Your pain

[Richmond]

Somehow I intended this for the use-list, but did not realise it was 
sent from
an individual to me. I hope he does not mind my posting it here.

Richmond.

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	Re: Your pain
Date: 	Tue, 21 Jun 2016 21:30:24 +0300
From: 	Richmond <richmondmathewson at gmail.com>
To: 	Mid West Coast Media <andrew at midwestcoastmedia.com>


We can all empathise with each other like mad, and I can say that I am
extremely
grateful that I teach privately, so I can pick and choose my pupils to a
very large extent.

I remember my semester's T.A. work in the "Writing Center" at SIU Carbondale

[to contextualise, that's where John Belushi got the idea for "Animal
House": the "party" University]

as extremely revealing. My T.A. supervisor sent me there for a spot
after I had been moaning to her
about the standard of foreign students I had been teaching academic
writing to in Language 105.

Let's just put it this way: the foreign students looked significantly
better after "helping" students
from Illinois who didn't know the difference between a subject and and
object, and kept telling
me "I kin tell what they is."

Today I got out the old 12 by 12 Shatranj al kabir board and was moving
pawns around, and getting
kids to work out that the Livecode "House" is underground, because you
go in the door and then
DOWN the stairs . . . one kid made my day by remarking, "But I live in a
flat."

Richmond.

On 21.06.2016 05:42, Mid West Coast Media wrote:
> I empathize with Devin, teaching at a community college in Indiana myself.
>
> But I remind my students constantly that they have the benefit of native tongue to decipher things like "background".
>
> In reference to...
> Your students might be "the opposite of tech-savvy", but they are
> neither in the 8-14 age range, nor
> native Bulgarian speakers (unless there is something you're not telling
> us about Utah).
>
> --Andrew Bell
> --Sent from my iPhone