Sleepy Studies

   I decided to do a double shift again today because I will not be able to volunteer next week due to the fact that I will be attending my older sister's honor's day.  Everyone, including myself, was very tired today.  I first worked with Aron who was very frustrated today and complained that he was very tired.  One of the stories that we focused on today was "The Masque of The Red Death."  Aron and I read through the entire story but I could tell that Mr. Poe's word choices were bogging Aron down.  I made sure to summarize each paragraph with modern language after we had read it.  As he began to get into the story, Aron got less and less frustrated.
    Aron began to get frustrated again when we returned to the questions.  At the beginning of the class he was very frustrated when I wouldn't give him the answer.  I dealt with this by narrowing the answers to give him a fifty-fifty chance of getting the question correct.  This seemed to help though I always worry that I give students too much too easily.  This is the constant struggle that I have in Classic City High School.
    I feel that I was really able to help Aron with his work.  At the end of the class, we thanked each other and he seemed truly sincere.  It is so great to see that I am helping people in the Athens community.
    In the second class, the one that I usually work with, John was not in class.  I decided to work with John's friend, Tandra.  The first thing out of Tandra's mouth was that she was tired.  This was out of the ordinary because Tandra doesn't usually complain about anything.  This was so out of character that the teacher actually commented on how strange it was to hear her complain.
   Tandra is doing very well in the class and is ahead in her progress.  She is working with Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet."  She has had the book for a while and has been given time to read it but she has not been able to complete it.  Instead of taking her class time to read through the play, Tandra goes through and guesses on different questions.  This was difficult for me because I have never read the play myself and I can't help but think that her time would have been more productively spent by reading the play that she was questioned over.  I think that the PLC or at least the teacher that I am working with pushes progress too much.  There is such a focus on how much a student has done that day and what they have done already.  THere is almost no focus on literature.  There is only focus on headway.
  The fact that I have not had the pleasure to read the play myself made it very difficult for me to help Tandra to narrow her guesses.  Towards the middle of the class, the teacher asked Tandra to pull up the play online for a certain question.  From then on, I encouraged Tandra to look up the sections that the questions were over.  Tandra was very willing to read the sections once I asked her to and she did very well when she took her time.  She is a very good student when asked to be.