Faithfully

Are you prepared to take the oath?

Yes.

I, Beckie Sheffield, do--

I, Beckie Sh--

--Do solemnly swear.

I, Beckie Sheffield, do solemnly swear.

That I will execute the office of English Teacher to the 10th graders at Granger High School faithfully.

That I will execute...?

---Faithfully the office of English Teacher...

The office of English Teacher to the 10th graders at Granger High School faithfully.

Faithfully?

Faithfully, sir.

Faithfully execute the office, or execute the office faithfully?

Both, sir. So, help me!

I hope you all saw or heard Obama's Oath of Office this morning, as well as his address to the nation. Otherwise you won't understand what the heck I've been talking about.

It is so---what's the word? fitting? ironic? pleasantly, slightly symbolic?---that our new president was sworn in for his new job the same day I signed the contract for mine.

Yep, starting Monday, the 26th, I will be responsible for teaching 6 classes of Sophomore English at Granger High School. The former teacher was also the school's football coach who took another job coaching at Taylorsville High. Instead of hiring me to teach AND coach, though, which surely would have proved disastrous, the school has hired another coach and I'm taking over the missing English classes.

It's a hard thing, to take over in the middle of a year, but I had a pleasant realization as drove from the school to the district offices this morning. I heard Vice President Biden sworn in, and then enjoyed a pristinely beautiful new musical arrangement of the Quaker hymn "Simple Gifts" by John Williams. (I told you I loved that man! He's simply brilliant, proving it yet again!) How would it have been to be one of those performers? Up there with Itzak Pearlman and Yo Yo Ma. Here's what the clarinetist had to say about it. And they performed flawlessly.

Then Obama came on.

The first time I'd heard his name was two days after I got home from Chile in July 2007. It seemed everyone was talking about him on the news, and I remember looking one of my siblings (Anna? Or Thomas?) and asking, "Obama??" And the response was, "Yeah. They've already made every joke about it." Little did we know!

And then today John Roberts and the oath of office. Does it really matter where the word "faithfully" goes? Should the modifier go before or after the subject and verb? Aren't you excited to have many lessons on adverbial order and misplaced modifiers after this event?!?

Then we'll move on to studying Obama's speech itself. What kind of persuasive elements did he include? How did his use of parallel sentence structure make the message more powerful or memorable?? To what effect were his uses of pathos and ethos in his rhetoric???

From a new English teacher's perspective, I love our new president already. And I'm glad he got his job the same day I did.

I hope he will do his job faithfully, as I, faithfully, do mine.