Grammar, Grammar, Grammar.

The evil time has come. I am the teacher that Petit talks about. I am the English teacher who is scared to death (not to mention angry) about teaching grammar. As some of you know, I've spoken before of my high school experiences in grammar. My favorite teacher of all four years subjected us to about three days worth of grammar instruction under the guise of, "We HAVE to do this. I'll make it as short and painless and possible." It was short and painless. But guess what else? I didn't learn anything. NOTHING. As we all so were so painfully reminded of in class the other week, most of us know squat about grammar.
I think that is what makes both Petit's and Dean's arguments so attractive. They both advocate a short lesson on grammar (or are we talking usage?) at the beginning of each class. A short time in which students can explore writing and maybe even learn something. Dean's approach of mimicking sentences to help expand your sentence vocabulary seems just too simple. Could it be that such an easy and painless approach can garner real results? Petit's approach, too, seems so easy. Pick an element of a grammatical issue that is important, something that students can grasp onto, instead of tuning out. I think the simplicity of these approaches is what really makes me weary of them. But if they work, you'll find me using them in my classroom.
Which begs the question for me: is there any place for explicit grammar teaching in our schools? My seventh grade English teacher, Mrs. S. absolutely pounded us with grammar instruction. It was the meat and potatoes of our classroom. We may have read something worthwhile in her class, but I'll never know. ALL I REMEMBER IS THE GRAMMAR. Last year, before entering this program I heard she was teaching at one of the high schools that I was observing. I took the opportunity to go watch her class and reassess her classroom with my new eyes, my college eyes, my "I now know what was good for me" eyes. It was painful. The kids hated her. She was using THE SAME worksheets, that I had once filled out in seventh grade, with TENTH graders. The kids were aching to leave class and go run the halls free of the grammatical boundaries that she had set. Where they could "ax" someone a question and if they "don't want to do nuthin,'" they could.
Now this is an obviously extreme example. The more I speak with individuals about their English instruction, the more I hear this same sob story. "I hated English because of Mrs/Mr ______ and I never wanted to study it again." I feel like this is the most important issue when it comes to grammar instruction. Forcing these ideas down the throats of students without contextualizing or justifying it, breeds hatred, not only of you as a teacher, but of the discipline as a whole.