Day eight: March 26, 2015

9:15-10:40

11 hours and 20 minutes

       Today, I was able to tutor James. Once again, Mrs. Clark had to talk him into having a tutor. She told me before he got there that he is a smart kid but he always has to be pushed to do his work. Whenever he is left to do his work independently, he just plays on the computer and doesn't complete the tasks that he is supposed to so she likes to put him with a tutor whenever she can. She sent us to the media center so we could complete some of his E20/20 work. This time when we were trying to get started, he told me that he didn't remember his log in for his computer. This made me a little skeptical considering they do work on the computer every day. So we went and got Mrs. Clark and she just said, "James, stop and log on to the computer. We are not doing this again today". So I'm guessing that he was trying to just not do school work hoping I wouldn't go and get Mrs. Clark. But right when we got back to the media center, he logged right on and went through all the stuff we could do that day. I just told him to choose from the tasks that were due tomorrow but he said he didn't want to because those ones were hard. Eventually I convinced him to do the tasks that are due tomorrow.
       In this task, there were a lot of reading comprehension tasks. James would somewhat skim through it and guess on the answer. I would always read over his shoulder and the answers were clearly stated in the paragraph but he would still answer wrong meaning that he just wasn't reading or at least wasn't reading as intently as he should have been. After answering about three answers incorrectly, I had him read the paragraph completely and I would talk to him about it so I would know if he read or not. After that, he was beginning to answer the questions correctly. Towards the end of the period, he began to get restless and started answering questions incorrectly so he could get through with the task on time. In the midst of his rush to finish his school work, he went to the bathroom and took about ten minutes so that by the time that he got back to the media center the period was already over.
      This somewhat upset me because I believe that he should value the time he gets to spend with a tutor when all he wanted to do was rush through his work and waste time in the bathroom. It has been pretty hard to form a relationship with James because he barely likes to talk to me and even when he kind of talks to me, its still like pulling teeth. After this session, I went and talked to Mrs. Reed and told her about how is was frustrating for me when James has no motivation and is wasting time and she just told me that James was one of the more difficult students in the school and that I didn't realize how much I was actually helping even if it didn't really feel like I was. So this definitely made me feel better and that I was actually making a difference for the students that I was tutoring.