Author Description

In a short story by Shirley Jackson called "The Lottery," she makes a fundamental comment about human society. She implies that people continue to perpetuate traditions regardless of the tradition. The townspeople have a lottery every year, and the 'winner" of the lottery is stoned to death. After the stoning, the people go about their business like nothing happened. I suggest that English departments have established traditions that have continued for decades without a constitutional change because they have such entrenched traditions that no one sees the importance and the necessity to change them. I am writing this memoir to open the conversation about those traditions that have seriously affected our children's literacy. We will look at some of those traditions at the high school and college campuses where I taught for quite a few years. I wrote Confessions of an English Teacher: A Memoir of My Teaching Years to share the problems I discovered as a high school and college English teacher in California schools. They are indeed my confessions, even though confessions imply I did something wrong. I did nothing wrong except that I could not do anything about what was wrong. There needs to be a correction to the long-standing tradition of teaching English. These corrections are all valid criticisms of two institutions that have disregarded change too much. I taught at six high schools in Orange County, California, from 1973 to 2008. I also taught at seven community colleges from 1978 to 2018, including one in another state. During my career, I learned that watching colleagues teach English was a perpetuation of problems I saw as far back as my high school days in the 1960s. While those who teach English have improved their approach, much remains to be done. I will share my experiences teaching English throughout my career. Although some of these stories might sound negative, they do not reflect my feelings about teaching. I loved teaching, and I was