somehow their names, their faces, their voices are familiar to me, and hazy memories tickle my brain.

By this time, people are moving freely around the cafeteria and I go looking for the other former student whose name I recognized from the school website. I can’t find her, but I am sought out by three more teachers who ask if I remember them. Holy Cow,! Yes, I do. Different years of my teacher ed career, but amazing to feel each memory take shape as they tell me their names and I see their faces and hear their voices. Here are two snapshots to begin with.

Natalie teaches Kindergarten Inclusion and her mother volunteers in her class every day. Natalie has a wall in her classroom of selfies with students from the past, and she tears up a little as we look at them together. She tells me that they are her children as she does not have children of her own, and I see that we are alike in the fullness with which we love and care for other people’s children.

Jean teaches first grade. When she stepped up to introduce herself to me, I recognized her immediately and my heart leaped. I felt like I had found a long-lost treasure. I have thought about this woman and her classroom for years! Out of all the elementary classrooms I visited while supervising interns, hers was the only room in which I would gladly have placed my own children. Or placed myself as a kid. The. Only. One.

The way I remember it, the room had a visible organization to it—students moving at their own pace, working individually, in small independent groups, in a small group with the teacher. The routine was moving smoothly, and I was able to interact with individual students without interrupting anyone else. Every student was working and knew what they were doing. There was a quiet hum of modulated voices. There was no bright kid-decor. It reminded me of my own classroom and my own style of teaching.

Of course every time I thought about that classroom over the years, I could not remember what school it was, what grade level it was, or even the teacher’s name. The memory just hung in my mind as the best classroom I ever visited. But that day, as soon as she stepped in front of me, her name and all the rest came back in a flash.

By the time we ended our conversation, we had agreed to future talks, in particular, about her post-retirement plans to start a non-profit organization whose mission would be to support teachers directly in ways the district and school cannot do. And how I would love to help her with that and could I perhaps send an email to the principal and the vice-principal to tell them how highly I remember her teaching and classroom management?

Of course. It is my great pleasure. It’s all in a day.

Looking back, I think the last time I felt the full confidence of knowing what I was doing, why I was doing it, how it was working, and what I needed to do next was in 1982, after a Master’s Degree in Linguistics and ten years of classroom teaching, the most recent of which were as the 6th Grade Writing teacher in a rural Colorado middle school. By 1983 I had started a linguistics Ph.D. program, and, well, here we are….

My first self-placement attempt was to volunteer at my neighborhood Boys and Girls club which serves a(n) historic, culturally and linguistically rich African-American community. I did the online training, the finger printing, the interviews, and finally got assigned to assist with the K-2 group of girls. I loved their rich and lively language and styles of interacting, but I never succeeded in building a working relationship with any of the staff.

My second attempt to integrate myself into a classroom was to substitute teach at a nearby Spanish-English Charter School.

I. Learned. So. Much. I had not been on my feet for a full day of responsibility for students in many, many years. Oofda! I needed 12 hours of sleep most nights and the support of a dog walker to survive. The scheduling at this school is complex: students alternate between their Spanish-speaking teacher one day and their English-speaking teacher the next day (along with specials, recess, lunch, etc.) The bilingual curriculum is coordinated so that students experience continuity but not repetition in their lessons—dual language immersion. It was exciting, fascinating, and incredibly challenging for me: so many names (teachers, staff, kids), so many different classroom routines, multiple online platforms and protocols to learn (state, district, school), and coping with the individual quirks of the smart board in every classroom. It was demanding, but I always felt good walking into those classrooms.

By the end of a 6-week, long-term sub job for 4th grade math (in English), (and several calls to the main office for discipline support,) I had to finally admit that the challenges were just too much for me. The real lossI felt was that I had not been able to establish a collaborative partnership with any of the teachers or staff. They all welcomed me warmly, but I think everyone was just too full-tilt busy to talk shop at the end of the day.

