Volunteer Explorer

I cancelled my ESOL class for last night because I had to wait for a plumber to come to my house and connect my new kitchen sink. I felt kind of bad about it for a minute, until I remembered that this is a volunteer endeavor. And my students are not refugees who need basic language skills for survival. Still, I enjoy the interesting turns the class takes, and I felt the slight sting of disappointing someone. This feeling abated when, at 6:30, I experienced the unrivaled joy of water-on-demand in my kitchen sink for the first time in three weeks. My guilt was also assuaged by the email I received Wednesday from my newest student, Regina. In connection with the presentation Regina gave us last week about an American folk story, she had written a short essay about the story and her analysis of it. She emailed the essay to me, asking me to correct any grammatical mistakes she had made. I was only too happy to oblige. For one thing, I was delighted that one of my students had ...

January feels like a time of waiting. Waiting for spring, waiting for a thaw, waiting for the days to get longer.  I had a longer than usual break over the holidays, so I’ve also been waiting to get back to a normal routine. And we’ve had some difficulty with a remodeling contractor at our home, so we’re waiting to get our kitchen put back together.  The worst part about this January waiting syndrome is that eventually there’s a rebound. The equal and opposite reaction to my beginning-of-the-year time warp is a rushing forward, usually in February. That shortest month tends to zip by at breakneck speed, making up for the indulgent lolly-gagging of the first few weeks of the year. Once my time freeze thaws, the days tumble over each other like a snow-fed spring cascading down a mountainside.  I had given my ESOL students some homework over our winter break. They were to read and listen to a story by an American author from a website (manythings.org), then pre...