When I Grow Up...

I met with Isaac, my mentee, for the last time this past Tuesday. He and his family are moving to South Carolina in hopes of a better job market. I've been meeting with him once a week since November and he has become my new BFF. I enjoyed seeing him every week...I think he was more of a help to me than I was a mentor to him.

We both hated math but every week I would pull out the Spiderman multiplication cards and I would try and convince him how math was important and bribe him with McDonald's Happy Meals and Hershey bars when he passed a weekly multiplication quiz. He was never that motivated and I always wondered if he dreaded spending Tuesday's with me instead of going to lunch & recess with his friends.

But on our last encounter he surprised me, proved me wrong. He had been listening to me all along, remembering our conversations. Months ago I spent the entire visit explaining how math was so important and that every job he would ever do would require math. I proved my point as he told me he wanted to grow up to play video games, be a cop, a rock star, and anything else he could think of as he tried to stump me.

This past week, our last visit, he reminded me we had never finished the "Getting to Know Me" workbook we had started on our first meeting. We pulled it out and I started asking him questions from the Interest Inventory. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I asked.

He shrugged so I answered. " When I grow up I want to be happy," I told him.

He instantly replied, "Hey, you don't need math for that!"

"Yeah I guess you're right Isaac." I'm gonna miss that kid.

I told him he needed to tell his new school in South Carolina that he had a mentor in Michigan and that they needed to get him an even cooler mentor than me. He told me that no one would be as cool as me. I cried on the way home.