Sunday, February 7, 2021

 Sunday, February 7, 2021

 

            I had to get up in the middle of the night, go out into the living room, get in my chair, and meditate. I was so upset about what was happening with one of my students.

            She's K, a third-grader whose mother died a year and a half ago. Her father hired me to help her write an essay for her entrance exam for a local private school, The Kamehameha school. It will only admit children who have some Hawaiian blood. I believe the school is for free, supported by the Trust. 

            The dad should have hired me a month ago. Then he made four appointments with me, all of which he canceled for one trivial reason or another. I didn't know what her skill level was yet. Saturday morning, I had my first session with her. I asked her if she wanted to write about her mom? She said yes. The essay choice was to write about someone you would like to spend a day with. Since one of the Trust's commitments is to care for orphaned children, dad felt that writing about her mom was important. 

            Then I asked whether she had thought about what she wanted to write. Yes. Great! Good start. I asked her to dictate me her thoughts. She produced two sentences, "I would want to spend the day with my mom. She loves me, and she died."  Let's see. As I checked the rubrics, that would put her at a low kindergarten level- not exactly entrance level writing.

            I asked dad to arrange for a second session later in the day. The other three sessions had been canceled because of gymnastics. This one was put off because of a party. They would be home by seven. There was no call at seven. Shortly before 9, I went to write an email and found one from dad. They had gotten home around 8:30. I was furious.

            I called dad in the morning; I told him that I was quitting if he didn't cooperate with the schedule. He wasn't paying me enough for me to be up worrying about his daughter's performance on this entrance exam. I thought he might fire me. I really had had it. Instead, he snapped to.

            I think dad's a little over his head. He looks like he's a little ADD. Then he lost his wife, leaving him to raise a 6 and an 8-year-old. OMG! No easy chore. He seems to be doing well. I can appreciate his conflict. However, he did snap to. 

            He drove home from work, got his daughter organized on the internet, and then drove back to work. Today went much better. Yesterday, I formatted her writing and showed her how to organize four paragraphs about things she did with her mom. I may have to modify it slightly, just a line to clarify that she wants to do the things they always did. It's implicit now; we might have to make it a tad more explicit.

            I still had no idea how her manual writing skills were. How was her handwriting? Did she use capitals and periods appropriately? I dictated two sentences to her. She could write them without having me repeat the words —a very good sign.  

            While it had taken her over 30 minutes to dictate the story in the morning, it took about half that time in the afternoon. She added some more details. I had to remind her to stick to the paragraph's main topic once. She used complex sentences. She repeated dependent clauses when she didn't have to, but I figured it showed her comfort with complex sentence structures.

            I spent most of the day working on the shortened PowerPoint presentation for the Step-Up Tutors. I had a blast. Each time I went through it, I made some revisions. I broke down the steps for Aspect Two into three slides from one. This allows me to give more details as I demonstrate the process.