Shopping Mall Super Powers!

For the question "If you were a god/goddess, what would your area of influence be? What special powers would you have?" Yosuke wrote "shopping mall."

He had misinterpreted the question somehow because the word "area" was confusing, but I thought his answer was great! I had to try really hard to not laugh, though. After I explained the meaning of the question to him, Yosuke laughed and embarrassedly erased his answer. I wanted to persuade him to keep the answer and respond to all the other questions (Make up a story about how you got your power; Where do you live; How would you punish those who defy you; etc) as a God of Shopping Malls, but I decided Yosuke is probably too straight-laced to appreciate the humor. Oh well!

Summer School

This week is going pretty well. Yuki continues to do well with Algebra, and I now have no doubts that she could take Geometry. In fact, Mrs. Kikugawa is making plans for both Yuki and Yosuke to take summer classes. Yuki will take Geometry and Yosuke will take English II. Both classes will be intensive, so it looks like I have a busy summer coming up!

Exhaustion

Tutoring was fun today, but it was exhausting! I tutored Yuki for two hours. I thought the time would drag by, but it was actually pleasant. Two hours turned out to be perfect to cover a whole chapter in her Algebra textbook. Teaching the material and doing some practice problems took about an hour and 45 minutes, and then the last 15 minutes was spent doing some problems from the chapter review to make sure she learned it all. I was impressed with her ability to pick up on all the material and handle a massive amount of new ideas.

I tutored Yosuke for two hours, and that's when I ran out of energy. I made it through okay, though. We spent the first part of the session discussing his courses for next year, and then we read some of The Odyssey. We were in the middle of a boring part of the story, though, so it dragged a bit. Tomorrow I'm going to skip ahead to a more interesting part. We should be able to fill in any necessary details later.

Wow, I'm so tired!

Alas, Spring Break Homework!

Miki was in a foul mood today when I went to tutor her. Her ESL teacher had given her, and only her, homework over spring break. It's frustrating enough to have homework during your break, but to be the only one who has to do the homework is just rough. Miki hates homework, so she was really frustrated about it. I think she also may have been embarrassed.

I can understand why her ESL teacher gave her the extra work. Miki is stubbornly resisting learning English, and her ESL teacher just wants to help push her to learn a bit more. But I can also see Miki's point of view - why should she have to do work over spring break if the other students don't have to? It's humiliating.

I remain neutral.

Hurray, Spring Break!

Well, my spring break was last week, but the kids' spring break is coming up soon. Normally, these breaks mean a cut in my tutoring hours, but this time it might not be the case.

Yuki is behind in Algebra because she missed a few days of school when she had orchestra performances. This is made doubly problematic because she wants to take Geometry over the summer to get ahead. Her teacher's opinion is that taking Geometry using the accelerated summer session will be too difficult, perhaps even impossible, for Yuki. I'm not sure how difficult it will be for her, although I'm confident that she can manage if she's willing to work at it.

Anyway, the upshot is that next week, I'll be working a lot with Yuki reviewing Algebra topics. I'm looking forward to this. Yuki is a fast learner, but not as fast as Yosuke. Teaching Yosuke math topics seems almost pointless; he picks up on them immediately and just zooms through the problems. It makes me feel rather superfluous! Yuki, on the other hand, actually needs instruction, but she's not as clueless as Miki. Essentially, she's just right.

Happy Ending to Last Week

Miki received an extended deadline for the science project, and her science teacher left useful comments on her rough draft so we were able to finish it fairly easily.

After that, we worked on her new project, for which she had to pretend like she was an expert witness in a crime scene trying to prove that some fictional person is guilty for murder. She had to make a story for the circumstances of the crime. I thought she would come up with something bland, but Miki got really into it and wanted to use an elaborate murder she'd seen from a mystery/detective drama. I thought she went a little overboard, but I just went along with it since she was having so much fun.

More Science Teacher Frustration

It's a neat coincidence that the last post is so topical - once again I find myself trying to communicate with Miki's science teacher.

