Motivated Learners

Wow! I had my first meeting with Rodrigo and Walter today and I was very impressed by how motivated they are to learn. Rodrigo is braver than Walter, as Walter is somewhat shy. We were very conversational today, because I want them to be comfortable with me. We talked about what needs were most important to them and they are at different levels, so their needs are different. We met on campus, which they had never been to before, so I did spend some time touring them through the library and the student union. They were impressed by how much MSU has to offer. We all enjoyed ourselves and look forward to the next meeting. After the semester is over, I agreed to let them help me with my Spanish. This has honestly been the highlight of my week!

Tutoring concerns

I tutored over at East High School for an ESL classroom on Wednesday, after I had finished with conferences over in Waseca.

The kids were really great. I met a student from Mexico and one from Guatemala who were working on English sentence structures and doing quite well. There was a third student from Sudan, but he was having problem with his eye and went to the nurse's office.

After seventh hour was over, I worked with several students working on their science. The focus was chemical reactions. I left a little disturbed, as most of them could copy information from the book to the worksheet, and some with difficulty at that. However, none of them seemed to really understand the information they were covering. This concerns me a great deal. They were great kids and very polite and appreciative, but I don't know that they are really learning anything about their content subject. Is anyone else encountering this?