Adult Education

Tabby writes her Adult Education exam on Friday. She's been studying furiously the last few weeks, she really wants to do well. "I've never failed anything," she told me over tea, "I don't want to fail this." But she's struggling a little, after she was put in the wrong class and covered the wrong material for half the term before the teacher realized her mistake and moved her to where she should be. A glitch in the university's registration system and suddenly it's even harder for Tabby to learn. It would be ironic if it wasn't so frustrating.

The manager at EWC isn't making things easier; refusing to give Tabita time off work to study. But Tabby has balls the size of Russia, and is mitigating the situation as best she can. When I visited a week ago, Tabby gave me her books to sit with in the kitchen, pretending they were my own. She stood a few steps to the right peeling carrots, or rather peeling one carrot repeatedly, while I read out her notes slowly, repeating the lines, each line, and she listened. Between us Ma'Monica's soup bubbled, behind us Yandi cleaned the sink. The manager walked in and out. She tolerates me because she has to; my presence at the site precedes hers and was negotiated by a former manager and she can't tell me to leave. I smile as I answer her questioning gaze, "I'm just doing some reading." Tabby refocuses on her carrot and peels furiously.

On my visit last Friday, Tabby passed me a note as I sat warming and humming next to the heater in the office: please go to the kitchen we will discuss this further. Take the book with.

So I took the note, scrabbled around on her big desk to find her book, grabbed some other papers to cover it up, and made my way to the kitchen. I would have whistled and swaggered nonchalantly if I could have pulled it off. She joined me a few minutes later and we stood at the food-preparation table. Sitting would imply that we were spending time in the kitchen, standing means that she caught me in passing as I paged through the thick manual.

"So the question is about how you learn. About how it's a cognitive and social process." I tell her.
"Ok," she says, "so I discuss what needs to happen in my mind and then also around me?"
"Yeah, and you need to give examples." I read off the rest of the instruction.
She pauses for a few seconds, "Where must I find the examples?"
I start laughing, standing there in the kitchen with "my" books, hiding from her manager. "Tabs, I think you can start finding them here..."