The Professor is in.

Listening to: Genesis - A Trick of the Tail

Hand me a fucking apple, because I had a teacherly moment today.

Today, whilst watching the kiddies as they played Reader Rabbit, or Reading Blaster, or whatever, I noticed one girl struggling with one of the minigames. It involved navigating a climber from word to word to climb a mountain, following a common thread between each word. In some cases, the guidelines were obvious, like "find words that are like grape" and the idea was to pick the words that began with gr-. In the girl's case, it was identifying the words with the short vowel noise.

This is a six-year-old girl we're talking about, so it seems fair to say she had absolutely no idea what a short vowel was.

So I pulled up a little-bitty chair next to the girl and had a chat with her. First, I had her identify the vowels, which she was able to do, albeit a little out of order. Then, I laid out what a LONG vowel noise is.

"Those are the ones that SOUND like how you say the letter - like boat, or smile."

She nodded.

"Alright, so a short vowel's when it DOESN'T sound like how you say the letter - like bob, or cat. You understand?"

She nodded again. I told her to try the game again - and she did it without a single mistake. I felt so damn good.

And better still? She then proceeded to help explain to the boy sitting next to her what short vowels were, so that he could play the game, too. And he did it without a single mistake.

I've never been so certain in my life that I want to teach. It sounds cheesy, but it's so damn rewarding to not only watch a kid learn something, but be able to explain that learned information to someone else - that shows that what I taught her really stuck. I feel... important.

Working at the daycamp in Westchester, I never felt so appreciated. Those spoiled kids... they're not interested in doing anything other than what they want. This is different. These kids really want to achieve, and I'm glad I'm part of it.