When one is willfully unemployed, will one have worked at anything to write about? What, I wondered, would I write this winter? Was there any adventure to which I would be able to advert? Well, I was never writing about work, I remembered, so why worry? Then again, why work too hard at writing? Whence the letter W.
West High School is my new home for Tuesday afternoons. That's where I meet with various students who want help working with their assignments. Officially the program is "Every Student a Graduate" but I prefer the principal's descriptive comment (when I commented on his serving as a doorman): Whatever you need.
Typically, I work with one student at a time
during each of 3 class periods.
We like to say the program is student driven
,
which mostly means we work on whatever the kid
pulls out of her or his backback.
I promise to help all that I can with whatever
they bring, although I think I've been more helpful
with math and science than with Spanish.
There's been a certain amount of switching off from week to week as what the students want develops or their teenageriness comes to the fore. Somebody else handles all that management stuff. And I don't even have to train the managers!
Oh, where is that headline heading? I was only thinking about the confirmation class which meets on Tuesday evenings. Marian Boyle does most of the work, while I get to offer wise advice and watch the group each week.
Wandering in from Randy Kostichka's mom's place up by Crivitz, heading off toward Randy's uncle's old farm outside Sturgeon Bay, and getting lost trying to find the path around the foot of the bay, the young male bear settled into my silver maple. There is no experience so unbearably exciting as to watch a bear sleep in a tree for 6 hours.
Whether you missed the story or just want to revisit it, the Bear Facts are available from my travel pages. (Somebody was travelling; it may not have been me.)
My pretend niece and nephew have brought the world Neah and Eden. (Eden was particularly wee.) They join Neah's big brother Noah to form a triumvirate of cousins who will, I predict, wreak havoc on their parents' sense of decorum. We'll have to wait a little while to know whether my predictions are well made.