Personal Narrative: My Partnership With Mikel

At the inception of my partnership with Mikel, I purposed in my heart to view him from two angles. First, I would treat him as though he was my actual student; and second, I would teach him if he was my child. In every other assignment up to this writing assessment, I felt like a teacher. I was the one prepared with the questions, activities, and lesson plan, ready to guide Mikel through instructional learning. All he had to do was follow my lead. As I prepared to give Mikel directions for our writing activity, we had a terrific start. Mikel shared that his last name contains an r-controlled vowel. So, it was a joyous moment to hear that he retained the information I taught him during our last session.
However, this assignment tugged on my heart in a different way. When I shared my excitement with Mikel’s reading specialist about our writing session, she shared the countless blank pages in his journal, explaining that Mikel struggles to write. A …show more content…
The natural response is to ease whatever discomfort the child is feeling. That’s how I describe Mikel’s experience with his writing assessment, and how I felt watching him. His posture in figures three, four, and five illustrated above indicate the emotions I quickly detected throughout the session – fear, frustration, and fatigue. What Mikel sensed gives validation to the connection between emotion and learning. (Feldgus & Cardonick, 1999, p. 29) Despite his apprehension, I constantly gave positive words of affirmation to let Mikel know how brave he was for trying. Likewise, I did my best to set an emotional environment, instructing him to write about his own topic and presenting Mikel with several different templates to pick the paper he preferred. Spotting the crayons also gave him comfort. When he constantly appealed for help, I took a moment to ask him to point to his head and believe that everything he needed to write was within