My Best Teaching Is One-on-One

一対一が僕のベスト

Of course, I team teach and do special lessons, etc.

当然、先生方と共同レッスンも、特別レッスンの指導もします。

But my best work in the classroom is after the lesson is over --
going one-on-one,
helping individual students with their assignments.

しかし、僕の一番意味あると思っている仕事は、講義が終わってから、
一対一と
個人的にその課題の勉強を応援することです。

It's kind of like with computer programs, walking the client through hands-on.
The job isn't really done until the customer is using the program.

まあ、コンピュータプログラムにすると、得意先の方に出来上がった製品を体験させるようなことと思います。
役に立たない製品はまだ製品になっていないと同様です。

Monday, July 30, 2018

Book Review -- Diving for Love by Jenny Flake Rabe

Yeah, it's a quirky title. Not exactly the worst choice for the title, and I'm not sure I could have chosen a better title, but it might make you expect it to be about pearl divers. 

Or about snuba divers.

Oh. Wait. It is about snuba divers.

Or about one part-time snuba diver guide, negotiating deep and dangerous waters of personal and social relationships during one summer of high school. And about her summer job helping her uncle with his snuba business.

You can read the official blurb on Amazon or Goodreads or, say, the Balanced Writer. My summary follows:

Mariana takes us on a tethered dive through a slice of her life that skirts ethnic issues and plows through moral and economic issues as she solves several mysteries in her life, the most important of which is why her best friend doesn't seem to want to be her boyfriend. Most important, that is, until her uncle's busines and her grandmother's house become targets of sabotage and her own life is endangered.

Now, Jenny never took any of my advice when she was writing it. (Well, just once.) And that's actually a good thing. If she had written the first two chapters my way, the story would have been over before it began. The other young lady would never have had a chance with the best friend, and neither would the mysterious other guy with Mariana. And that unscrupulous businessman would have been dead meat within a week of Mariana's arriving at her Grandmother's house and her uncle's snuba outfit, I'm pretty sure.

So we get to enjoy watching Mariana solve her mysteries and untangle that very important tangled relationship, with the help of her grandmother, uncle, uncle's girlfriend, mother, and others close to her. And of course with the help of her best friend. And Abuela's wonderful cooking.

Fun reading.

Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Sad Pictures

This is a kind of sad picture. This poor girl is tired.


I'll show you why.


She needs a boyfriend.
She also needs a better place to lay her eggs.

But we can't afford to get her either.

Really need to do something about this.
(A second tub filled with decently clean dirt
would at least help a little,
but hot days like today, not so much.
She needs some shade, too.)