mentoring

Yesterday I had a very stimulating conversation with my high school student, Angie. We talked about immigration. Through our conversation about the subject, I learned her passion for the subject that was a little vague in the paper. She explained that it was an emotional and close-to-home topic for her and her family, but without specific reasons or examples, it didn't convey the same emotion inflected by her voice. Her tone and passion was clear through her voice, but the tricky part was finding ways to put it in her paper. I liked how in Angie's persuasive paper, she wanted her mom to read the article not because she agreed with it like most persuasive papers would be, but for the opposite reason. She wanted her mom to read it because of the obvious ill-informed thoughts that many Americans have about Latinos. I liked that twist in her paper because though subtle, it was a tad different than a typical persuasive argument. Also, when thinking about the steps I would take after the first draft, I realized that I do use a method for that. I take the arguments or points that I feel especially strong about and elaborate and expand on them. Eventually my hope is that I have so much to say about those that I can take out the parts that aren't especially heart-felt. I feel that it's better to have a few points explained passionately and completely than ten mediocre points. I was getting excited about Angie's paper just from her talking about it, and I know that if she works a little harder on it, it will be a superb paper.