APOLOGIA PRO VITA MEA

Life as I now know it has little time for journaling in my own blogs, reading other people's blogs, doing the laundry, walking the dog, sleeping, cooking real food.  The classes I'm teaching at Del Tech are very time-consuming, and I am enjoying them very much this semester.  We have changed texts in two of the classes, and that has made things so much better.  But working with the beginning level classes on Reading and Writing is just totally exhausting - I'm using every mental and physical resource I have or know. 

Political activity continues, and will pick up as we get even nearer to the Big Day.  I've signed up for phone banks, which will start next month.  We're even going to be calling into nearby swing states, mainly Pennsylvania, as well as calling folks here in Delaware.  To prove to you that I really am certifiably nuts, I'll be starting a second job next Monday.  My classes at the college are all in the mornings, I'm finished by 12:30 with actual teaching.  There's always other stuff of course, I didn't leave campus til almost 3 p.m. today - working with the tutoring center and a student to get her signed up for much-needed help, giving a make-up test to another student who missed the test because of a sick child - so, yeah, other stuff. 

But...when Joe, another ESL teacher, put out the call for a teacher to help in an afterschool program that he heads - I decided to sign up.  It's a homework help program for Hispanic elementary and middle-school kids - homework help and academic enrichment.  I'll be working with the older kids every afternoon for three hours.  Some of it will be ESL, some will be Social Sciences, Math, English, etc.

Joe's goal for the program is to give these kids the same kind of help that other kids may get at home from parents who can read and write the English language.  Most of the parents of these young students had rudimentary educations in their own languages in their own countries  (many of our Latinos in this county are from Guatemala, a country so long devastated by war, revolution, poverty,  that education was not a priority, especially in the rural areas these people have fled),  and are doing well if they can manage to hold their own just speaking English for work and survival.  One of the great goals for many of my adult students is attaining the ability to help their own kids with their homework.  Until that time, we're over at First State Community Action in La Casita working to help those kids after school until they go home for dinner.  There are already so many signed up for the program that there will have to be two shifts.  Two groups of kids, coming and going, each group getting only an hour and a half of help.  I'm looking forward to this, although I know it will not be an easy gig.  I've worked in similar programs before, and know it's often a matter of running in place.  They don't have the federal grant money yet, so who know when I'll even get paid.  Life in these times.  Trillions for war, a trickle for children in need.

All of which is to say - if I don't post the sort of deeply thought-out, intelligently researched political or environmental entries that my inner self would love to have time to write, please don't give up on me.  I know it's a cop-out to just cut and paste something someone else has written, but it's often the only thing I can do.  And I hope that sharing some of the stuff I read or find with you is of some use. And so I give you, The War President:

 
And an article to go with it.