By my third attempt, I understood my essential requirements:

• access to learners and teachers

• having a limited and flexible on-site schedule

• having the freedom to design and lead learning activities outside of the district-prescribed instructional time blocks

On cue, I received an email from the district volunteer office (I had registered to volunteer before I started subbing last year.) Announcement: All Level II Volunteers (security clearance to have unsupervised contact with students) are invited to become certified Florida Resiliency Coaches. 1 A Resiliency Coach works as much or as little as they wish in coordination the Resiliency Coach Coordinator for the school of their choice, offering encouragement to individual students who have been identified as needing support. Grandparents are especially encouraged to participate. 2

This looked like the perfect way to be welcomed onto a school campus, on my own schedule, and to serve students in a support role designed for collaboration with teachers and staff. I did the online training (as superficial and constrained as you might imagine) and was waiting for an opportunity to do my 4-hour practicum when I got another email from the District Volunteer and Outreach Office: I could do my practicum hours this summer by volunteering at my very own Neighborhood Elementary School! Kismet.

Fourteen rich, rewarding, and exhausting volunteer hours later, this placement feels perfect for my next attempt:

• The school is 5 minutes from my home

• I know the school from having supervised student interns here in the past

• I now know the very experienced, very welcoming and openly communicative principal

• I now know several office staff members and paraprofessionals

• I now know about 18 of the delightful students attending this school, grades 1-5.

• AND, turning point for me, I ran into a former student (10+ years ago) who is teaching here! Immediate big hugs and plans for ongoing conversations.

This list propelled me to propose to the principal that I serve as the school’s Volunteer Volunteer Coordinator.

She said yes!

And get this, she even has some extra Title I money to pay me—an unexpected perk.

Mission and Vision: First Draft

My mission as the school’s Volunteer Coordinator is to accomplish the following goals:

• recruit enthusiastic volunteers through community speaking engagements

• provide volunteer intake, onboarding, and niche placement services throughout the school and the school day

• engage volunteers in practice coaching sessions for activities that all students benefit from:

  • sincere conversations

  • handwriting practice

  • side-by-side reading

  • counting, measuring, classifying

  • singing or chanting

  • physical movement

• collaborate closely with teachers, staff, and volunteers to respond to variable student needs

My vision is to see this Title I school provide the same learning resources for its students, teachers, staff, and families that more privileged and better-funded schools currently enjoy.

My meta-mission is to document the necessity (or not) of knowledge of language and linguistics to provide high-quality support to an underfunded school serving a socio-linguistically and culturally diverse population.

My first day on the job…

The principal asked me to come to teacher orientation this past Monday—”Come around 8:15 after we finish with pictures and stay for the presentation so you can communicate about our school.” Yay! I decide to dress in something a little more business-like than my kid-ready wear. And, I decide to not wear my District Volunteer Level II badge as it just seemed a little officious for a day with teachers.

They hear me knocking, but I can’t come in. (To be continued…)

Hi Keisha,

Thank you for noticing my linguistics background and for asking for my help!

I am not taking additional freelance work at this time, but I will sketch out the specs for an AI project that I would work on--in a heartbeat.

Let’s call it The SLAP (Student Learning Attainment Portfolio)—a slap in the face to inadequate and overused testing practices.

• The SLAP outreach/input unit is designed to receive and interact with multilingual input from students (K-12), teachers, parents, staff, and other community members.

• The SLAP’s intelligent design responds to requests for the vast variety of reports reqired of any particular state and district. These reports are transparently based on verifiable data, aggregated for anonymity, disaggregated for individual student learning portfolios.

• The SLAP’s intelligent design organizes all the submissions for individual students tagged with date, teacher, and all relevant learning goals and standards. Submission formats include text documents, scanned documents, photos, audio clips, video clips if faces are made unidentifiable, project coding files, etc.

• The SLAP’s intelligent design can also accept submissions by groups of authors, assess and record those submissions according to individual student contributions.

• The SLAP’s intelligent design can transcribe and translate text input into text output in all requested languages and in formats that comply with Universal Design for Instruction, including braille and automated speech, SLAP can handle all varieties of text input: digital, handwritten or hand drawn, audiovideo, captions, etc.

• The SLAP’s intelligent design can translate signed input using all requested sign languages into the requested printed output languages.

• The SLAP’s intelligent design can evaluate specific submissions when given specific rubrics and protocols for finding evidence for each rating in the rubric.

