Kim TS #10

I met with my child tutee, Amidu, and his siblings for our sixth tutoring session on Thursday April 6 at 7 pm. When I arrived at his home his three younger siblings were outside hanging upside down from a bicycle rack. As soon as they saw me walking up they flipped themselves over and ran over to all give me a hug. It was so sweet to see them so excited to have me there. They were immediately ready to go inside and start the day's lesson. Abu, Amidu's older brother welcomed me into their home and immediately walked out the door after his mother spoke to him in Swahili. She welcomed me in and asked me to sit down. Abu returned shortly after with Amidu in tow and told me that he had to retrieve him from the swimming pool. I felt bad for interrupting his time in the pool with his friends and he quickly made it very apparent that he was checked out from the day's lesson. We spent our time together reading three books by Dr. Seuss. We first read Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb, followed by The Foot Book, and lastly, we read Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now! The four eldest children read out loud as my finger guided them from one word to the next. On words they struggled with I encouraged them to sound the words out based on the spelling, they did very well! Today was a bit stressful because I could tell Amidu didn't really want to participate. Abu (the eldest) kept reading very fast and I could tell it was discouraging to the younger siblings as they tried to really figure out the words on their own. I asked him to read slower so they could read all together and then I could tell his interest in reading had faded as well. All this was happening while the baby (who is two) continuously got in the way, touched the book, tried to turn the page, and sang very loudly while we were trying to read. In addition, Amidu's younger brother tried to move a chair in the room to avoid the baby crawling all over him and his mother scolded him so he moved the chair back to the corner and wept for the entire hour. Tutoring the family can be a bit chaotic sometimes with so many distractions in the house, on top of the various levels of English that each child has, but they really show me how appreciative they are of my company. Today it really dawned on me that I am going to miss tutoring them when the class is over.