A mark of readiness

I've always felt a little anxiety whenever we went for the out-of-class projects, whether it be with the high school students or with the Boys and Girls Club. The first consulting session with the high school student went out smoothly, yet I was still feeling a bit tense, since I was still new to the "job" and did not know much to do. This time it has changed. I came to the last consulting session feeling very easy. Part of it had to do with me knowing exactly what to expect and the rest was the confidence honed through training and many shadowing sessions. I met with my student again. When I called her by her name, she was pleasantly surprised that I still remembered. Maybe that's something I should keep in mind from now on: always call the writer by their name when it is appropriate to do so. She had THREE drafts that needed help with. Based on what I had learned about prioritizing, I knew there was no way I could adequately help her with all the three. So I asked her which one she thought was the most important. She pulled out the one where she described her most important accomplishment up to date: relearning Spanish. Upon finishing reading, I told her that she accomplished two things instead of just one: learning English and relearning Spanish. That was something she did not see in her own writing. We made some changes in order to highlight the most important points. Seeing the significance of her own successes that she had not discovered before made her feel much more confidence. I was very glad that I could instill such good feelings in my writer. With the 10 minutes left we went briefly through her second draft. At the end of the session she was confident that she could revise the third draft herself based on what we had worked on together.

When we were leaving, Emily asked me how I felt, for she knew I was not comfortable working with the Boys and Girls kids. I told her and Ms. Dolson that it was "just as expected", if not just like textbook. That was something I was trained to do and has become familiar with. I could see that the same could well be said for all of us. Ms. Dolson was right. I am ready to be a writing consultant.