Tue. Feb. 16, 2010

Another conference day. I'm liking conference day and the one-on-one opportunity. I wish I had more time throughout the quarter to have at least one more conference day. Students are firmly situated in 1.3 and they will be turning them in next Tuesday. No complaints--wait, I had one student who didn't want to engage the prompt. She felt she didn't want to talk about contact zones and instead wrote on the idea of safe-houses. I like the idea, but her piece didn't address safe-houses either. So this was a good opportunity for me to understand a students motivations. During our conference, she shared information about her previous experiences that told me she has trouble with listening to authority--this materialized in her school and work situation. That piece of knowledge helped me to not take her situation personally and rather understand she is working off past programming. My hope is to help her see following some authority--in this case the prompt and myself--can be beneficial.