Ramesses sent me Draft 2 of his essay. He applied much of what we discussed yesterday and it was a huge improvement. I went through it and made more suggestions to work on more wordiness and adding some more characterization. Then we conferenced and went through it together. Today, I had Ramesses use my computer and we made revisions in real time. Ramesses is very bright and we are on the same page. He applied everything we discussed and I believe he learned some valuable writing tips that he can apply to his writing in life. We cut his essay down from 800 (and something) words to 647 words. His essay is sounding amazing! Good session!
Maggie sent me two of her college essays to read and review. I had her e-mail it to me, and I made comments and suggestions and then scanned and sent it back to her, and then we Face-timed and conferenced. Maggie is working on Draft Two of both her essays.
We worked mostly on Jeffrey's college essay. Cindy and I have both been working with Jeffrey. I think this one is it! We organized his ideas into paragraphs and he is putting it all together this weekend. I also worked with Ryan for a bit.
Haley and I discussed her second draft of her college essay. It was an improvement. We are working on wordiness and the organization of Haley's essay. She is working on draft 3 now. It's looking good.
Today, I mostly worked with Jeffrey on his essay. We had a long discussion about digging deeper and connecting his ideas to a focus that has purpose, focusing on answering the prompt and showing an in-depth and personalized essence of who he is. Jeffrey has several drafts so far, and I believe his first draft delivered the most promise. We discussed how he can combine ideas from all of his drafts. Jeffrey has a story, but it is not coming to the surface. Cindy and I both spoke with him to help him "get" his story out. I will meet with both Ryan and Jeffrey on Friday
