Will's New Job

Well, I've been after my 18 year old to get a job.  Some kind of job, any kind of job!  He's made a half-hearted effort and I was just about to go into nag mode, when my aunt started taking up a lot of my time and I started to use Will as a default sitter.  I realize that this situation would be so much harder if Will were gone.  Josh is 15 but he doesn't have the temperament nor the control that Becky needs to be kept in line.  Becky at age 9 is still a real handful!  So it is a truly a blessing that Will is still hanging around at home so I can rely on him to hold things together while I'm gone so much.  Yesterday while thinking about this I got an idea.  The two areas that I'm most concerned about for Sean in his academic career are math and reading.  He's fine at math but he's approaching Algebra in a year and a half and this is the time I like to start focusing on consolidating knowledge and making sure he's got all that pre-Algebra stuff under his belt.  Also, I'd like to see his reading stamina develop.  He does read a lot but not not new novels or non-fiction at grade level.  He reads lots of comics and books like Worst Case Scenario or Dave Barry humorous articles or he'll reread books he's enjoyed like Holes or Wayside School.  But it is really hard for him to engage in higher level, longer books.  So I put 2 and 2 together and hired Will to tutor Sean in math and reading.  Both boys are excited about it.  Will has decided that along with composing music he'll probably wind up being a music teacher.   So he's excited to explore teaching.  And Sean thinks it is cool that his older brother is going to be his official tutor.  Will immediately started coming up with ideas for getting Sean enthusiastic about reading.  He's come up with a brilliant plan.  Sean is very analytical about everything.  So they are going to have a reading club where they discuss readings.  Will is going to teach him literary analysis (which Will really enjoys):

February - Grimm's and Andersen's Fairy Tales.

March - short stories - Rudyard Kipling, Ray Bradbury, Washington Irving, Isaac Bashevis Singer

April - Short novels (which wound up having a dog theme, more or less) Sounder, Old Yeller, Animal Farm

May - Stories in Verse - a great old book I have about narrative poetry

June - Maybe The Hobbit?

That's the tentative plan, anyhow.  We'll see how things go.

Hopefully all this will lead to a greater enthusiasm for reading and as Sean moves into 7th grade we can start to tackle some more challenging, longer classics.

As for math - Will gets math and can explain it so much better than I.  He makes it funny and interesting.  So I think that will really go well.

So for now, I think this might be a good solution.  Though, of course, there would be many benefits to Will getting a job outside the family.  But for now, this'll have to do.