[Note, names have been changed and details have been left out to protect student privacy. For my last log see this link.]
This session of tutoring was
pretty satisfying - but not because
Juan was especially easy to tutor today.
I accidentally got there a little early, so I watched the kids and relaxed for a while; then after 10 minutes or so I went to work helping Juan. As soon as I started helping him, I got approached by a couple of other kids who wanted some help. I want to be as big a help as I can, so I started giving them some help while Juan got ready, and I continued to give them pointers as Juan and I got started. I think Juan was kind of offended that the other kids were distracting his private tutor, so he spent the bulk of our session today being squirmy and doing stuff like collapsing on the bench beneath the table when I wasn't giving him my full attention. It was annoying but kind of funny too because it was exactly what little kids do. I guess I spend little enough time with children that I still find some of their bad behavior to be amusing (let's hope I can hold on to some of that sense of humor later when I need it for my own high school classes).
Anyway, Juan's homework today
consisted mostly of math problems -
stuff like single digit multiplication and some simple
division.
Juan hasn't memorized any of the multiplication table yet, so pretty
much every problem required making tick marks and counting them off
(like making 4 rows of 7 ticks to count out 28). It was
pretty
tedious and I can understand why he wasn't too into it.
Still, I
think 2nd grade is still a little early to have your times table
memorized. It took me until 5th grade to actually knuckle
down
and learn the hard numbers (I got very good at multiple additions) -
but I was one of the last of my class to bother to do so.
Towards the end of the session, Juan mentioned that he has a brother. This was confusing, because I thought he said he only had a sister and that his brother was due in June. After asking him what he meant I found out that his brand new brother was born last Friday. Wow, what an event! A minute or two later one of the workers there asked Juan's sister to come over and show me the baby pictures. Juan's brother looked very small, and he was clearly in an incubator. I'm guessing maybe he was due in June after all, but he came at the end of April. Juan's mother was still in the hospital 4 days after the birth, so I'm guessing things didn't go easy. Juan said she might come back that day though.
I asked Juan's sister (I think she is 10) if she is taking care of the family and she nodded her head. She doesn't really know me so she doesn't really talk to me. Since I'm going to be done soon, it might be neat to stay late one day and meet Juan's parents. We'll see if that happens or not.