The Pleasure of Good Work
I enjoy my work as a volunteer tutoring an ESL student through the Madison Literacy Network. The Network, a United Way-funded organization, is professionally staffed and run. So I don’t have to figure out what text to use or where to find resources to help my student with her difficulties in pronunciation, for example. In retirement, I no longer have the energy or stamina for many of the tasks that I used to accomplish with ease. Without exhausting me, however, my two-hour a week commitment uses the skills and experience I’ve accumulated over the years. I enjoy my student’s exclaiming with pleasure that the first hour went so fast that she didn’t notice the time or that others are impressed with the progress she’s made in slightly over a year. (She is, of course, is bright and hard-working.) Although we’re supposed to speak English to one another almost exclusively, from time to time I’ll explain something in Spanish. That limits her frustrat...