• The SLAP’s intelligent design can conduct, record, and evaluate engaging interviews with individual students about their work--what they have read or written or designed, their thoughts about this experience, what questions they have, and how those questions might be answered

• The SLAP’s intelligent design includes screening protocols to identify potential problems with vision and hearing, and can identify students that match neurodivergent profiles that typically benefit from specific learning supports.

• The SLAP’s intelligent design can identify the language(s) and the dialect(s) being spoken to it

• The SLAP includes the open access language transcription and analysis software programs used by linguists and speech-language therapists

• The SLAP provides training on all aspects of its use to all users, and it learns and can train others on new applications of its use as they develop in real time.

• The SLAP is built to have a main hub in every district office and an outreach/input unit in every classroom. The SLAP records and monitors enrollment information, attendance, tardiness, illnesses, early departures, absences

• The SLAP is customizable in all aspects by its users, on site.

• The SLAP is available to all who request it. The SLAP will shut down and possibly self-destruct if it detects nefarious activity in its waters.

• The SLAP is fully funded by the Elon Musk Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization serving the educational needs of everyone, everywhere.

Thank you again for contacting me.

Mary Rebecca Burns

On Fri, Jun 26, 2026 at 3:08 PM Keisha Thomas <keisha.thomas@tunewithalignerr.com> wrote:

Hi Mary Rebecca,

I hope you’re having a great week.

I’m reaching out because I came across your background in linguistics and discourse analysis and was impressed by your expertise. We’re currently looking for subject-matter experts to help shape the future of Generative AI, and your profile seems like a fantastic potential fit for our community.

At Alignerr, we connect professionals like you with flexible, project-based work—including tasks in writing, reasoning, and domain-specific data annotation. We have active projects across a variety of fields, and I believe your background would be a great addition to the team.

If you’re interested in exploring this further, I’d love to invite you to create an account and complete your profile. This is the best way to showcase your skills and get matched to the right opportunities:

Join Alignerr here

It only takes a few minutes to get started, and there’s no upfront commitment. Completing your profile and assessments is what unlocks the projects that align with your specific expertise.

If you have any questions, feel free to reply—I’m happy to help.

Best regards,

Keisha Thomas
Alignerr

My escort showed me two bins of leveled reading materials next to the teachers desk— piled high with books and discarded posters. She handed me the Summer Volunteer Activity Guide she had written to go with the reading books. “Student reads and answers questions, Student retells fictional text including characters, setting, problem and solution, character actions, character feelings…”

I put the paper down and asked her, with my friendliest toothy smile and crinkling eyes, “Where can we find crayons, paper, pencils, and masking tape?”1 We found everything but no tape, which is critical for creating signage and displaying student work—hallmarks of a student-centered, print-rich environment. To search further, we went into the adjoining space—a conventional classroom.

Written on the white board, still visible from the school year, was “An adjective is a word that modifies or gives more information about a noun or pronoun.”

By this time, I am wound up and I cannot stop myself. I point to the board and ask my escort, “So how can they know if they are right? Where is the test for adjectives?”

And that’s when she says, “I know what an adjective is” and leaves the room. (She came back later with a roll of packing tape, for which I was very grateful.)

Blazing Saddles: “We don’t need no stinkin’ tests (to know what an adjective is)!”

9:00 and the kids are coming in with Miss Mary, the caregiver who is with them throughout the day (6:30 am to 2:30 pm, $15 an hour—a mature adult who has raised two literate children of her own .) She gives me the handouts she has prepared for the students—a Mad Lib! (A story with blanks for many of the content words, and a notation for what kind of word should be put in the blank, like adjectives.)

Miss Mary has made several copies, but I am eager for us to do this as a group—the way Mad Libs were designed to be done. The first blank calls for an adjective, and some students call out words and other students call out, “What is an adjective?”

So this is where structural grammar comes in.

I quickly shift gears: “Give me a word that fits: The [blank] cat” and everyone calls out adjectives. Another volunteer is with us today, and I have asked her to choose the words to fill in the Mad Lib, which adds a wonderful dramatic element to our activity as she thinks out loud about her choice before writing it down.

If we need a verb, I say, “The dogs [blank];” if we need a noun, I say “The [blank] escaped;” and if we need an adverb, I say “ [Blank-ly], the cat ran.” All the words the kids came up with were good candidates. One enthusiastic student got fixated on “cheese” which morphed into “flying cheese” and hilariously described the van in which we went on a camping trip in this Mad Lib story.

