On Wednesday night after meeting with Ahmed, Abdulrahman called to tell me he could make it to our session. By the time her arrived Ahmed had to leave so we had a one on one session, I could tell something was off with him upon his arrival, he seemed very tired. Abdul has been asking me a lot about how to get into a masters program here at FSU but honestly I don't know much. I have had to do a lot of research and asking around to get an idea of what he has to do, how to explain it to him, and what kind of speaking exercises we could do to prepare him for this. I found the prompt for the essay that every applicant writes, my goal for this session was to go through the vocabulary and outline some form of response, even a very basic one at least. I wanted Abdul to have a basic concept of teh essay format and something to think on further until out next meeting.
Unfortunately this was not the way things went. Abdul did not want to disscuss vocabulary, he only wanted to use the translator app on his phone. While this was something to work around his attitude was not, he did not understand why he couldnt just write this essay in arabic and then put it through the translator. I tried explaining to him that usually the contents of the essay and your resume are where the foundations of an interview in this situation would come from. At this point we worked through some of the words and started to make some headway and he was doing very well until he absolutely just gave up. I asked Abdulrahman what was wrong and he explained that he did not have his usual nap during the day and was very tired. I empathized comepletely as I had also had a very long day, I suggested we pick up the college application disscussion when he was feeling a bit better. We ended our session on a lighter note, disscussing some fun things about the weekend using some of his vocabulary class. This session was very interesting and really made me think about strategizing how to get students on track when they're mind may be straying. This weeks session with Abdul also was a great reminder taht no matter how much planning you do sometimes you just have to go with the flow and adapt to your students needs.
Yikes! Sounds like you probably needed a nap after that session. It also sounds like you did a good job staying nice and professional, keeping on target as best as possible. Good job on not letting the tutee's mood rub off on you. It's a good reminder that we need to check how we might come across if we are tired before entering a teaching session.
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