Journal Entry - May 17th 2005

The meeting today went really well. My Mentee had some homework she needed help on, so while I helped her create a book for Language Arts we talked more about school and everyone's favorite subject - Math.

Her mom keeps changing her mind about where she wants her to go. She's decided now that she wants her to stay home and go through a home-school type program with a private tutor three times a week. She said that she thinks part of the reason is because of her (and her moms) worry about violence in local high schools and also that she's been having so many problems in middle school that her mom wants to make sure she focuses on studies and not on what is going on around school.

Because she's so far behind on homework and I end up spending the majority of the hour helping her catch up, we've barely been able to tackle the learning objective, and I'm down to the wire. Beyond collecting information on local and online programs, and showing her how to work problems she's been having trouble with, I haven't had a chance to talk to her teachers or anything like that.

I got some more information for her about places she can get tutoring and assistance with her math. I also found some free (and not free) software she can use on her computer at home to help her practice her algebra and pre-algebra problems. I'll give them to her on Tuesday.

I think I have a closure activity too. We sort of talked about what we might want to do, and I think beaded keychains won. It should be fun stuff!

I'm actually going to miss meeting with her when we are all finished, it's become part of my regular routine now.