Author: Alex Stark

Here is my last, and most recent, Journal entry for today April 21st. Take a read,

4/21/20
Today was the last day I got to meet with Fabrice. I told him after we finish and I don’t think I said it right. He started trying to schedule next week with me and that made me feel bad. I told him that next week is finals week and he still didn’t understand. I finally told him I won’t be able to do these phone tutoring sessions anymore and then he caught on. It really felt bad to cut him off. Not to patronize but the whole experience felt like leaving your new dog home for the day when they just don’t understand that you can’t be there all the time. This is how it felt but replace the dog with someone you’ve joked around with on the phone in slow or broken English. I can honestly say that this was an interesting experience and I’m glad to have had it. After we were done with the session, he said thank you and that he hopes we can meet again. This was a wholesome end to something both of us needed.
Meanwhile I’ve been relying on work for all social interaction. As it seems when everyone rushes to fill three months of prescriptions all at the same time after everyone has their meds they don’t need them for another three months, who would have thought. Yesterday, that’s 4/20 for those keeping track, next to no one came to pick-up in the hour and a half before we closed. With that out the window im going to have to consider other socializing activities.

Here’s the journal entry for April 16th wherein I find my self contemplating human interaction. Take a read,

4/16/2020

Today Fabrice and I got the rest of unit 2 done and started on unit 3. Unit 2 was present perfect and unit 3 was the use of because and because of in grammatical sentences. Fabrice really struggled with this so we spent a lot of time on it. I found it hard to explain the meaning of the word because. This made me wonder if there are any other words I just instinctually know the meaning of that aren’t easily describable to someone who doesn’t speak our language well. What I noticed helped, as seems to be a trend now, is describing these words using simile. My English teachers would be so proud. To do this I just replaced the words with something he was familiar with. This seemed to help but I’m not entirely sure he is understanding what I am saying.

So as promised another news update from the covid front line. They started making us wear mask during work. I’m not opposed to this new rule, it will keep me from spreading the disease should I unknowingly contract it but I’ve noticed when I work with patients on simple things like putting in for refills it is incredibly hard to breath. You forget when you make short breaths during conversation that this is because you’ve run out of air. Let me tell you one becomes acutely aware of this when it is suddenly taken from them by a mask. I think the biggest hurdle I’ve come across during this social distancing is the lack of genuine human contact. The absence of this is very noticeable.

Here’s the entry from April 14th, this was only one week ago but feels like a thousand years. Take a read,

4/14/2020
I hadn’t talked to Fabrice in a week. He works overtime during the week so we weren’t able to make our usual Thursday appointment. I asked him what his job was but I don’t think he understood me, or he did understand and doesn’t want to tell me. Either was I think the time we do get to spend studying together has been enjoyable to say the least. Today we worked on the second unit of the workbook. Due to time constraints we only got through about halfway through the unit. I told him this was fine because we had scheduled Thursday to finish the rest of the unit. This was a particularly easy unit for him to get through though, so I have a feeling that we’ll be able to finish the rest of this unit and a little of the next unit Thursday.
As for how This week has treated me the days are starting to blur together. I am an “essential worker” being a Pharmacy technician at Meijer. That has kept the days from blurring into the three constants, today, yesterday, and tomorrow. I have picked up a few new hobbies, I’m practicing guitar and baking. After the stores ran out of bread, I got fed up with going out to find bread to be fruitless in my search. So, I looked up a recipe, bought the ingredients, which as it turns out were still largely in stock, and made my own bread. Anyway, more stories from the front for next time.

So here is my first solo attempt at tutoring over the phone. I also use the journal as a means to reflect on the situation we’ve found ourselves in. Take a read,

4/7/2020
Today was the first day I worked one on one with Fabrice. We went through unit one of the workbook. This unit went over verbs and gerunds which I don’t think I had every heard of or if I had its been since I was in second grade in 2006. Fabrice had a hard time using the table provided in on of the section to answer the questions provided. The operations that I would normally be able to do are extremely hard over the phone. For example, when I worked one on one with a student before I was able to draw it out for them. Pointing to specific example on the sheet I was working with. Over the phone I had to tell him to use his finger to point to a specific part of the page and then using that information instruct him to move his finger to the part of the page I was talking about. This was exacerbated by the fact that he was having trouble understanding what I was talking about.
This is a unique time to try and teach especially over the phone. Working with Fabrice is an experience though because he is a character. He likes to crack jokes about people in the photos of example problems. He’s making the isolation feel a little less isolating and I appreciate him for it.

