Three students, a no-show, and some frittering ... or noodling

I have a repeat student, it seems, a very sweet young woman who is in a pre-non-credit English immersion class. She's doing pretty well with a lot of things, making improvements, but she was asking about prepositions today, and that's one of those things that, as I understand it, non-native speakers just are never going to get. One of my dearest friends, a woman from Hungary, speaks beautiful English (albeit with an accent), but she gets prepositions wrong all the time--for whatever that anecdotal evidence is worth. I assured the student that she shouldn't worry if she can't remember and makes mistakes; the rest of her work is doing fine.

There as another ESL student, of course, and he wanted help with tenses, which I completely suck at explaining. I copied relevant pages out of the style guide I've used (which I carry around with me), but I was very aware that a colleague (who essentially runs this branch of the WC) was sitting on the other side of the partial wall dividing cubicles here and that he has an absolutely brilliant explanation of the various tenses, with diagrams denoting time relative to the present. I finally broke down and asked him if he had a copy of it I could share with the student--and he printed out his PowerPoint slides for me. I gave one copy to the student and kept another for my own future reference; it now lives in the "Writing Center" bag that I tote around with me (in which I carry a pair of glasses, writing utensils, various clips and "office supplies," cough drops, scrap paper...)

...I was interrupted at that point--15 minutes before the end of my shift--to take a drop-in student. He kept insisting "I'm a good writer," but what he produced certainly didn't reveal that he's a good thinker, which is more to the point. Interestingly enough, he's one of Kristin's students; it was great to see her assignment, her rubric, and her feedback on his attempt at a proposal. She is fierce! I told the student that he will be challenged (and how), but if he does everything in his power to meet her expectations and fulfill her assignments to her satisfaction, he'll learn a lot. And he will.

In any event, prior to that, and in between my other appointments, I kept myself amused with nothing in particular. I'm not sure whether what I was doing qualifies as frittering or noodling (note, please, the food metaphors), but either way, I was sufficiently engaged, albeit in nothing of substance, that the time passed without tedium.

And there was a fire drill, in which I encountered my former salon student now occasional cat sitter. You would think she was my long-lost daughter: she always gives me the most enormous hug hello and goodbye. And she told me that she is sad to think I'm not teaching any more--even though she'll be graduating at the end of this semester and transferring to Old Westbury to study philosophy and religion, so I wouldn't be teaching her again in any event. But apparently she is in a class with another student from the SF class, and they both talk about me and that experience. It really was quite wonderful, one to remember.

Normally at this point, I'd head to the office to talk to Paul and do whatever further frittering/noodling until my usual Monday appointment, but my usual Monday appointment is canceled this week and Paul has probably already flown the coop, being (as is all too often the case) exhausted. He and I will surely see each other tomorrow, after he is finished with P&B. I'll be in the office engaging in further purging of files. I have an unbelievable amount of clearing out still to do, and the semester is whipping past. It would probably be good if I were to come to campus on spring break to do more clearing out of things, but ... well, it's unlikely.

For now, however, I am finished for the day. I will pack up my various totes and head off into the ... well, not the sunset, since we're in Daylight Savings Time now, but into the rest of my evening. I confess, it will be rather nice to be home earlier than usual of a Monday.

And there will be another blog post tomorrow, good lord willin' and all that.