rules as tools to create meaning (3-30)

So, yesterday I visited a teacher at Hickman High School to try to get some information I can use for the seminar paper in my 18th century Br. Lit. class on how Jane Austen may be presented to high school students. This teacher primarily teaches an AP Language course, and when I asked her how she came up with the course, she told me that she had created it several years ago. Previously, they had not had such a course, and she created it based on her own background knowledge to fill in the gap in the curriculum. Even though we have already spent half a semester talking about and preparing for English 1000 which we will be teaching, the fact of “creating a course” still terrifies me. The logical part of my brain tries to tell me that I have a fair background in composition theory and practice, both as an undergrad and from this class. By the time I start teaching, I will have completed five years of college level work, which is certainly more than my students. And yet in some ways, I still feel like I am being told, “Teach students how to write—Go!” and the task seems impossible. Now, there is a connection here (at least in my mind) between my angst and the readings about grammar. While I am interested in the ways grammar work, I am definitely not a prescriptivist. As long as people share enough grammar in common to be able to communicate, I really don’t care whether or not they are using formal, long-standing rules. The rules of grammar are just the necessary tools to making meaning. So, what I think I’m lacking in the area of teaching is a firm understanding of its grammar. I know there is meaning that I want to convey to my students. I’m just not quite sure how to structure it to get that meaning across. And, I’m not sure there are many hard and fast rules about teaching. Even as a student, I know that teaching approaches vary widely. I’m not sure this analogy really solves anything, but it helps to write about it. Maybe I should also remind myself that when I stutter in the classroom, both literally and figuratively, it just means that I am trying to acquire a new language.