Yep--as of this afternoon I am a certified Literacy Tutor in the Laubach program. And my first student will probably be a young Arab woman who lives in Covington (about 25 miles away) with her husband and child. They're with a relative of some kind.

At any rate, although she did graduate work in France, she doesn't speak English. Yet. So, when I got her as a prospective student I was also handed two more workbooks--workbooks for an ESL (English as a Second Language) introduction. This should be very interesting. I know no Arabic and precious little French. But supposedly this material doesn't call for the tutor knowing the student's language. Nevertheless, I'm still going to try to find some of my old French books for a couple of handy phrases.

I'm looking forward to this. I always have looked on teaching as a learning experience for me, as well as for my student(s). Maybe she can teach me what I consider the three essential phrases in Arabic: please, thank you, and where's the bathroom?

I'm managing to get myself busier and busier, and that's the way to keep myself from procrastinating excessively.

My bookshelves in my office are starting to look less cluttered as I part with many of my women's history books that I have mostly read, but doubt that I will ever need for any future course work. The Women's Center library is the recipient. Of course, I am running across books that still look interesting but which I have never made the time to read. Some of them are going into the donate bag, but others are being retained (hopefully) for later reading. And my old-lecture-tossing may give the trash man a hernia, but it's giving me additional bookshelf space which will probably get filled quickly with more books. You know how "they" say that Nature abhors a vacuum? Well, I think empty bookshelf space exerts some special kind of force that causes sudden urges to buy more books.

Whatever.