I have just returned from the Library where I am helping kids with homework. And boy, do I feel like I am stupid - or something!
And I find myself like a kid wondering why kids need to learn the things they are being taught.
First there was a young man who was from Africa who has a paper to do on Dante's Inferno. I wasn't working with him but overheard the conversation about thesis statements and symbols and allegories. I remember doing papers like this in college and I was an English major. And find myself thinking about why we are teaching Dante's Inferno. In High school. But I guess that is part of being an educated person????
And then I worked with a young Muslim girl on genetics - about homozygous and heterozygous and I couldn't remember ever knowing this stuff? And then another girl asked me to check her homework - algebra and factors and I couldn't remember this stuff. And she is just in 7th grade.
It all seemed hard to me and I have a graduate degree.
I guess this is a worthwhile way for me to help - but I wonder if I am any help at all. I can just see these kids going to school with the wrong answers and saying....I am never going to go back there for help again!!!
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ah, but if you're nice while you're helping them i think that's what matters more. ;) hopefully they'll be grateful.
i am obviously a dork because as i'm reading what you wrote, i'm just thinking how much i would enjoy getting to relearn those things (i.e. dante, genetics). if it were up to me, i'd get a PhD in liberal arts. ;) i think as we all grow older we get more and more isolated in our own worlds of knowledge...
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