Ben - TP #15

I realized before meeting with Glenda yesterday that I had not assigned her anything to work on and I did not think it would be very useful to continue talking about Love Actually, so I brought along my "things that are awesome" speaking lesson plan. Of course, I took into account the fact that Glenda is in her mid-fifties and "awesome" isn't necessarily the most relatable term, so I modified the lesson into something more along the lines of "things that we care about." I asked Glenda to compile a list of ten things that she cares about and then three reasons for why she cares about each thing on her list. I purposefully did not monitor her while she made the list, though I did let her know that if she needed help with specific vocabulary terms I would be more than happy to assist her. She did not need much help however, which was nice, and had a list of ten things in no time. I do not remember all of the things she had on her list but I know they included: family, friends, food (which was actually a big one for Glenda), nature, work (another very important one), God (or faith), and a few others. Actually, Glenda's list was fantastic because many of her terms allowed for further discussion and exploration.
We started with family because for me that is the most important thing in our world, and Glenda shared my point of view on that. She explained that our families support us and we support them, our families care for us, and we can always trust of family members (this is of course debatable, but I was not about to split hairs). Food was another important thing that Glenda said she really cared about. She explained that food brings people together, it is a way of sharing culture and a way of life, and it allows us to live. I couldn't agree more with Glenda on that. This lesson was a real pleasure because it allowed Glenda to freely talk about things that meant a lot to her, and it helped me learn more about Glenda and the way that she looks at and approaches her life. By the end of the lesson I almost forgot to go over some of her grammatical and pronunciation errors I was having such a great time. I did though, I went over them.