Journal Entry #5 - April 26th 2005

I met with my Mentee today. We've gone ahead and started meeting in our room rather then me having someone sent to get her from class. This saves us about 10 to 15 minutes of waiting around.

I was going to start the Learning Objective this week, but unfortunately I couldn't because the school had planned an Earthquake drill and it took up nearly the entire hour that we were meeting.

I had to exit the school and everything!

Because of this we really didn't get anything done, and we didn't really get a chance to talk about a whole lot. Hopefully I can start the Learning Objective next week, I want to ask her what types of problems she is having in math, and how she thinks I can help her work on them.

Journal Entry #4 - April 20th 2005

My Mentee wasn't able to meet with me this week because she had a doctors appointment. It wasn't anything serious, just a general check-up. What was very impressive to me is that she actually called me at home and let me know she wasn't going to be able to make it, and she called me well over a day before. I really appreciated that, and I made sure to tell her that it was fantastic of her to call me.

This week in class we met at the Study Skills Lab and attended one of Teresa Massey's workshops. This one was on Note Taking. I attended this one in Fall term but it was a good refresher because some of the tips I had forgotten.

I am definitely going to pass these tips along to my Mentee and see if some of them will help her with the problems she's having in her Math class, or even just help her generally in all her note taking.

Journal Entry #3 - April 12th 2005

Oh my gosh, we made a mess.

Today I brought in a T-shirt for my Mentee to paint. I've got four large packing boxes of fabric paint, so since I didn't have to buy anything but the shirt it was no big deal for an activity. I also brought in some brushes, glitter, and a ton of newspaper to cover the table with. The newspaper was the best idea I've ever had, seriously. We got paint everywhere. By the time we were done, she had managed to completely cover her forearms in paint, from setting them down on the shirt by accident.

It was really fun though. She decorated her shirt with her name, and then a ton of glow -in-the-dark stars and flowers. She says she's going to put it up on her wall, because it will match her room.

I also had her fill out the new mentoring contract, and we talked a bit while we painted. She didn't "pass" the standardized math test thing that they make students take, to judge where the school is and where the students are. This was one more thing to make me think that a good goal for this term with her will be to help her find ways to raise her math grade, and be more comfortable and confidant doing math. I am not so great at math myself, so I definitely understand the yuckyness of it.

Maybe some good ways to start would be having her think about what exactly does she have the most trouble with, and relaying that to her math teacher. Maybe her math teacher might know some good things to do or even tutors to help her develop better math skills.

It was a good meeting. I completely enjoyed myself, and I think she did too, because she kept asking me if she could stay later and miss some of her next class. I think next week we'll start on trying to figure out how to develop the math thing, that sounds like a good plan to me.

Journal Entry #2 - April 5th 2005

The Mentee and I met again today, it was a pretty standard meeting. I didn't really have anything planned for today, so we just sort of winged it.

We talked a bit about how to solve our meeting problems, and we decided that she would go ahead and go straight to our meeting place instead of me having her called down from class from the office and having to wait 20 minutes (yikes!) for her.

We talked about school, and how things were going. Her mom had suggested her going to high school twice a week for four hours, and the rest of the time taking all her classes online (apparently one of the local high schools do this, which is pretty cool, actually. Especially for teenagers who want to work while they're going to high school or if they have a situation where they can't go to classes during the day) she is very excited about this possibility. She said she'll have to go to the campus for labs, tests, and PE, but everything else would be over the net.

We also decided that we were going to do a T-shirt next week, and so I'm going to be bringing in a shirt and a box of fabric paint. It should be nice and messy!

All in all it was a very good meeting. I notice that she is a lot more comfortable now then she was when we started meeting a in Feb. Next week will be, I think counting the first time we met, our 8th meeting! Time certainly does go by really fast, doesn't it?