For the past month I’ve been emailing a dog. More specifically, a white Maltese, to whom I send homework assignments and tutoring session updates. More and more frequently, I get a reply.
I started working with Z several months ago, and our first efforts at correspondence failed because his school gmail account wouldn’t allow the sharing of google docs. Equally frustrating, he only ever accessed the account via his phone, meaning of course that he forgot his password and wasn’t able to log in through a computer. So I asked him to make a personal gmail account, which he did. Well, his dad made it. And as my student is 12, and he and his dad are honest people, google required a parent password every time he wanted to access his account. Obviously that’s not sustainable. After the third time of him asking his mom to call his dad so that he could log in, we bailed on that account.
This sort of challenge isn’t unique. Lots of my students are hampered by something technological: a firewall that prevents doc sharing, a forgotten password to an account that they only access on their phones, too many accounts and not enough passwords. Part of my job is clearing those roadblocks so that the student can actually work on the work, not work on trying to access the work.
So here we are. Every week, when our session is over, I send an email to a new account that he created under his dog’s name. And there’s no parental password required, as the dog is 42, going on 49.
The Misorganized Mind 