Update on Tutoring

This time, tutoring session was all about brainstorming. When my student came in, we talked a little bit about our days and went into talking about her English class. Only thing I had problem with was the fact that she did not bring her prompt and explained it to me orally. This presented me with some difficulties in determining what it is her instructor wants. She luckily found her notes on the prompt and we immediately began to work with what we had. Her instructor wanted her to write an academic essay on the poem "White Man's Burden" and comparing it to Sherlock Holmes series characters John Watson and Roylott. In order to better understand what the topic was, we proceeded to read "White Man's Burden" out loud. We then talked about what she thought of this topic. While we conversed, I was able to better understand what she thought about the poem. She picked out few passages that she reacted strongly to. We talked about those more in depth and began to separate what exactly is a white man's burden? After we identified the white man's burden as the whites viewed it, we began to apply it to those two characters and see how they were reiterating white man's burden in the text. We used strategies such as charting (she likes visual organization) and clusters to brainstorm. As a homework, I asked her to write a thesis and bring it back to me because I felt that she was still at the brain storming stage and she did not have her book with her.