Kala: TP 1: "The rays make me feel powerful."

After working as an virtual tutor for the past eight months, I assumed that tutoring in person would be a natural fit. I was surprised that upon walking up to the steps of Strozier to meet Abrar, my first tutee, my stomach fluttered with nerves.

Once I'd shaken her hand and watched her negotiate a temporary library card with the front desk, I realized that although she had only been living in the States for three weeks, Abrar was proficient enough to navigate everyday problems with grace and clarity. 

Sitting down in the middle of the Starbucks cafe, I was impressed to hear Abrar explain that her desire to learn English was a personal dream rather than a professional one, and that it meant so much to her she had taken a hiatus from her government job in Kuwait repairing radios and projectors for schools. We discussed the phrase "mechanical intelligence" as an alternate way for her to describe her strengths. 

After the first few minutes or so of founding our human to human relationship, I began to explore what needs our relationship as tutor and tutee would take on as I interviewed Abrar about the areas in which she felt she could improve. She very quickly designated grammar and writing as her weak points, evidenced by her standing as a Group 1 student in these areas. However, unsurprisingly, she has exceptional speaking and reading skills, maintain standing as a Group 3 student. 

Discussing needs did not take as long as I had anticipated, as a result of Abrar's ability to communicate her difficulties. At this point I realized I was holding a nearly-blank notepad with 40 minutes of time left. I asked Abrar if she had any CIES assignments that were giving her difficulty. She pulled out her cell phone and showed me a picture of a blank essay outline worksheet. After expressing her confusion about how to approach creating sentences and organizing an essay, we practiced brainstorming, outlining, and choosing significant details to answer the prompt "Describe a fun day in your country."

Abrar said she didn't think of her country as very fun, but after exploring some different options, we landed on "Going to the beach house." as a topic. From here on we defined her main points and sub-points. I made a point not to feed Abrar proper grammar and spelling, though she would often look to me and ask for immediate affirmation or correction as she was writing. Since I wanted to see the full extent of her abilities, I encouraged her to try her best and focus on writing down her ideas--we'd have time to pick through the grammar later. 

Once she had downgraded the self-monitoring of her syntax, Abrar approached a rather fluent and creative sense of prose, coming up with sentences like "I prefer the daytime to the night," "The rays of the sun make me feel powerful," and "I like having my feet in the sand without shoes, not thinking about anything."

It was a lot of work for Abrar, but once we went over corrections I think she realized some patterns in the mistakes she was making. I realized today that she remembered my verbal corrections very well and was able to apply them. I will be sure to correct her and provide a couple of verbal examples each time I do so. 

I felt a certain joy today in helping someone enable themselves to a different manner of expression. It was a basic human happiness that I anticipate from my future experiences as a teacher.