On Call

It's tense. Every morning, you wake up early and get ready for a potential day somewhere unknown. You can't make plans, and you can't make appointments unless they're vital and urgent. You've got to be prepared, because you are 'on call'. Yes, you may only be a supply teaching assistant, but you've got to make a good impression, blast it! Oh, the tension as the clock ticks on until nine o'clock, when you declare the wait done and convert your notions for the day into concrete plans, and rue the loss of earning and learning opportunities. Hopefully all this stress will go to some good end, or at least a good reference. That cold tight feeling in the stomach and lack of sleep won't be entirely wasted.

Oh, it's so silly to worry, as nothing bad is going to happen. Medics on call have far worse troubles, so do public defenders and cover gladiators. You wouldn't believe how the market for supply entertainers in the coliseums has decayed in recent millennia. Back in the old days, you could make a decent living covering for busted hamstrings and lions who wouldn't get out of bed for less than ten pieces of gold and a bowl of rice pudding. Still, no-one ever expected any of this to make sense, right? All I have to worry about is being an assistant and dealing with small groups of students learning, at the very worst. That's easy. Why the terrible stomach, then? It's probably the phone aspect. Phones are terrifying things.

Away in the real world, suddenly after months of nothing, there's a possible student in the works and it's time to be on call on a whole second level. Will this be the breakthrough? Will the straw finally break the canoe's back? Will tutoring take off? Can these metaphors can get any more twisted up? It's going to be an interesting challenge if it works out, as the student has dyslexia and I'm going to have to learn a whole new bucket of tricks. Teaching language is one of the nicest things in the world, as it truly is the tool that brings us all together and enables every other topic of learning, although this is not what you say to the student at the time, as the pressure would be insurmountable. The necessary things are really interesting and arresting texts to practice with. It's always got to be the texts! Also, using verbalisation to help the flow seems to help.

What are good books and stories to begin with? How to best motivate writing and spelling? What are juvenile males interested in reading at thirteen years old? These are good questions. Obviously, this is going to be fascinating if it works out, and why wouldn't it? In a blatant display of lack of thought and resulting ignorance, my mind had never considered how a print learning disability might affect mathematics learning, which is something else to consider. For once it's lucky that my ego is larger than Manhattan Island and that this is an opportunity to help that should be taken. Now, where's the cape and the magic wand of mighty magic...? What's that? 'No capes!'?

O.

Note: Presumably this post will curse me in the usual way, tempting fate as it does. If relevant people are out there reading this... Well, rest assured I can do it.