Monday Bits

The posts just keep coming over at Jean's brainchild, the ingenius and subversive Your Filpina Penpal! (I love the exclamation mark...). I'm itching to contribute, I tell you; my fingers are fluttering above my keyboard, poised for play. Maybe tonight.

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I just found out this morning that longtime cyberworkshop pal, Dr. Susan Evangelista, will be a panelist at the Carlos Bulosan Symposium at the Library of Congress in April, where I'll be sweating profusely while reading "Bernie". It's always such a silly little kick to finally meet in person someone who has only ever existed via e-mail or the blogosphere. I should mention that I am so pleasantly surprised and grateful for the generosity of Our Own Voice, which is sponsoring both my flight and accommodations.

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Strange. Tomorrow will be my first session serving as a tutor in the afterschool Kindergarten tutoring program. That is not the strange part, though. The strange part is how semi-terrified I am to be a "teacher" to eight kids for forty-five minutes. It's not that reading aloud (in fact, I love reading aloud to wee ones), playing alphabet bingo, and working on phonemic awareness stuff is particularly grueling. It's the knowledge of how easily the eight of them—if they only realized—could organize their very own Mutiny on Veronica and overthrow the entire thing. I'll let you know how it goes.

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In more school news, I've hit a bit of a snag in my capacity as Latino Outreach-er. Following the super fantabulous science event at which the delightful Professor Jeanette Medina made chemistry and whatnot soooo accessible, I asked the parents to fill out an evaluation. One of the questions was which topic(s) they would like to see covered in future presentations. Well, almost everyone requested a math workshop so that they can learn how to help their kids with their homework. I'm stymied because of the logistics involved: four different grades (I'm assuming K and 1st grade parents don't need help), four interpreters, plus the after-hours cooperation of the entire (already overworked/underpaid) staff. It's sort of a huge thing. So I'm thinking on that.

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And, well, that's all.