The game is afoot!

It’s a big deal – for me anyway. Next Thursday, I start a volunteer position tutoring at a place called The Literacy Project. Almost two years ago, I started casting around, looking for a place where I could jumpstart my teaching career. I have known for a while that I want to teach (I have been toying around with it since I was a Freshman in college – is 20 years long enough?) Now I am ready to move on. I feel like I have enough “real world” experience under my belt to make me a great teacher – I have a lot to teach my students, and it’s not just all about history (though that will be the medium, I hope). And I have a lot to learn from them as well. I am looking forward to the give and take of those lessons.

When Wayfarer got back into teaching a few years out of college, he taught ESL (now called ESOL) at a community college out west. I remember him coming home with wonderfully uplifting stories about the great students he had. They were from all over the world, and they had a spirit and level of commitment that gave him the opportunity to hone his considerable skills in a nurturing and supportive environment (from the students, at least).

So I realized that if I was going to start teaching, working with adult learners might be the way to begin. I have issues of self-confidence, and I know that I need to work on them. When I found the Literacy Project, I thought this might be the place to start that process.

And now I start next Thursday, working with two learners new to the program. I will be working with them as a sub-group of a larger group of adults working towards their GEDs. These two students are non-native speakers of English, and while their spoken English is apparently very good, their literacy with the written language needs some focused attention.

I have a ton (and I do mean a TON) of training materials to go through. I started working through them about a month ago, but now the pressure is on to complete the materials quickly, so that when I meet with the instructor to review her plan for these two students, we are working from a common language and set of assumptions. The program is very supportive of my desire to teach, and has offered me the opportunity to take over a class session (or more) once I am ready.

I am excited. Last night, I corned Wayfarer on his way to do some other work, and we talked about working with students with learning disabilities and how hard it is for some teachers to work outside of their comfort zone to accommodate the student’s needs. And the feeling that some teachers have that giving extra attention to their LD students needs isn’t fair to the other students in the class. I liked how one of the video instructors explained it – fair doesn’t mean that everyone gets the same, it means that everyone gets what they need. I was getting very excited. Poor man -- I think he had to go the bathroom, but he was very patient with me.

I’ll keep everyone posted and let you know how things are going.