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Welcome!
Welcome!
I'm Nathan Grammer, a 7-12 English Language Arts teacher. I am a graduate of SUNY Buffalo State’s English Education (7-12) program with initial certification and an MSEd in English Education (7-12). I have student taught in two Buffalo Public Schools; I have experience tutoring mostly English language learners in English at SUNY Erie; and I'm currently a substitute teacher at the Charter School for Applied Technologies.
I have an academic background in Philosophy and Anthrozoology, so I can bring an interdisciplinary touch to the English classroom. My interests and hobbies include tabletop roleplaying games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, which have a lot more overlap with teaching than one might think, in terms of concept, skills, and techniques.
"As you know, we don't make mistakes, we have happy accidents. We just have happy accidents."
-- Bob Ross
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths and Weaknesses
Teaching Strengths:
Kindness - The highest praise I've ever recieved from a student: I am "such a kind, heartwarming teacher"
Equanimity - As a student once said to me, "nothing much bothers you, does it?"
Knowledge of pedagogical theory, English Language Arts, and Standard American English, and broad-strokes understanding of much content outside ELA
Recognition that I need improvement and eagerness to improve
Teaching Weaknesses:
Class time management - I can never quite fit everything into a 42-minute period, especially if I get caught up overexplaining a point
Excessively highfalutin' vocabulary - I try to keep it to words students are likely to understand, but sometimes I get carried away making a point, and sometimes the lingering effects of a 2020 traumatic brain injury make it hard to find those simpler words while $10 words still spring readily to mind
'Dad jokes' so bad that students may feel secondhand embarrassment
Effectively setting and enforcing consequences
"I know only that I know nothing."
-- Socrates
"Advanced learners benefit from thinking of the writer as an artist whose grammatical choices represent different brush strokes made to different effects."
-- Ayanna Thompson & Laura Turchi
Every text is propaganda for something, whether the author meant it to be or not.
-- a core tenet of critical literacy
"Dude, sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something."
-- Jake the Dog, Adventure Time
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