Fourth Meeting 03-10

Working with Elodia today was incredibly fun and inspiring. We started off by looking at the questions that were sent home with her about the social studies passage we read on colonialism, the founding of the United States, and its government. She had answered the questions at home and she got every single one of them right. She seemed so surprised that she got them all right because we had the GED book so she didn’t know the answers. I could tell it made her proud to see her hard working paying off. I have to admit I was surprised too. I thought she might get one or two wrong and we would have to review a little more. Her dedication, however, became very obvious. She told me she had to re-read the passage multiple times over several days to be able to answer five questions. It was inspiring because I do not think I would have the patience to re-read something over and over again until I was absolutely sure of my answers the way she did. Elodia can read better than she thought, but it is still difficult for her and I still have to help her with hard words so her dedication to read that passage until she had the correct answers was impressive. It showed me how much she really wants to get her GED and do well. It did, however, make me realize we have to consider the timed portion of this test as well. So to begin the second lesson, we looked at the questions first. I could tell, at first, that she was wondering why on earth we were doing this. During our slow reading of the passage, though, when we read something related to one of the questions I would bring it to her attention and she would react, “Oh yeah!” So then she understood why we did the reading of the questions at first, and thought it was a good idea.
Reading the second passage was really fun as well. It is strange for me to be reminded of all this history that you forget or don’t think about that often. For Elodia, though, it is brand new information. I thought that was really cool; to explain your nation’s history and have it be something that is so familiar to you, but it be totally new information for her. People forget how important things are when it is so familiar to them. Overall, it was a very good session. Elodia and I got through the entire passage on the Civil War in one hour so that was good. We even talked about her family a little more. She joked about how she truly had to do the homework on her own, because her daughters are so busy with their own school and studying and everything. It is very obvious that she loves her family. I have a much deeper appreciation for teaching, though, because it does require a lot of patience and care. I do not normally have a lot of patience, but Elodia makes it easy because she is very mature, and kind. She is very understanding and tries to help me find middle ground when I am having trouble describing a particular term or meaning to her. Each week there is something new to talk about and I enjoy listening to her and watching her get excited about new things that I am so accustomed to knowing.