Day three: January 29, 2015

Time: 9:15-10:40

4 hours and 25 minutes

    Today when I arrived to the school, Mrs. Clark was a little off put because there were very few students in her class. She thought that maybe the buses were late but it turns out not many people came to school today. At first, James had decided that he didn't want a tutor today so Mrs. Clark directed me to a class across the hall but soon after she came over and got me saying James now wanted a tutor. This was nice because it showed me that James actually wanted to work with me and needed my help, so this made me feel like he's enjoying having me as a tutor. 

    Today, we were working on some online quizzes again. They consisted of finding the subject and verbs in sentences along with identifying dependent and independent clauses. James did fine with the first three quizzes we did but when it came to the last one he told me he didn't want to do it. We still had twenty minutes left in class so I told him we had to do something so he needed to find something else. In the end, he ended up clicking on the quiz and saw the first question which had something to do with prepositional phrases and he quickly closed out of it again. This raised a flag for me because in Bright not Broken, it talks about how students will come up with excuses when they don't understand something because they are embarrassed at not knowing how to do it. I told him to open it back up again and we worked on it together and eventually got through the entire quiz. These questions were a little bit more difficult and included a little bit more explanation in order for him to understand it all fully but in the end, he got it. These type of phrases and clauses are something that I want to focus on with him a little bit more because he did struggle with it next week when I go. 

    As time goes on, the tutoring sessions are going smoother and smoother. Its becoming a bit of a routine. I always go on Thursday mornings so James knows to expect me. At first, when he said that he didn't want a tutor today it kind of hurt my feelings because it made me feel like he wasn't enjoying or learning from our tutoring sessions. Then when he decided that he did want me, it made me feel like our relationship was growing. James is not much of a talker; he doesn't really care to talk about himself or anything that is not school related and this is fine as long as he enjoys the tutoring sessions and that we get the work done that was assigned. Overall, I would say today was a great tutoring session.