So I found out during my most recent tutoring session that my student has a family health crisis and will be returning to China for a few months starting in two weeks.  I'm a bit conflicted - obviously the situation sucks for her and that's of paramount importance; but of course it sucks for me as I was just getting into a bit of a groove.  Turns ( Read more... )

Last night was tutoring session #1, at a library about a mile from my house (so once the weather gets nicer I can bike there).  I hadn't prepared anything formal, as I just wanted to do some introductory stuff and get a sense for how good her English is.  And fortunately it's pretty decent.  She actually quite the self-starter, and watches this ( Read more... )

When last I wrote about my foray into tutoring, I had expected to get going last fall.  Long story short - it didn't happen.  I managed to get in touch with my student assignee a few times but we could never get a meeting set up.  So last week I received a new assignment from Literacy Volunteers, a Chinese woman also looking to improve her basic ( Read more... )

A few years ago I finally reach the point where I wanted to get off my butt and actually give something back to the community (no, I don't think posting to my blog counts).  I was always interested in some sort of literacy volunteering so I looked into the Hunterdon County chapter of Literacy Volunteers of America - but each time I looked I had ( Read more... )