Schools
Teen Makes Teaching Her Generation Good Grammar Her Mission
Meridian Jenkins, 14, wants to be a language arts teacher. She's on a mission to teach her generation proper grammar and spelling, even if it's a text.
Newpoint High School freshman, Meridian Jenkins, knew she wanted to be a teacher since she was a little girl.
At first she was sure she would teach art, but her pet peeve for proper grammar and spelling in text messages steered her toward language arts.
It all started in middle school when she realized her fellow teenagers had less than ideal grammar and spelling. She couldn't tolerate the acronyms, misspellings and slang, commonly seen in instant messaging, social networks, texts and emails.
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Jenkins considers the dichotomy in technology her generation's mainstay that also contributes to a breakdown in communication.
"It strikes me as a lack of intelligence if you can't spell correctly...[as a language arts teacher] I'd like to spread the knowledge I have."
Until she becomes a teacher, her mission of proper communication starts with her friends first.
"One of my friends is the worst text talker. I refused to answer her unless she wrote it properly. It took a few years, but now she writes almost as grammatically correct as I do," Jenkins said.
Jenkins sees the incorrectly spelled words as more than a simple annoyance.
"Texting, and the language used, affects everything in our daily life and how we communicate. I want to teach the next generation, the kids of this [texting] generation," she said.
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More about Meridian Jenkins
Though she's modest about her abilities, she has journals and journals of artwork. Her art has been commissioned by people wanting logos and book characters.
"I consider myself a hobbyist artist. I like to express my ideas," Jenkins said.
For the last three years, she's been a member of the online artist network, Deviant Art. Under the member name, LinkLover2000, she posts her latest anime, sketches, poems, narratives and more.
Character creation is her forte. She designed a complete role playing game with "quite a few original characters". Similar to the iconic Dungeons and Dragons role playing game, her game lives in a fantasy setting with multiple characters, rules and role playing.
It's an intense past time. She researches Latin words to create character names. One example is Sesi'idae, a moth-like character derived from the Latin word for moth.
