Lets Challenge Your Brain.!! Come in!! your HIgh school students

Hi, I am your age, cobrateacher, a mother, a grandma,and have taught many years at the University. Still I can remember my own teens as a difficult age. Please don´t mind my English, as it´s not my native language. But unfortunatly not all teachers (or parents) are aware that when people reach their teens they start to think for themselves if what they were taught should be followed absolutly. Fortunatly they rebel: if they didn´t, we would still be living in caves as our ancestors did. I always explained this to my students with Red Ridding Hood. If she hadn´t taken risks and tried to follow her own path, there would have been no story. It is up to us, the older generation, that this period of life passes with as little pain and problems. I rather prefer to talk with my teenage grandchildren than to tell them how wrong is the way they are doing. Most of the time I learn from them as much as they learn from me. My eldest grandson (16) is wearing now those horrible dreadlocks. We talked about it. I know he´ll grow out of them. But I did press my point: why wear dreadlocks if you are not in the rasta culture? I know he´ll think about that. I´m glad that your students are so good at English. My field is language and I have discovered that chatting in msn has done nothing to help with it. I had to say that I would not grade anything I did not understand at the University. There´s a new shorthand that youngsters use at computers. They have to: they talk to 20 people at the same time. Take care!

When English is not one's native language, it is certainly not expected that the speaker or writer will have perfect control of it. Only a few of my students are native English speakers, but they understand that accents don't matter, but usage does. One other teacher and I have been working with the "regular", not gifted or advanced seniors, because we give them encouragement and the tools to go out into the world and take their places being the people they want to be. Many students return for a quick hello, advice, and letters or recommendation, and they make us so proud! We do have to remind them that, when they write, they are not on line, so they can't use the new testing language...