Notes
Shahlo and I met for 30 minutes on Monday, January 26. The primary purpose of the meeting was to build the relationship and begin to lay the foundation for subsequent coaching sessions. To facilitate relationship building, we used the central focus and strategic questions from the Vector resource.
During this meeting, I learned that Shahlo is a graduate student pursuing her doctorate in Educational Psychology. She is taking this class to learn more about the Science of Reading especially focused on the progression of acquisition of reading skills and how that differs from student to student.
I learned that Shahlo is from Turkmenistan and we had a wonderful conversation about her culture. I learned that she has 2 school-aged children and that her husband is not currently with her due to his not being able to return to the United States after the visa ban was enacted last year. However, that ban has been lifted for Turkmenistan, so hopefully he will be able to join her soon.
Shahlo does not currently have a classroom, so any interventions or assessments that she practices in this class will be accomplished using her own students. She shared with me that she has learned that teaching reading to native English speakers is different from teaching it to those who don’t have English as the first language, and that she learned that by working with her own children.
Shahlo discussed the fact that there are not many people from her culture in the U.S., but that she has found a few, and she tries to visit with them as often as possible, and to be sure that her children are having cultural experiences native to her country.
I shared with her information about my professional background and experience as well as discussing my family, my interests and hobbies.
Shahlo had not had an opportunity to dig deeply into the course site and to begin to consider goals that she would like to achieve, although she kept circling back to determining the progression or reading skills and how that may differ from individual to individual.