Spontaneously offering a test frame to help kids think of words to match a part of speech. is easy after a little practice, and if you make a mistake, you will instinctively correct yourself—something students are likely to enjoy and remember. The more you try it, the more you will awaken your awareness of your vast but subconscious knowledge of your language.

Your brain has been tracking and organizing what you hear, say, read, and write every minute of your life. You (and every other human being) has more linguistic knowledge than you can ever imagine, but that knowledge needs waking up for us to consciously use it.

No one needs a full course in structural grammar to be able to think of a test frame for a part of speech, but I never see test frames being used in the elementary grades, where they are most needed.2

Test frames can clarify the grammatical function of a word in that phrasal context. But are there English words that are always adjectives? Yes. The test for those words is whether or not they can (a) take the suffix -er and -est: green, greener, greenest or (b) be preceded by ‘more’ and ‘most’: beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful.

Very young children can respond to structural test frame because they learn to “fill in the (pause/blank)” at a very early age. (Citations provided on request.) Using structural test frames adds a whole other dimension to a grammar lesson. Think about the fact that English-speaking children commonly say words like “beautifuller” or “more beautifuller” and “bestest”—word forms kids have never heard before. How are their brains organized to be able to do that? How does their mental organization change as they develop into mature language users? 3 This is what research in child language development is all about. I did the long course so that you don’t have to…

Today was one of the happiest, most fulfilling days of my life! I felt like a life-long birder who finally made it to Costa Rica.

Today I volunteered at my neighborhood elementary school from 9 am to 11 am. This was my fourth visit. Room 708—a computer lab set up for 30 students, carpeted floor, inaccessible white boards because the computers/desks are all against the walls. The room has the abandoned feel of summer—the teacher’s desk and the space all around it are piled high with stuff.

But there they were—the 3rd and 4th grade 9 o’clock kids, all 6 of them—on computers with headphones doing i-Ready1 Miss Mary, the paraprofessional who is with this group of kids from 6:30 am to 3:30 pm, was sitting at the rectangular table in the center of the room. She greeted me warmly, and we had a chance to really chat for the first time. [Establishing personal connection with other teachers and caregivers at “my” school: happiness check]

Eventually one of the kids asked if he could do something else, and before Miss Mary could say, “No, not until you have completed 30 minutes of i-Ready” I invited him to join us at the table. Soon we had the whole group at the table and I know exactly what I want to do next.

On my last visit, I had explored ways to play2 with a set (a box of five bags each one a different color) of plastic, magnetic “lowercase letters” with some of the 1st and 2nd grade 10 o’clock kids. I was eager to see how the older kids could play with the same materials, and we had a blast! [happiness check]

“Close your eyes. I am putting a letter in your hand. ‘Read’ the letter with your fingers and tell me what the letter is.”

You have to experience this yourself to feel how your brain feels uncertain about the input from your hands and fingers until suddenly your brain KNOWS what letter it is. Eureka moments over and over. The kids progressed from challenging each other to challenging themselves to quickly identify a whole handful of letters. They were fully in control—no peeking and no disagreement. You don’t need an advanced degree in neuroscience to know we were growing our brains in the directions that support academic attainment.

Gregor, who was sitting next to me, elbowed me to get me to look at the word he had spelled with his letters. (gregor) Soon everyone was making meaning with their letters. I recorded each one before they scrambled their letters for their next effort. Here’s our list: (Note, as soon as I asked what they knew about Michael Jackson, we were taking our shoes off doing our best moonwalk.)

And then it was 10 o’clock and I was looking forward to reading this fabulous bilingual book written by my cher colleague, Barbara Zurer Pearson. (My first mistake was to take this as an opportunity to practice my ever-beginner-level Spanish.) After a few pages of approving or correcting my pronunciation, Ethan said, “This is kinda boring,” and I agreed.

I flipped the book to the English half, where a whole other-but-related story is presented and the kids were amazed that a book (about two languages being more fun/useful than one) could be two books in one! (The two stories are companions, not translations of one story, charmingly told with beautiful illustrations! Strongly recommended!) And with my enthusiastic, fluent reading, all were enthralled…until they lost interest about half way through. So we talked through the remaining pictures to explain how the story ends.

