it ends well

day #3 with the tutee. the theme of the evening was: breakthrough!

my goodness, it's hard to believe even as i type that things were
so
dramatically
different
this time.

we started out the same: she saw me, she smiled sheepishly and immediately rolled her eyes... and hesitated. the director had to escort her over to me. she sat down, i tried to initiate some small talk about her day, how she was, and received nothing in return except for "nothing" and "can we read short books?" i asked which book she'd like me to read. she noticed right away that i had included in my stack a book she appreciated last week. rather than be happy to see it, she complained that we had already read it, which was a huge positive indicator to me that she is observing, retaining, and comprehending the books we're reading! hooray. i was happy about her complaint.

she selected a book, and i began reading it to her. it was about pizza, and at one point i described what happens when one tosses the dough high up into the air. we proceeded to pretend we were tossing and catching the dough between us and being silly, and that's when everything began to change... we had fun! and she trusted me. after that, we left our table and talked about a map on the wall, and later i presented an activity that included recognizing and labeling pictures by writing the word next to them. she loved it, and excelled. she actually spelled out each word and was ELATED when she got every single one of them right.


there were more highlights, but i'll just sum up with the fact that i felt so good about what she accomplished tonight. i think she's going to be okay.