effective delegation

So I have those two students who come "help" me "early" in the morning before school (I say "help" because they are not always helpful and I say "early" because I am not always early). Today, I handed one a pile of dialogue journals and said, "here--respond to these," because frankly, I get overwhelmed and he asks good questions.

"Um, ok, should I respond as you or as me?"
"As yourself. Or as 'a student'."

Just now, I looked at what he wrote, and had to laugh at how dead-on he captured the "teacher voice." Here's one journal:

Dear Ms. D,

Calvin and Hobbes were playing on there [sic: spelling word] tree house wen [sic: another SPELLING WORD!!!] the baby siter [sic of misspelled words] comes and tells Calvin to go to bed.... blah blah blah....

and Yonathan wrote:

Dear Walter,

Are you enjoying the book? Can you relate that to someone? I never had a baby siter. Do you think they're mean to kids? Sincerely, from a student

***

I wanted to write about the new Wilco album that I finally listened to all the way through. I like it better now than the initial listen, but I still think maybe he mixed up the first track and the last track by accident. Song #1 sounds like the end, and song #12 sounds like the beginning. Also, when I turned my car on in the middle of track #11, I thought it was the emergency broadcast system for about three minutes.

***

This weekend, I bought blank CDs (for me) and charcoals (for Jeff). Last night I graded and he sketched. Some trashy sitcom was on in the background, but neither of us paid attention. I was wading through the thorns and burns of misspelled words and lazy sentence structure, and he was shading a face. Tonight I'll knit. It's all so tactile.