Say, "Do you want to be forwarded to his/her voicemail?"

When I say, "Would you like to leave a voice mail?" I do not mean I am the voice mail service. Duh.

I am the anti-vw, apparently. My boss is violently against voice mail, so my conversations usually go like this:

Me: He's not in right now, but would you like to leave him a message?
Caller: Oh, yes, please!
...
...
...
Me: Hello, are you still there? I'm ready?
Caller (baffled and oddly wounded): Oh. I thought I was going to voice mail.
Me: I am the voice mail.

Gworf.

(Gronk is too pointy a word for me this morning.)

vw, you rule.

Don't wanna go to work. I even have the weekend off, and getting these next two days out of the way makes me crankypants.

I have had exactly the same conversation as JZ re: voicemail so many times...

Why am I not getting up and getting coffee? Getting coffee before I've had coffee is apparently too much for me. I'm trapped in a coffeeless conundrum.

Getting coffee before I've had coffee is apparently too much for me. I'm trapped in a coffeeless conundrum.

I've had that conundrum. Still have the resultant burn scars.

I took him to a tutor to help him make the big jump from whole words he had memorized and sounding things out.

Whole language learning vs. phonics has always made me nuts. I learned via phonics but my SiL who is studying elementary ed. insists that the whole language approach is best when learning to read. I've seen an funny email joke that goes around that is horribly misspelled but easy enough to read because our minds recognize the words with only the first and last letters correct--the middle parts don't mean so much.

I get that once we know the words they're easy to recognize, but does that make learning them easier? I'm torn. I love phonics--in spite of the fact that you have to learn so many exceptions to the rules.

Instead, I go to work.

I DON'T.

hehehehehe

What is whole language learning? Do kids not sound words out anymore? What do they do if they encounter a word they've never seen before?

I get that once we know the words they're easy to recognize, but does that make learning them easier? I'm torn.

Torn is a good reaction. Apparently, some kids learn better one way, some kids another (which drive a lot of people crazy who can't seem to get their heads around the idea of there not being One Right Way).

I think that the best bet, for classroom learning, would be some combination of phonics and whole language, since there are bound to be some kids in each classroom who'd learn best one way or the other.

I taught myself to read at age 2 or 3, and it was totally just memorizing whole words. By second grade, I was reading at a fifth or sixth grade level, but still could barely sound out new words. My school taught completely by phonics, but the lessons were totally meaningless to me -- I already knew all of the words they were using as examples, so I didn't bother trying to pay attention to the letter/sound combination things they were trying to teach. It took me until about fourth grade before the "every letter makes a sound" lesson actually made any sense to me, though I never really trusted it -- when I encounter an unfamiliar word, I never pronounce it properly on the first try.