Howdy Folks

All these new visitors and me with nothing clever to say. The NaBloPoMo! Randomizer seems to bringing many visitors my way. Well, to you all I say, "hi!"
So, of course the presentation on "Student Motivated Vocabulary Acquisition" (sounds appropriately academically bullshitty, huh?) I gave at work yesterday was fine. I don't know why I insist on driving myself and everyone around me crazy for days before I give any kind of presentation. I mean for god's sake, I'm a teacher. I stand up in front of people and talk every day. Is there really a difference between that and a presentation? Presentations are acutally easier because I only have to know what I'm doing for an hour or so and I don't have to count on the audience coming back again the next day. When I teach I actually need to have a plan for the whole semester in line. Oh well. Anyway, I regularly think about quitting teaching because there's not a lot of money in it and sometimes too many students come to me with too many problems and excuses all at once. (I teach at a college, so they're all adults, in theory.) Then something happens to make me think about how I may actually be effecting peoples' lives in some kind of positive way and I think maybe I really don't want to quit after all. Yesterday this happened at a conference with my girl's teacher. In the course of conversation I mentioned where and what subject I teach. My girl's teacher asked me if I knew a particular student. "Oh yes!", I said, "He was in my class last year. He did well in the class." Turns out my former student's mother is a teaching aide at the middle school. My girl's teacher told me that all my former student talked about last year was his Japanese class and how much he loved it. That got me to thinking about this particular circle in the community between me, the student, his mom the teaching aide, my girl's teacher, my girl and back to me. It feels good to know that someone else had heard good things about what I do before they even met me. I guess that's part of the reward of teaching.