Here is the first instance of phone volunteering with Robin and Fabrice.

4/2/2020

Today I met with Robin, the coordinator, and one her English students, Fabrice. The plan is to meet every Tuesday and Thursday whenever Fabrice is available, to work on English. Largely what I will be doing is going through the workbook Robin provided helping Fabrice work through the book. The way Robin explain it to me I will be correcting his pronunciation.

Fabrice seems like an interesting character. I look forward to working with him. Robin called me personally after our conference call. Apparently all the students who work with her have about a 3^rd grade vocabulary. This is an interesting I’ve never taught someone who doesn’t have a working knowledge of English. I’m curious to see how this will turn out.

So here we are at the beginning of the new normal. This is the last journal entry I have from the time before the stay at home order.

3/12/2020
Today, I was informed, was the final day that the school would be open. In response to the COVID-19 outbreak As it sounds, they like many other schools will be transferring online. I do not know what this means for me an volunteering but I do know that this was the last day I could help people in person. They worked on review packets of several different topics ranging from social studies to math to science. I help one of the students with the carbon cycle.
I hope I can continue to help these students they are all interesting characters and I enjoy interacting with them and the teacher David. There is a potential plan for me to continue volunteer online but I have little to now information about this.

3/5/2020
Student were working on exponential functions again. There were a new faces in class today both of which needed help with exponents, specifically multiplication and exponents. I explained it with cars, a weird analogy I know. This resonated with them and they knew how it worked. A few of the students asked me what I was doing in school. I told them I was a chemistry major and the cooed, calling me smart. I tried to explain my research to them, but they seemed dismissive. I think I should have explained it in a simpler way.

Hey guys, sorry it’s been so long. In the next few posts I’m going to share my ICR Journal. With everything that has happened in the last month a lot has changed. You can see this reflected in my journal entries so please give them a read if you have the time.

2/27/20
Today I helped students with Algebra review worksheets. They worked on algebra review worksheet which had problems from exponential algebra to fraction multiplication. The students seem relatively prepared for the exam that a few were taking on Tuesday next week but there was a few hang ups of variable fractions. I tried to explain it like soup again but I think this caused more confusion than answers.
I feel like my role in the class is very tertiary. I am there to explain things when they need help a not much more. I have found that relating math to food works pretty well with a few students.

Hey guys, I know mathematics isn’t most peoples cup of tea but this Theorem is actually REALLY useful.

Say I’m a general in the Chinese military in the 3rd-Century and I want to know how many soldiers are in my army. Well is I was Sun-Zi I would arrange them in ranks of prime number size. Then I would count the remainder in an incomplete rank. I would do this two more times with the next consecutive primes. The three of these numbers modulo there respective primes are then congruent to the total number of soldiers I have in my army.

Here is a picture example with primes 3, 5, and 7

For more information about this topic I’ve included a few links below for you to browse to your hearts content. Until next we meet, have an excellent day!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_remainder_theorem

https://www.britannica.com/science/Chinese-remainder-theorem

Hey guys, today I want to look at what impact the coronavirus is having on global economics.

First a little background and I’m not a business major so take this with a grain of salt. Many manufacturing jobs now a days are shipped over seas where labor regulation or lack there of make manufacturing cheep. The countries, especially china, allow foreign companies to make use of their populations labor at reduced rates compared to the US. This makes these supply chains very reliant on the health of these countries populations to maintain a steady stream of product. This has seen an effect in stock prices with Apple’s Stock price dropping $15 earlier this week.

I found this extremely interesting that our reliance on other countries labor can be heavily swung by the health of that labor pool. This was an extremely surface level look at what The COVID-19 virus is doing to the global manufacturing sector. If you want a more in depth look please follow the link below to a story i found on the subject.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/commentary/covid-19-coronavirus-china-5-year-plan-growth-gdp-poverty-income-12457926