New Semester, New Partner

As I stood in the entryway of the library, I wondered what this semester's tutoring would be like. I enjoyed last semester in sophomore comp with my partner then, and was looking forward to new experiences and tests of my knowledge of the English language. There was that anxious feeling as I watched people continue to enter the library and branch off in different directions that maybe I would not be the tutor Elodia needed. I wanted to stop looking at my watch, but to no avail. At 2:35, I decided to call her, just in case she was late or forgot, as our scheduled meeting time was 2:30. I called and she said she was already there, and quickly found her and we introduced ourselves. She had arrived early as well and we were waiting for each other. She said she didn't have my number, so I made sure she had it written in her notebook before we parted later. I began by telling her I was going to help her with the reading and writing sections for the GED, and asked where she was in those areas. She said she could read better than she could write, so I talked about reading comprehension and we went over a reading passage and questions that followed afterward. I had her read one exercise out loud and we went over the first two questions. She read well and seemed to understand what the questions were asking. I gave the rest of that exercise and two more like it to her for homework to look over and said we'd go over them next week. I then had her write a short paragraph to know where she was in her writing. She wrote about her children, having 3 daughters, 2 of them at TCU, and one son. We started talking about her life, and she said she'd worked at TCU for seven years with housekeeping in the Bass and Dan Rogers buildings. She was so sweet and eager to learn, I felt silly being nervous before. I went over her few mistakes in her writing and said she could write more during the week for practice and we could go over it next week to better utilize our time together. I quickly explained sentence structure and we did a short activity about what was missing in certain sentences that made them fragments. The time passed quickly and I gave her some pages I had copied from the GED book that explained sentence structure and parts of speech, so we could pick up there next week. I was glad everything went well and pleased she was not afraid to ask questions during my explanations. I think this is going to be another great semester. Stay tuned!