Summer Schoolin'

It's weird not teaching this summer. While I hate the daily trips to campus that comes with summer school, I miss the students, the small class sizes, and the laid back atmosphere. My summer evaluation scores were always the highest because I could really focus on my students without the distraction of my own seminars and papers. So I should be excited to put a little energy into tutoring working with Little Miss Daisy and Little Ms. Violet again. I am trying to help Daisy spend more time reading; she is really bright but she hates to read and is terrible about reading carefully. As an example, today I had her read a little bit of MLK's "I Had a Dream" out loud--just to challenge her a bit and show her that she is capable of doing "hard" work. She did a great job, but she would say words like "material" as "mineral" or "racial" as "radical"--she has this tendency to guess what the next word is going to be rather than slow down and read it. And her writing and spelling is just atrocious. There is no nice way to put it--I was SHOCKED when she got A's on her work--they apparently grade at her school on just being done--her language arts teacher did not check there work. As a result, she has been placed in Honors English for next year by her teachers. I think that's great--I think she needs to be challenged. But, having seen her homework, I'm a little...surprised. No actually I'm shocked and awed. At any rate, hopefully spending some time reading this summer will help her get ready for the challenge ahead.

Now Ms. Violet is a different story. She is the sweeter, less stubborn student, but I think she has been allowed to just "slide by." Her parents want me to help her build up her vocabulary and work on algebra in preparation for the SAT. It is a little early, but I think the time spent on reading and writing will benefit her classes all around. I told her mom that my focus is not going to be on test-taking and all that right now because I don't have a sense yet of where she is. Word on the street is that she did awful in algebra last year, so I think this is going to be more about making sure she is not behind next year. My algebra skills are a little rusty of course so all of this is interesting. But my bigger concern is that she does not have a summer reading list! I even checked her high school's website and they have one book that all students are supposed to read over the summer and that's it. What's up with that?! The school does recommend some books, but they do not require them. I find that odd. It seems to serve the purpose of allowing students who could use some further development in reading to continue to slip through the cracks. Because those students who do read regularly/like to read will continue to do so over the summer. But those who don't like to read/don't read well/are never encouraged to read because they are always sitting in in-school-suspension continue the practice of doing nothing--being put further behind and then further unprepared for things that do come up in high school like SATs. Ugh. I get frustrated when there seems to be simple things (like summer reading lists) schools can do to make sure No child is left behind. Of course, those whose children around being left behind generally don't have the information or resources to know that these simple things should be in place.

Sigh. I have all kinds of schoolin' issues on the brain today. Spent some time thinking about/revising my texts for my special topics seminar next spring. Since Ms. Violet doesn't have an official reading list, we're going to tackle some of the books on the recommended list--even the (gasp) AP books. We are starting with Things Fall Apart, and we're going to read Color Purple next. Yes I said we. I told her I'd be reading these books with her. So I have got to give both of these a reread so I can hold a decent conversation with her.

In the meantime, I'm trimming down my abstract. I spent about an hour on it tonight. I need to stop playing over it; it will be done by Thursday. Since Dr. J is not coming to town this week (ugh), I am probably not going to New School City for the social. So I'll finish my dissertation loose ends for sure. Oh crap, I just remembered I need to send some money off with the diss--hmm....