Corbin Ryan: Tutoring Session #14 with Christian

            For tutoring session #14 with Christian, I had planned out a pretty cerebral lesson, centered around using chalk on the driveway to practice and reinforce the upper and lower-case letters, copying simple words, letter-word association, etc. But, when I arrived at Christian’s house that Thursday evening, it was very clear that he was feeling very low-energy, and was in a bad mood. He had just woken up from a nap, and it was the end of the first week of school for him.

I tried to hype him up for our lesson, but it failed to pull him out of his slump. It was obvious that it would be best not to try out what I had planned for him, as it would only make him more miserable that evening, and risk the possibility of weakening our teacher-student relationship. In my backpack, I had brought my Gameboy Advance with a copy of the Legend of Zelda. In previous sessions, Christian would ask me: “Next time, can you bring this one?” as he would pantomime with his thumbs and fingers playing a handheld videogame device. I don’t how he knew.

I had brought the videogame as a reward for after the lesson, but I decided it would be best to try out some speaking and listening practice for that session by teaching him how to play Zelda. I guided him through dungeons and fields within the game, and he understood. He had some difficulty navigating the game, but I he definitely enjoyed it. I taught him the directions “left” and “right,” so hopefully those ideas will stick with him.