Tuesday, September 23, 2008

How to pursue a career as a pedestrian

One of my favorite parts of being a teacher is reading my students' writing after they have worked really hard on a project. Partly, this is because I like to see them succeed in writing. Partly, it is because I like to see if what I taught them actually transferred into their brains and pencils. But, mostly, it is because I LOVE to see the crazy typos and mistakes they make. In my last batch of essays (where each student wrote a magazine article about another student in the class after interviewing him/her), the winner was the following:

"When Brooke grows up, she has the great goal to become a pedestrian, so she can travel to Africa and fight diseases."

Now, color me confused, but I'm not sure that a pedestrian could easily get from here to Africa, and once he or she got there, I'm not sure how being a pedestrian would cure any disease, as healthy as exercise may be. But regardless of whether it makes any sense, I got a good laugh out of this student's mistake of "pedestrian" for "pediatrician".

Can't you just picture the business cards now?

I would that we all were so creative in defining our lifetime goals!