On Monday, I finally met with my ELL buddy for the first time. She was very shy at first; I tried talking to her about general topics before we started the assigned assessment, but was really lacking in conversation ideas and she seemed reluctant to say much. Once we started the activity and got to talking about our families, she opened up pretty quickly. We drew diagrams of our families, which went well, though I can’t say either of us learned anything language-wise from the other — we had the same words (Mom, Dad) on the labels of our diagrams so there weren’t any linguistic ideas to exchange. We continued with the activity; I read aloud to her, then asked a few questions to check her comprehension, which was minimal. She had a vague idea of what the story was about, but that was it. After that she read a passage to herself. I asked her some comprehension questions on that — it was a little better, and with guidance she seemed to understand more. Then, I read passages aloud that she then read after me. Comprehension was pretty minimal on those too. For the final part of the activity, we drew a diagram of the family in the story we read. I had to really guide her through this activity. She didn’t understand the relationships we’d talked about in the story, and she didn’t really seem to grasp the way the diagram worked, even after I tried a few different ways to show her.
And then we were done with the assignment… except we had 40 minutes left. Yikes.
So I got her to talk to me some more about her classes, her family, and her background. I learned that she moved here from Cuba 3 years ago, at the end of her 6th grade year, and she said she prefers the Cuban education system because the students have more choice in what they learn. She helped translate for her aunt, who only speaks Spanish, and her aunt’s doctor, who only spoke English, when her aunt was giving birth to her cousin this past October. She has an older stepbrother in jail in Cuba, and she’s never met him. (He actually wasn’t on her diagram of her family; I think she only remembered his existence in our later conversation.) She says she’s doing well in most of her classes, except IPC: the “academic language” gives her trouble.
Textbook case, right? I’m pretty sure her affective filter was up until she could identify with me as a human (who goes to school, who has a family, who worries about rainy weather, and the like). BICS is easy for her, CALP is problematic. Everyday conversation flowed smoothly with her but when we tried to talk about what we’d read, her language skills fell apart. It stunned me to hear the word “academic” come out of her mouth, as (as Prof N noted in our debriefing this afternoon) that’s an academic word!
Next time I’ll work on building more rapport before we start any activities so her affective filter won’t be affecting our progress so much. It was very hard to do it this first time; our first meeting actually should have been weeks ago but she was absent, so we had to make do this week, without any of the props that eased introductions for buddy pairs who were present the first day. (I couldn’t find conversation so I just fell into the activity that was sitting in front of us.) I’ll be sure to ask her how her baby cousin is doing, and talk about my niece — I think we really connected over the talk about babies.
And maybe one day, I’ll even find time to write about my first teach. 
