First Meeting

We had our first 'real' meeting, my mentee and me. As part of it, I got a copy of his grades. Now I know why he was offered the opportunity to be in the program. What I'm not sure about is what I'm supposed to do about it.

Basically, of about nine subjects, he's doing well in four, and poorly in five. Of the five, three are 'real' subjects - Science, Social Studies, and Math -- while two are 'kind of' subjects -- computers and techology education. We picked Social Studies to talk about. He told me that he didn't get why anyone would care about this stuff, and once I started to talk about it, his behavior abruptly dulled -- he started fidgeting a lot, literally holding his notebook in front of his face, looking off into space. I talked generally about the area his class is getting into -- the physical geography of South America -- and why you might actually care about it, but I know its a long way away from here to there. I'm not qualified to teach the subject, nor am I planning to, but I figure I need to get up to speed about it, so that I can at least talk about what he's encountering I'm assuming that I ought to talk about it.

But other than that - hmmm. Hmmm....