How I Spent My Day Off

Mrs Y2K gets a call the other day. It's a woman she used to work with, we both went to graduate school with the lady so she is far from a stranger. A small college she works for is desperate for some adjunct teachers and they would like Mrs. Y to teach. She was all flattered and she really used to enjoy teaching day care parents how to do basic early childhood skills, so she said she would agree.

Then she told me about it. "Who are you teaching? Are they day care workers getting a certificate to baby-sit or are they college students on their way to an Early Childhood certification test? There is a HUGE difference in the level of information you will need to offer."

She didn't know.

"So... have you had any Early Childhood Literature classes? I mean like a semester long class and not just a couple of hours in a seminar?"

OK that one got me a dirty look. She assured me it was fine, but I took a college level Early Childhood Literature class and while the required reading list was kind of light... It was a heavy work load! And if you want to teach that class you better know your shit when you walk through that door, because those kids won't get another chance to learn the material and colleges do not refund.

Let's just say I got nervous. I start asking if she knows basic terms like "Literary Event?" No, I was not being an asshole! I started off describing a literary event and defined it for her. No, she had not heard the term before. I grew VERY Nervous.

Today I grabbed the text and started reading it and she gave me the rest of the course material. It was a mess! All garbled up and mixed together. I spent the rest of the afternoon putting it together in some order and identifying the missing material. I went over a lot of the lessons with her and told her she needs to spend the rest of the weekend reading the text and reviewing the semester's workload because her class starts on Tuesday!

You know suddenly I have two girls in college. I started laying out the material for her that she will have to know well enough to teach by Tuesday and she has never really even had a course in this subject. Within minutes she was saying, "Oh no! I made a mistake! I never should have agreed to this!"

It will be fine and she will come out OK. But I really did work all day on my day off trying to get an idea of what her class is supposed to present. It is the work horse type of class I took back in college alright. It's going to be a lonnnnng semester Bubba, real long.