Posts
1. Write about the Strangest Job I Ever Had and tell what I learned from it.
2. Link to other "Lessons from Odd Jobs" posts.
3. Tag my post "Lessons from Odd Jobs".
4. Tag other bloggers.
5. Link back to the Lessons from Odd Jobs page and and email this month’s host at that site.
I'll do number one and just pretend I did 2-5.
Like so many of the rest of us, I have never had any particularly odd jobs, but may have had odd jobs in the sense of a variety of jobs that lasted various lengths. My resume, I admit, omits some of them because they don't really mean much in the grand scheme of things.
I will choose the job(s) that seemed the most odd to me, not in the sense of unusual, but more of an ironic, yet not uncommon, way.
In high school I did a lot of tutoring. I tutored math, which was probably the easiest to tutor and I think I liked those students best. I tutored one student in multiple subjects and I think that was my biggest challenge tutoring. I remember one day trying to help in biology and using pennies and breath mints to explain how molecules are composed of atoms. That was an experience in thinking on the fly, and I think she got the concept.
The most odd tutoring, however, was tutoring Spanish. I tutored one girl whose Spanish one might call "Valley Gringa". Her accent was not even remotely close and she made very little progress, even with tutoring, seeming to forget one week what we went over the previous week. The other two students I tutored in Spanish were hispanic. They both had people living in their homes who only spoke Spanish. Their parents spoke both English and Spanish. Here I was, the white girl, helping them with a language they grew up hearing. In both cases, they were raised to speak English. Because of that, they were not corrected when they made errors, so they did not learn to speak proper Spanish. I learned in the classroom and understood the formal rules of the language better than they did, although they definitely both knew more than they thought they did!
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4 comments:
Oh man... I did the tutoring thing too, and this brought back memories. I remember, in particular, being hired to tutor a privileged little high schooler in Spanish (when I was in college) who offered to let me see Madonna's "sex" book (I declined) and EVERY week tried to talk me into leaving and just getting paid without doing work, assuring me that she wouldn't tell her mom. I eventually got tired of fighting her and told her mom myself... and quit.
Fun memories, eh?
Interesting and funny. This tagging thing, while a bit of a pain does bring back memories - or educate the rest of us as to the details we missed.
I love the pennies and breath mints bit. Atoms made fun!
Could we be related? I also tutored math and Spanish:). Motivation makes a huge difference. Like Nikki mentioned, I tutored a high school boy who had not interest in learning Spanish. His well-to-do parents wanted him to pass this class. He wanted to chat (no charlar, mind you). I also tutored one of my classmates from my algebra 2 honors class. He tried hard and was able to make wonderful progress.
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