Suboptimist

New design, other matters.

I have a lot of things I could write about, but I feel I have lost my ability to do so. I am in a rut, as it were. I don’t know, I don’t feel like doing much of anything lately.

I do have a few things to mention. In continuation of my recent work in the field of sensitivity, I have come to find myself pondering my relationship with the students I tutor in Classical Arabic. This goes beyond the question of whether they are a students or clients, venturing into how I should go about treating them if they are, indeed, my students.

Most of my students, coming from Arabic 2, don’t have a very good teacher to begin with, making my job nearly impossible. I can’t be a supplemental instructor, nor do I want to be. Ideally, students would come to me for an hour or two to work through questions they still have about things they have already learned. The reality is that I find myself attempting to teach what the real teacher doesn’t. I am not a trained teacher, so I can’t do this very well.

This relates to my recent thoughts on sensitivity thus: is putting my fist through the wall and storming out in anger to show my disapproval of my most boneheaded client/students a sensitive method of teaching?

Oh, notice the layout change. Yes, it’s a WP theme. I intend to experiment with new themes to see how you like them, and when we settle on one, I will modify it, assuming the license allows me to. The header image is mine, but the rest is canned.  I also want to put my Node links first, but I can’t do that.  The categories want to go in alphabetical order.