Journal Entry - May 31st 2005

I was supposed to meet with my Mentee today for the last time to finish up our Closure Projects and talk about if there was anything else she needed from me, and whatnot.

I get to Adams Stephens and she's not there! My ride also left me, so I was stranded at the middle school for about an hour and a half. What a fun way to end my Mentoring experience! :)

Hopefully my Mentee isn't sick or had anything too bad happen to her. Usually she lets me know when she won't be able to make it, but I do not know if she tried to contact me today or not.

As for the Closure Projects, the only thing I can present is half of it, so hopefully that is ok!

Journal Entry - May 24th 2005

Wow! Only one meeting left! That went so terribly fast, it's amazing.

We worked on our projects, we got them about half finished. We hope to finish them up this next meeting. It shouldn't take very long, since she got the hang of beading pretty well after doing five or six rows a half a dozen times each. ;) I'm also going to see if she wants to meet this summer at all, or maybe just exchange Emails if she feels she needs any help with anything or wants assistance in finding information about anything in particular. I want her to know that I'm available if she wants to talk to me, but no pressure if she doesn't.

She is very excited about summer. The day after she gets out of school she's going back up to Washington for a week, and it's all she could talk about. I think the break from worrying about what she'll be doing this coming September will be good for her. Her mother has decided not to homeschool her, but told her she'll know for sure by the end of summer. I know that it is leading to some anxiety on my Mentee's part because she doesn't like feeling so up in the air about high school, especially since being a Freshman is so much on it's own.

I told her if she had any questions or if she wanted information about any programs I could probably find them for her, but I also encouraged her to talk to her mom about her options and help her mom decide which ones would be best for her, and letting her mom know that she is nervous about high school, and where she might (or might not) be going.

I gave her more information for online tutors. Basically the ones I'm finding work like this: you have a question or problem about something (let's say a math problem) and you're assigned a teacher. That teacher helps you over E-mail, or chat rooms, or message boards, to try and help explain the problems and how to work them. Some of them even have web videos, software, and other things that you can watch to try and get the lessons. Also, they help with everything from math to English, and it may be a good resource for her for not just her algebra problems. I also gave her more for in-person tutoring (like Sylvan and whatnot) so if she felt more comfortable with that, she could utilize it. Hopefully some of this information is helpful to her.

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.

Journal Entry - May 10th 2005

I met with my mentee today, and went directly to the room we meet in after signing in. This is working out so much better then before when I had to wait on her!

I went ahead and talked to her about since we only have a few meetings left, that we should just go ahead and keep meeting. In reality, we only have four after today, and four more shouldn't make such a major impact that it will disrupt the rest of her school year. She agreed to this.

I wanted to get started on the learning objective but she had a project due the next class period that she needed help on. So I ended up helping her try and finish that one instead.

It was a good meeting, we talked a lot about her summer plans, and her apprehensions about high school. While we were talking, I brought up Math, and we spent the rest of the hour talking about her concerns with Math, and what she might want to do to help those concerns.

We talked about possible summer schools, private summer tutors, or online tutors. I told her I'd collect a bunch of information for her over the week and bring it back to her the next meeting time as a possible starting point.

Hopefully some of it will help!

Journal Entry #6 - May 3rd 2005

Today was the second time we've met directly in our room rather then having me send for her. This works better because I can get more time with her then waiting around for anywhere up to 20 minutes (!!) for her to make it out of PE or Art. PE is usually the long wait because she has to dress down.

I was going to start on the Learning Objective today but my Mentee has been having major school problems (she has both lunch detention and in school suspending for one day) and so she needed help on some other assignments that were past due and the reason for her lunch detention.

She was supposed to give an oral report on "Why Drugs Are Bad" but didn't do it, and was giving lunch detention until she did (I think perhaps maybe there is more to the story then that, not that she would lie to me, just that I think that's awfully harsh over one assignment. But it could be a continuous thing as well. She was very hesitant to talk about it). So, I pulled a few books out of the library and we worked on her visual aide until it was time to go. Hopefully she can finish it up and get it turned in before it's too much later.

I actually think a lot of these problems she's having is stemming from things that are going on at home, and her frustration with her school. I try (nicely, and without being too preachy) to tell her that not liking the school or the teachers isn't a reason to completely ignore what they tell you to do, and skip classes. I've offered to help her work on it, or if she needs anything to ask me for help, but she really doesn't want to do either one.

Unfortunately I think this, and her school problems, is leading to her not wanting to meet with me anymore, because she brought up today that her teachers have been telling her to drop the mentor program because it takes her away from classes too much. I am not really sure how to go about handling this, I asked her if she didn't want to meet with me anymore and she said she did, but her teachers told her that she can't make up the missed classes. I asked her if she wanted me to talk to her teachers or the school contact, and she told me it wouldn't do any good.

I'm open for suggestions. :)

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.