Day 1

Today marked the beginning of my experience tutoring at the PLC and to be completely honest, my experience surprised me a lot. Before today, I had never been to an alternative school of any kind so I didn't really know what to expect. I guess in a sense I was expecting the school to be unorganized and chaotic but it was the furthest from that.
Today I got paired with Trey, a student who was working on a practice social studies test to prepare him for graduation, which he hopes to attend in a few months. I am not, nor have I ever been, a social studies kind of person but I worked with who Mrs. Mimi paired me with and didn't ask questions. We sat in one of the computer labs and began the online assessment. I was a bit surprised by how much he was unprepared for the assignment and sensed he really did not want me there. I didn't want to overstep my boundaries as a tutor but I could tell he was not putting much effort into these questions. I began to ask questions like, "Why do you think C is the answer?" to get Trey to think a little deeper into the practice test but it didn't seem to help because every question somehow got directed back at me and my thoughts on the question. In a way, I felt as if he was taking advantage of me and using my help to speed up this whole process. After some time, I began to ask him questions about when he was wanting to graduate and what his goals were. I learned that Trey is a father of two children, one 2 months old and the other 8 months old. He wants to go to an all black college after graduating from the PLC and play football there. These two details about his life alone completely blew me away. So many thoughts were rushing through my head as he was telling me about his life and I was so in shock at the difficult place he was at in it. I tried to give him as much motivation as I could on the spot and told him I thought it would be best for him to stick with school because he is expected to be a good father by two different young women.
Although today was unlike anything I have ever experienced before, I liked my first time at the PLC. I thought I may have actually motivated him a little bit and it felt very good to feel like I made a difference. I can't wait to see what else this school has in store for me!