Thursday-Monday 2

Going Home.

I don't know if I've mentioned lately how grateful I am to not have to drive to work anymore, but I absolutely am ten million percent extraordinarily grateful. Too much? But seriously. All the things last year of the early morning ice and fog and rain and snow and just the darkness; then there was the back pain and the bus rides and the getting lost sometimes. I'm not happy that Steve's car died like it did, but I am very glad it is my excuse to not drive. It would have been so much better at this place though because from the get-go they set up a rotating schedule to share the responsibility. So I was particularly grateful the other day when I was able to come home for lunchtime and surprised myself for needing to poop and was so very glad I could do it at home, with my wet wipes, and in my own space. It's not cool to poop at school, though I have done it (last year, where there was a choice of single-stall bathrooms in the office area. That doesn't exist here.).

Internet.

There was a handmade sign up at school for a history or sociology class pointing out how few people have computers in the world. It's a massively misunderstood concept that 'everyone' has a computer, not to mention the internet. Anyway, there's a program where students can get free internet if they need it, and I was glad to be able to help a couple kids figure out where to get the forms and how to fill them out. I don't love filling out forms, but I've had to do so many hundreds of them in my life that if I can help make it less complicated for somebody, then I really enjoy doing that. 

Reading.

One does not really think about reading when one is doing it; when you know how. But when you're reading with someone who is not proficient, it is often surprising what words they find difficult and which ones they easily soar through. Comprehension is a different story. When I'm helping a student practice reading, we are mainly focused on pronunciation and confidence. Sometimes I will stop them to explain some concept or meaning I think they will find foreign or antiquated, or to make certain that they understood what transpired in a passage, but mostly it's just a time for rehearsal and one on one attention while they read aloud, which they perhaps infrequently or even never get the opportunity to do outside of school. So we were reading 'Corduroy the Bear' and he had difficulty pronouncing the name of the titular character. I gently corrected them the first few times and then just allowed them to say it however they saw it because moving along was more important than getting that one word correct.

TBC/Peace.