Dan: This morning I was asked to help the teenage son of one of my students prepare for a big test he has tomorrow. It´s for some kind of certificate of English. We spent two hours looking at the types of writing tasks he may be asked to perform in the composition portion of the exam. It may be the two cups of coffee I drank during the lesson, but I feel really good about what we were able to accomplish. It seemed that he wasn´t familiar with the schema we all were taught to use in constructing essays. We made outlines for reports, a letter of application, letter of complaint and narrative short story. He remarked how easy it was to write a paper after having done the outline first, like it was a new concept.
Coming into a classroom for a one-time session is always a little awkward at first, figuring out the level of the student, what he wants to do, what can be accomplished in the given time. But as I do it more often I am more confident, and luckily, I had learned some things about teaching writing from working with some real pro GED teachers in Hopkins who, as students come and go, pretty much walk into a different classroom every week.
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