Jaime TP4

I was meeting with Yasuko to help her prepare for a presentation on how children are raised in Japan. She told me she would be presenting with a classmate from Libya. She was nervous about her speaking and wanted to polish off her thoughts, organization, and presentation. So it was a surprise as well as a pleasure for the both of us, when my new tutee, Alice, joined.

I asked Yasuko to explain to Alice what we were going over, and afterwards mentioned that it might be beneficial to compare and contrast the different experiences of being children in Japan, China, and America. They nodded, but I’m not sure if they believed me. Yasuko showed me her notes, “Here is what I will say about this.” I looked at her, “okay, say it.” The practice launched into a discussion. “Is this the same for America? For China?”

Instead of turning this into a quasi-conversation partner time, I tried to tweak circumstance to cater to both Alice and Yasuko. Alice is nervous about her speaking, and Yasuko would be participating in a presentation with another classmate. So I tried to get them to pretend to be giving me the presentation- which prompted Alice to really have to think on the spot, and gather her thoughts. We would pause here and there for Yasuko to write down some notes and map her flow. I notice that Yasuko has no problem in conversation but when giving a presentation her thoughts are not always organized as concisely as possibly. We worked on dividing into categories and timelines, but once we hit childhood discipline we got a bit off tangent.

Both Alice and I were spanked as children. Yasuko never touched her children and didn’t agree with physical discipline, but she was curious to know whether Alice or I would spank our kids. I tried to lobby for the “no kids for me” option, but Yasuko wasn’t buying it. Needless to say, that took up the last 10 minutes comparing thoughts and experiences between the three of us.