Day 3: On the importance of change, and moving forward

I prepared for, and came to, today's class optimistic -- the past two sessions had been pretty good, and had left me with many realizations and skills re-learned. Plus, I was confident that I knew Janice well enough to know what she likes and what she's capable of. However, for part of today's hour and a half with Janice, I felt a bit lost and discouraged because while she responded well to the dice as usual, as well as the new storybook Kelly and I made for her, I could sense her boredom with the coloring activity, which spilled over to the reading portion, probably the most important part of the class.

Which is why, during the short processing after, I tried to think of what went wrong, and I remembered that today was the first time Janice said, after coloring a tiny fraction of a coloring page we gave her, that she didn't want to color anymore. This is a really stark contrast to the last Monday and Tuesday, when she'd get really excited when she was given the chance to color. This observation led to the realization that I can't keep doing the same things every day, that while Janice responded well to coloring in the past, it's not a certainty that she'll keep liking it. Today, I think, was a signal to me that I have to keep changing -- that while a routine is important to enforce a sense of regularity, monotony is not the way to teach that. Our preferences change as much as our routines remain, and that's really something I have to keep in mind when I prepare for a lesson, and when I teach Janice.

The question posed for today's blog entry was whether or not we now share goals with our student, and I don't think Janice and I are on the same wavelength just yet. I'm trying to find my ground in teaching as much as Janet is trying to find hers in reading, and before I can help her with her reading, I have to fix my teaching. I do think, however, that the goals I set for myself last Tuesday were somewhat fulfilled -- I managed to focus today's lesson on a story, and I managed to integrate Janice's creativity through the story book, but her preferences shifted. But I think catching those shifts in preference, and being prepared enough to shift along with them, is the last step before we're finally on the same page as far as goals are concerned. Once I knock some sense into myself though, I really do want to focus on reading even more words and introducing new ones to Janice. Hopefully that happens by Monday next week!