"E" is for "Apple"

Three months ago I began training as a volunteer at a foundation here in South Bend that provides free tutoring to children with dyslexia. This amazing organization provides three years of one-on-one tutoring for children in the community, whose families are unable to afford such services. It has also served to provide me with one of the most uniquely humbling experiences of my life.

As a professional student who refuses to get a job, I am very comfortable in the academic domain. I have my own little research field which I can talk about until your ears bleed, I can skim book chapters, read abstracts in place of entire articles, use unnecessarily big words, and look serious and busy so nobody thinks academics' have it easy. Further, despite being Australian, I was under the impression that I had a fairly decent grasp of the English language. I am no longer under this impression. I didn't think that helping kids to read would be too much of learning curve...how wrong I was. It really only takes one time for a 10 year-old to correct your pronunciation for you to throw your entire ego out the door...an ironic and uniquely enjoyable experience indeed.

Once you start getting down to it, the English language is pretty damn complicated. Apparently there are all these different catergories including so-called 'verbs' or 'adjectives'. Then there is the phonetic aspect of language comprehension, which I have realized does not mix well with an Australian accent. So as if these poor kids aren't doing it tough already, now they end up with friggin Crocodile Dundee as a tutor - who is going to attempt to teach them to read with a strange accent. Plus, given that I was never really exposed to the wonderful world of 'digraphs' and 'r-controlled vowels' - it is back to square one in a beautifully humbling manner. I am also of course surrounded by professional educators, the sorts of 30 year veteran teachers who create lesson plans as if they were breaking wind. So I am well and truly out of my depth, and for some reason, I am enjoying it.