Miki is working on a science project this week. Unfortunately, my ability to help her has been severely limited. All she had for me was a print-out showing the structure of the report: hypothesis, method, materials, background info, results, conclusion. She did not have any information on how to actually do the report, and, more importantly, no data. The teacher must have gone over all that during class, which excludes ESL students like Miki.

Maybe I'm being unnecessarily harsh on this teacher, but it seems so ridiculous. He knows Miki can't speak any English. He should try to help her more, and if he doesn't have time, why not assign a student to help her? I'm almost positive that most of the science project was completed in class. Why not ask one of the students who finished early to help Miki? She won't understand them, but they could at least make sure she gets a copy of the data.

I ended up writing a note to him and asking Miki to turn it in along with her laughably incomplete project explaining her situation. I asked him to give Miki more time to complete the assignment and to write down the instructions and data for her, or to meet me sometime if that was inconvenient for him.

I really can't think of anything else I could do. This situation is so frustrating!

Useless Teachers

Wow, I can't believe it's been a whole week since I've posted. I came down with the flu, and I can now say that I'm finally over it, although I'm still coughing regularly.

When I started tutoring, I imagined my students' teachers would be happy to work with me. I imagined that they would want to help their struggling ESL students, and because they're probably stretched too thin to spend any time individually helping them, they would be happy to spend a few minutes helping me. It hasn't worked out quite like that.

Miki's mother asked me to preteach Miki topics from science class, since that's the class she's struggling the most with. To do this, I need to know what her science teacher will be teaching ahead of time. Miki was unable to remember her science teacher's name, so her mother suggested I email Miki's school counselor for the information. I did so, being sure to mention that I was Miki's tutor and I was emailing per Miki's mother request, but I never received a reply.

A few days later, I found out the name of Miki's science teacher from her progress report, so I emailed him directly. I began by informing him of the concerns Miki's mother expressed to me and her proposed solution. I asked him for information about what he would be covering next in class, offering to come by and see him directly if that was easier for him than email. And... no reply. Ever. Not even one to say "Sorry, can't help you."

What is with these teachers? Do they not care?

I was ready to go by and see him directly so that he couldn't ignore me, but Miki's mother said she had a teacher-parent conference planned so she would handle it then. During the conference, the teacher said that the information was on his website. It's not. I checked back when this started, and Miki's mother and I checked it again today together. I looked at every bit of his website, and there's no class schedule or anything like it. What a sorry teacher...

Go Fish English

I had a blast tutoring Miki today.

While the rest of the 7th graders were taking the standardized writing test today at school, Miki had three hours of free time because ESL students are excused. The end result was that when I went to tutor her, she had already finished her homework.

Rather than stretch our usual thirty-minute English lesson to one and a half hours, I taught her how to play Go Fish. We spent the entire session playing. Each round, I would change the rules a bit so that we would be practicing a new grammar pattern. For example, initially we used the standard, "Do you have any ---s?" "No, go fish." Then I changed it to, "I want some ---s" and "No, I don't have any ---."

With two players, it was a little dull, but we managed to make it fun. Toward the end, her mother came by to watch and we convinced her to join us. It was more fun with three players, and everyone was having fun. I was happy that her mother had a chance to see Miki use English, as usually Miki clams up when her mother enters the room.

Today was the most enthusiastic Miki had ever been about English! She even asked me some grammar questions related to the game. For example, at one point she asked me the difference between "Can I --?" and "May I --?"

My next step is clear - I need to research more games we can play that are good for practicing English.

Not Invincible After All

Every member of the Kikugawa family has been suffering from a cold for quite a while. So after an entire week of being coughed on with no effect, I finally came down with a cold this past weekend. Ironically, when I tutored Yosuke today, he wore a mask so that he wouldn't cough on me, after a whole week of coughing in my face. I almost started to tell him he could take it off, but I didn't want to let him know he made me sick because he'd probably feel bad.