And the book ends by extending the story’s theme with fun examples of the Power of Two. “Can you clap with just one hand?” NO!!!!! “To clap with one hand, you need TWO PEOPLE!!!!” which we practiced, hilariously. A truly great moment. (Happiness check.)

Then we played with the “lower case letters” to make words, matching words in the book, and Sra. Perez, the all day paraprofessional teacher with this group, joined us to read (so beautifully) some passages in Spanish. I gave her the book to keep. (Barbara gave me two, beautiful hardback copies. As always, The Power of Two.) As the kids lined up to go to lunch, I reminded them that I would see them next Tuesday, and then came the hugs. (Happiness check.)

I feel I have finally started building my “education lab” with these connections to the staff and kids at this school. The principal is very friendly, and two of the teachers at this school are my former students from my ESOL certification courses—two students I had worked closely with and really enjoyed.

I have waited the longest time to feel this joy, this complete freedom to explore my trove of teaching ideas with willing collaborators.

Stay tuned for more rich Tuesdays! Muy rico.

What??? You mean I am not automatically assigned to a school here in Pueblo (aka Steel Town) where I have spent the last three and a half years? I can place myself in my own student teaching assignment??? My pulse quickens. Almost breathless, I write down Buena Vista, Colorado. Could this actually work? My physically distant family has provided me with a car and the fees for my tuition, room, and board. My college boyfriend has already graduated and is in LA, seeking fortune and fame as a songwriter. My apartment lease ends in August…

As I had hoped, the stunning mountain views lifted my spirit to ecstatic heights every time I looked. But the indoor hours of novice teaching were dreary. I was not much older than the high school students I was teaching, so I projected confidence that I did not have. I recall few specifics of this time, but one memory has always made itself available. I am sitting in a circle with a group of seniors and feeling so frustrated and angry with their lack of cooperation that I refuse to speak. We just sit there, in our chairs, looking at one another for perhaps fifteen minutes. The students make comments amongst themselves, but no one leaves until the bell.

I faintly recall a physical textbook in which we completed grammar exercises which were typically “choose the correct word in the following sentence” designs.

All of my students were white kids, monolingual speakers of English (as am I), so most of the “correct” answers were aligned with what sounded right to us. But if I had to explain a tricky one, like (lie, lay) or (were, was), I was weak, as my supervising teacher pointed out. Sadly, I do not remember her name, but she looked to be in her fifties when she supervised me, at 21, in 1972, so she likely went to college in the 1940’s, before traditional grammar instruction faded from common practice in the U.S.2

What happened to grammar teaching in public schools? 3

I can pretty much count my remaining years on two hands, so the heat is ON to get my last words onto the page. After more than a decade of false starts, the only way forward for me is to just begin with a shitty first draft (Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird).

And no one has to read this! Posting rough and posting now is my necessity. You never know what tomorrow will bring.

I have spent my adult life embedded in two fields that live apart from one another: education and linguistics. I graduated from college in 1972 with a BA in English and a minor in education from a small state college in southern Colorado. I took my first teaching job in 1973 (7th grade English, LA City Schools). I took my first linguistics classes in 1974 at Cal State University at Northridge: Phonetics, Structural Grammar, and Transformational Grammar.

(Among linguists, a common question is, “How did you discover linguistics?” The question results in great personal narratives because linguistics courses are not standard offerings anywhere in the world (unlike math, for instance). The linguistics courses that do exist may be hidden under the names of their administrative homes: Departments of English, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, World Languages (spoken or signed), Speech-Language-Hearing Disorders, Teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), and Computer Sciences.

I found my way into linguistics for two reasons. At that time, a standard California teaching credential required a 5th year post BA. So I went to the closest university and signed up for classes to take at night while struggling during the day with novice teaching and fledgling adulthood. I looked for grammar classes because I had been told that my grammar explanations were weak by my student teaching supervisor. So the combination of my wounded pride and the economic necessity of a good job led me to linguistics—the science of language.

My aim is to write and post some Dying Words every day until I am dead.

If you subscribe to my Substack, you will receive my postings in your e-mailbox. Free is fine with me. Just another Bad Capitalist.

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