Everybody can learn...part two -- figuring it all out

My favorite assignment in the Army was when I taught a section of physics (methods of signal modulation) for two years in a classroom at NTTC Corry Station, Florida after returning to the US from Germany. My brain had never been so happy! Somehow teaching provided the perfect stimuli for my intellect. I taught young representatives from all four services (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines) and each would present seperate challenges when drawn together in one classroom. Most times the Navy kids were the slowest to catch on, the Air Force the brightest, and the Army and Marine kids somewhere in the middle. Teaching these young adults of differing abilities, plus taking a technical subject and conveying it to those without a technical background, was quite a challenge and I enjoyed it very much.

After spending a few years in the civilian sector and finally making enough money to not have to spend my waking hours consumed with survival (Maslow would be proud), I came to the conclusion that my third career (after ten years in the Army and nearly fifteen in the software development/distance learning sector) will be in teaching. In particular, I'm interested in teaching English and algebra to learning disabled middle and high school students. I believe my motivation stems from all the 'striving' I have had to do in my life to surpass my upbringing as well as my aptitude in dealing with both liberal arts and technical subjects and the ability to do so equally well.

I am also equally interested in literacy as my Italian grandparents were illiterate in English and barely literate in their native Italian. I am not interested in teaching ESL students, however, I am more interested in Internet literacy and in bringing the opportunity to access and exploit higher education to non-traditional populations like the working class who have been displaced by the global economy and the loss of the US manufacturing sector.

Rhetoric is at work in both these instances: the rhetoric of the proud working-class, "buy American" crowd and the rhetoric of the promise of the Internet to revolutionize our lives. I've always followed politics like some people follow professional sports so the nature of rhetoric is something that I intuitively understand. What I am interested in is how rhetoric operates in Internet literacy (and by extension composition studies) and I may undertake a PhD in Rhetoric and Composition after teaching for a period of time.

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