Imagine my Surprise... with Image Grammar

Okay, so I don't know about the rest of you, but one of the first things that I did when I reached my cooperating classroom was check out my teacher's bookshelf. I wanted to know what literature Mrs. Postiy used to teach in her classroom, and I want you to imagine my surprise when on her shelf is a copy of Image Grammar. I don't know about the rest of you, but I had never heard of Image Grammar before last year.
As a person who has always been able to fumble my way through grammar during school simply because "it sounded right," I initially took this book as yet another attempt to explain the unexplainable. I feel like grammar, especially in the English language, is so fluid and so changing that it is difficult to always no the rights and wrongs of it all. As Dr. Kist said the other day, people are still debating whether or not to put a comma before the word "and" when you are listing something in a sentence.
In addition, when thinking about the type of grammar instruction that I got in school, my mind goes back to those horrifying grammar worksheets where you have to identify all the parts of the sentence: The dog in the window is barking at the cat by the tree. As a person who has always had my own style of writing these sentences really did not apply to my writing, and therefore, did not apply to my understanding of English grammar.
I think that Professor Noden's book gets around that boundary. By using actual writing pieces (especially those of the student), Professor Noden has found a way to make identifying grammatical elements and using them correctly in one's own writing a much easier task.