Anyone who knows me knows I believe that words mean something. I guess that's why some words and phrases have made it to my list of pet peeves.
Let's begin a series of pet peeve paragraphs with this one: ELA. For those of you who do not speak education, that's one of those annoying government-style acronyms that take on a life of their own. As far as I can tell, this thing stands for English/Language Arts. To this, I say, Good grief.
To my recollection, when I started my teaching career in 1990, there were two "subjects": English and Reading. Very soon after, somebody started combining them into one subject - Language Arts - with special emphasis on Whole Language.
It didn't take long before we were all referring to Communication Arts, which seemed to stick for a while before, overnight, some college professor changed it to ELA without telling anybody who wasn't currently in undergraduate education courses.
ELA? Really? That feels like a real step backwards.
Nope, I'm not doing it. I'll teach ELA standards and give ELA tests, but I'm not going to give this pseudonym any more merit. In this day and age, I want students and their parents to be clear on what I expect, and an acronym doesn't cut it. Do I pronounce the acronym? Is it a long E or a short E? Do I use Latin pronunciations or those more suited to our Southwest Missouri dialect?
As Cousin Balki was fond of saying, "Don't be ridiculous." I have no trouble explaining that Reading and Writing, along with their supporting subjects, such as Spelling and Penmanship, are part of an umbrella called Communication. If we expect our students to communicate effectively, shouldn't we (educators) be effective communicators in the first place?
Just because KFC and IHOP shorten their names to make themselves sound cool and hip does not mean I have to rebrand my curriculum in the same manner. Call it what it is and stop trying to repackage curriculum to make it sound new and innovative.
Let's begin a series of pet peeve paragraphs with this one: ELA. For those of you who do not speak education, that's one of those annoying government-style acronyms that take on a life of their own. As far as I can tell, this thing stands for English/Language Arts. To this, I say, Good grief.
To my recollection, when I started my teaching career in 1990, there were two "subjects": English and Reading. Very soon after, somebody started combining them into one subject - Language Arts - with special emphasis on Whole Language.
It didn't take long before we were all referring to Communication Arts, which seemed to stick for a while before, overnight, some college professor changed it to ELA without telling anybody who wasn't currently in undergraduate education courses.
ELA? Really? That feels like a real step backwards.
Nope, I'm not doing it. I'll teach ELA standards and give ELA tests, but I'm not going to give this pseudonym any more merit. In this day and age, I want students and their parents to be clear on what I expect, and an acronym doesn't cut it. Do I pronounce the acronym? Is it a long E or a short E? Do I use Latin pronunciations or those more suited to our Southwest Missouri dialect?
As Cousin Balki was fond of saying, "Don't be ridiculous." I have no trouble explaining that Reading and Writing, along with their supporting subjects, such as Spelling and Penmanship, are part of an umbrella called Communication. If we expect our students to communicate effectively, shouldn't we (educators) be effective communicators in the first place?
Just because KFC and IHOP shorten their names to make themselves sound cool and hip does not mean I have to rebrand my curriculum in the same manner. Call it what it is and stop trying to repackage curriculum to make it sound new and innovative.
