A Very Lucky Girl

If I found out that there was a video camera in the Literacy room of the public library during my tutoring session today I would die. Today was my first official volunteering session with my student. She is a middle-aged woman from Mexico with very little knowledge of the English language. Which is where I come in. She wants to learn conversational English and I am doing my best to aid her learning process. I met her for the first time a week ago and it quickly became apparent that we would have trouble communicating. We sat and smiled at each other and laughed nervously. My Spanish vocabulary is extremely limited, I was proud of myself for saying good morning and her name correctly this morning. All week I stressed about being able to communicate a new language to someone when I couldn't even communicate with in their native language. I hated professors who taught me French when they knew little English.  I had a TEACHER book to page through and the whole time I looked th...

I danced around my home yesterday morning, torn between laughing hysterically and crying of pure joy.  Why? The direction of my life was so fantastically validated.  When I first started researching the Internet for information regarding teaching English as a second language, I signed up for emails from a job listings site. Just for kicks. I felt sure I would regret the enormous influx of spam, but instead I found something wonderful.  One morning, when I was taking that damn Ancient Art of War in June, I scrolled through the options of the day in my email and found a listing for online volunteers needed for a program in Rio de Janeiro.  Considering I have high hopes and crossed fingers to get into the Fulbright program, destination Brazil, I jumped at the chance to become more involved in this pursuit.  I sent the woman my resume and a short blurb about me and why I was interested.  She responded quickly and set up a Skype chat with me for Thursday,...

It's so weird to me that these girls are college graduates and are going to start real adult life this summer. Savannah was my RA during my first year at OU. But, that was just the surface relationship. In reality, we were (are? she rarely returns my texts...) friends. I remember when I first realized we would get along. She friend-requested her residents on Facebook a few weeks before the semester started. I was laying on the floor watching The Bachelorette when I got the notification. I sat straight up and had a minor panic attack and inner battle of "should I accept it? Yes/no?" I decided to go for it, since I could always delete her if she turned out to be supes strange (she is supes strange, but we remain FB friends). I creepily scrolled down her profile page (this was before timelines!) and came across a recent status: "Just sitting here making name tags for resident doors and watching Ashley Hebert on the Bachelorette." Instant soul connection, even if s...

The infamous Miss Johnson I had quite a tumultuous education growing up. I started Kindergarden at New Hope Academy and completed third grade with the wonderful teaching of Mrs. Utley, Mrs. Fontenot, Miss Johnson, and Mrs. Peabody. I couldn't ask for a better beginning of school. From there I attended fourth grade through ninth grade at St. David's School. I learned Latin from the legendary Mr. Davis and labeled the African countries in Ms. Newsome's class. Mrs. Crutchley aided my seventh grade heart and placed me next to my crush in her assigned seating chart. Mrs. Purvis instilled basic grammar rules into my fifth grade brain and Mrs. Durham endured my crying fits in math class. LETTERS DON'T BELONG IN MATH. It's a disgrace to the alphabet. Sophomore and junior year were spent at Legacy Christian Academy in the presence of educators like Mrs. Maxey and Mrs. Brunson. I learned extensive amounts of European history and American Government from Dr. Hamel and Dr. ...

"... she rejoiced as only mothers can in the good fortunes of their children ." -Louisa May Alcott I should probably begin this tribute to these certain 21 influential people in my life with a post dedicated to the woman who experienced labor in order for the world to experience me. If you're about those Thank-You notes I can provide an address for her upon request. Shari Nelson Arceneaux and I have a running joke about what a "good mother" would do (which is typically the opposite of what actually happens). It came from a novel that we both read that I can't remember the name of now. But my good mother instilled a love of reading in me from a very young age. I can remember being put to bed with visions of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Anne of Green Gables swirling through my imagination. She taught me how to make the essentials in the kitchen: spaghetti, spicy pretzels, and ultimate chocolate chip cookies.  She's one of my biggest cheerleaders and the b...

Sharbear asked me a hard question the other night. I had just finished holding a two hour review session for my Gateway kids. Two hours that absolutely sped by, I had so much fun with them! I answered their questions about the study guide with some help from the book (but seriously, I probably could have aced this test with minimal outside studying) and created a jeopardy review game to further insure knowledge that would STICK.  The best part was the last 30 minutes or so. I had promised to stay from 7-9 so I didn't feel right about leaving early, just in case someone else showed up. Two students hung around with me, talking about everything from home to dirty roommates. I was so honored that they would sacrifice some of their own free time to continue keeping their TA company.  Anyway, back to the tricky Sharbear question. I spoke to her on the way home (almost cementing my demise: cause of death? by bicyclist) and apparently something in my voice when I recounted the ev...

There are two kinds of people in this world: good writers and bad writers. And I'm not saying that I was the good writer in this scenario, but I was certainly the better one. My roommate asked me to edit her English paper this evening. I could not stop cringing at some of the major mistakes and I have a whole new found respect for English teachers.  I thought bad writing automatically ended with high school graduation...it doesn't. My hot pink pen seemed to have a mind of its own as I crossed out awkward phrasing and tried to ignore the fact that she had forgotten third person even existed (I thought it was common sense to avoid informality, but there was a generous sprinkling of "I"'s and "you"'s throughout the paper).  But I found the ultra mistake on page five. She actually used the words "freak out" in a formal paper. I'm certain that I actually paused my pink ink rampage in disbelief.  The entire experience left me with a reg...