Process

I haven't done a story in a while, which is quite the oversight. It will happen in due course. There are quite a few things in process right now, a few too many things in fact, and it's hard to juggle them all without dropping a few balls on to the floors of the padded room. Too many things. An actual student, for one, and a meeting on Tuesday for another. All we need now is an interview to complete the hat trick! It would be nice to get back to the 'Ninja of Health', or even kick off 'Diaries of a Laundry Robot' before it all evaporates out of my mind!

It's a challenge to prepare tuition content for an eight year old. There is literature available from the buildup to the PGCE tryouts, some of it good. I never thought I would get to use it! What a marvelous thing it is to get another chance! Preparation is key, and in a student going from year three to year four at primary school, the first task is to assess where they are individually. This is the good form of 'assessment', not the ritualised sacrifice of school children at the altar of measurement. Tutoring is probably the only instance where you get to actually teach. You would not believe how arbitrary the systems of assessment are in establishing 'measures' of a child's progress. Did you ever stop to wonder just how you put a number on how well someone is reading? It's a nonsense, and one that only becomes clear when you do the reading. No wonder they all seem to fall apart upon leaving the security of primary schools, the poor souls. All I know is that I learnt to read well because I had really interesting books available, and devoured them readily.

Perhaps this should have been entitled 'Stream of Consciousness, Part Fifty-One'. There are many, many posts in the Quirky Muffin which eventually transform into strings of words tapped out continuously, erratically and rapidly. It's amazing what you can do when you have fingers on the move and solitude to burn.

Preparing for a meeting can be difficult too, especially when you're just going to report a somewhat ancient status quo. The foam problem is forestalled due to technical problems and my reluctance for heavy programming, and the three-dimensional crushing problem? Well, that has the legendary 'not a number' cropping up relentlessly. Oh, square roots and negative numbers, why plague us so relentlessly? Some actual work is going to have to be done. Does anyone remember how?

O.