Kendra&Kathryn

Hey all,

Today is Kathryn's last mentor meeting :( She has taken the next two weeks off for her sister’s graduation and for a convention. We first talked about Kathryn’s appointment this week; it was a two-hour session. She was another ESL student, who wanted to work on grammar (focusing on articles). Kathryn said that it went okay, but she was worried that she was focusing too much on grammar. I explained to her that you need to find a balance between the content and the grammar, but if the student wanted to work on grammar, then that’s their decision. Kathryn also noticed a lot of repetition and restating. This could be difficult to explain to students, but if you put it in a simple sentence like, “There are two modes of play, practice and story. The two modes practice and story…” Kathryn explained to her that she didn’t need to inform the readers of the two modes again, since she did it in the previous sentence. I thought this was a good way of handling and explaining this – Bravo!

So, the rest of the time we just talked about the semester and how the meetings have benefited her tutoring, etc. Kathryn feels as though mentor meetings have helped her become more at ease with social interaction, since she is a very shy person. She also feels more confident since she was able to ask questions, advice, etc. Overall, we both enjoyed being able to express concerns to each other about our students.
I’m glad I was able to mentor Kathryn this semester. I wish I could have observed her at least once, but with our schedules we were unable to.

-KC