Awake

To learn, to play

What with all the drama my tutee Ruth has been going through with her job and financial situation, I thought on a gorgeous pre-summer night like last night a game of Monopoly was in order. Of course my parents have a game at their house that I grew up playing, but I had an old battered game myself in my closet that I had purchased at Value Village way back when Alex and I first moved to the HBC (Hall Blvd. Connection). When I pulled it out on Ruth's bedroom floor, I realized there were no dice, so I used some pennies and a couple of nickels that I would as randomly as possible toss on the board for each of the players. Ruth's 8-yr-old niece was there when I arrived, so I asked her if she wanted to join us. So for the next two hours we played. I had brought my favorite thin paperback atlas which I opened up to the United States. Whenever anyone landed on a property that was named after a state, I pointed it out.

She started to get 3rd person pronouns a little better ("Me money?" "No, you pay her $25") and started to see that there was an important phonological difference between "eight" and "eighty" and even more important difference between "5", "50", and "500". By her second turn she counted spaces from where her "top hat" landed on her previous turn intead of from "GO" and by the end of the game, she could make change like nobody's business.

Her 8-yr-old niece understood and started using words like "your turn" and "my turn" and she and her friend counted her money zealously (yeah she whipped us both). She'll turn out to be a good little free market capitalist, I think. ;-)

What did I learn? To relax and let the process of learning happen in a fun and relaxed way. Yeah, she's under a lot of pressure and she knows it. (And I know it, too.) On June 1st, she'll have no monthly Tri-Met pass because her benefits from whoever was providing her with one have expired. She needs her welfare and social security benefits renewed (damn red tape) and her income verified (how do you verify $0?) for a Head Start application (don't even get me started on those people and their so-called "outreach"). I have ideas on how to help her, but with my own work schedule, getting over to social services is a bit of a challenge. This is one of those "it takes a village" moments, I think. But which village (or "Village") should I engage?