Sunday, September 8, 2013

ROUND TWO

I don't know if anyone will read this anymore, but I think it's time to revive this blog. It's always nice to hear from readers and I look forward to your comments and suggestions.  

I've been returned from my Peace Corps assignment for three years.  I've slipped back into teaching college management courses on a part-time basis.  I take my dog to the park.  I tutor my grandchildren.  I am a volunteer consultant with Executive Service Corps working as a coach for a new Executive Director, and I am going to start volunteering with Schools on Wheels, an NGO whose focus is to tutor homeless children on Skid Row in Los Angeles.

I tutor my granddaughters, Ava and Mia.  We call it home”fun” because learning should not be work when you are six and two.  Actually, regardless of age learning should never be work.  It's fun to create learning games and activities to teach reading, geography and math.  But I have to be honest.  I'm good at teaching literacy, but I’m lost as to how to teach math.  So I hired an amazing Math Tutor, Mary, who is helping Ava learn early math concepts.  I'm learning from Mary.  She shares in my perspective of learning; it’s important to not only learn, but create a love for learning.
  About Mary

Ava's summer focus has been reading and storytelling.  She just entered first grade and she is a fluent reader.  She has written simple stories about things she has done over the summer and we are going to bind them into a scrapbook.  As she writes and draws wonderful pictures of her activities, I often think about my own journal and how much I miss it.   Children are influenced by what they see.  Mia wants to do all the same things as Ava and so she does home”fun” working on letters, shapes and numbers and making her own colorful summer scrapbook.


This journal will be about giving my grandchildren a glimpse into their past as well as mine, being a role model for the love of writing, being able to think on a more deep level and finally, finding the little things in life that will help me not take myself too seriously.  And so, stay tuned for round two of this blog ....

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