News From The Cave Of Cool

I am having such a great week except for my stupid troubles with logging onto my Hotmail account. Nothing can ever go totally perfect for Calvin, can it? So far I am dealing well with my frustration over not being able to reply to emails and take care of some other business. I don't want to communicate with people through comments if it's personal stuff. So be patient with me. At least I can still post here. I would have nowhere else to put all this happy manic energy I have now without it.

Yesterday went really well. I felt the old Calvin come out. It's like riding a bike while teaching someone to subtract fractions...you never forget how do it. Okay, I forgot and got the first question wrong and they all laughed but I played it well by telling that that I wasn't the only one working on this question on the board. They should have caught my mistake. Then I turned it around and had them teach me how to do it which went really well because now they all know how to subtract mixed fractions by teaching me to do it. It's an old teacher trick.

Then one of the students asked me if that was my plan all along. I asked him if he felt manipulated. He replied by telling me it was genius. I did nothing of the sort of course. I was just covering for my own brain fart but it worked.

I forgot how much I really dug doing math problems on the board. Just keep cranking them out until it clicks and the student can finish the rest of the questions themselves. These guys move pretty quick through the pages of their books and it was fun to help different people who were at different points in their self-study. All subtracting and multiplying fractions which all the little steps you have to remember to get the right answer. Damn I love that stuff. Maybe because it makes my mind only focus on the math and not the ten thousand other things I have going through my brain at any given second.

Four hours just flew by. The ladies who run the place were happy, the teacher I was volunteering with was very accommodating and happy to have some extra time to meet with other staff and do some marking and showing me how they run their program. I fit right in.

Now that has a lot to do with the way I look of course. I come across on first impression like some mountain man biker who also wrestles bears on the weekend but you all know that I am just a cream puff, with a little extra puff sometimes. I also can't get my beard trimmed by my guy, Mitch until Friday so I look a little extra scruffy and homeless.

Sometimes when  a new person goes into a setting like a I did, the students can resent that person because the group have this bond they have developed with each other. It can go either way but I have subbed before so I know how to go into those kinds of situations. I came out as one of the group. I am looking forward to tomorrow afternoon and next week when I actually start getting a few bucks for the effort because they really made it easy for me.

I hope the filthy stench of money doesn't spoil the experience for me. Though I should buy a lottery ticket this week because EVERYTHING is coming up Calvin this week.