Fun stuff on all levels

I only had one student scheduled for today, interestingly enough a former student who has officially been among my "followers" for this blog (though I don't know if he reads it any more). I can't for the life of me remember when he was my student--and it isn't on his transcript (the only semesters that are recorded for him to have taken ENG101 are terms when I don't teach). But I do remember him as a very interesting--and interested--young man. It will be fun to see what's going on with him at this point, and what specific help he wants with his writing.

At the end of my stint, I got a drop-in appointment with a young woman--again with ESL problems (what is it about that??)--but I didn't focus on that with her; fortunately, she was in early stages, so we could work more on ideas, what to say of substance. She's in an ENG102, and--as is usual--only knows how to "respond" by summarizing, but when I started asking some questions, she actually had a lot of very good ideas about the reading, and it was fun to help her think about those, including stretching her thinking in a few places. More of that please--especially in contrast to Mr. "I'm Over It" from yesterday.

Meanwhile, an old friend has resurfaced and wants me to tutor her children, sixteen-year-old twins. They have diametrically opposite needs: the daughter writes beautifully (and she really does: a remarkably mature and well developed voice, though I could pick some grammatical nits) but she's lost the fire of enthusiasm for something she used to love doing. The son--with whom I am not yet in contact--needs help with the real basics: thesis, idea development, argument structure. I remember my friend telling me years ago that her son had struggled to learn to read: his brain is just not wired well for written language. But I've already had an email exchange with the daughter, which impressed me. Sixteen-year-olds are famous for resisting Mom's suggestions, so I wouldn't have been surprised if the daughter had either not responded to my overture or had done so very slowly and somewhat reluctantly. Instead, she seems very excited about the prospect of working with me, so that's pretty cool. And my friend will pay me. I realize I probably could have asked for more (and another friend told me that foreign language tutors in the town where I live charge five times what I'm charging), but, well, she's a friend. Still, interesting to contemplate how this might develop.

I don't have anything else of substance to relate today. I suspect that--until things heat up and I start getting a lot more appointments--these entries will tend to be somewhat short. But how nice it is to post to the blog not because I am in desperate need of a way to reframe a shitty day into something less burdensome but to do so because I'm simply interested to record how things are developing. I won't be here tomorrow, so no post again until Thursday--unless I end up posting more about my freelance tutoring, not the WC gig. What's that mantra? Oh, right: we'll see. That one.