Mentor Monday: Catch Up Time!

It's a rainy, yucky day and I'm up early for once.  It is also Mentor Monday so I figured I should get on here and blog since I've been away so long.  I really want to keep up the practice of writing but I have a feeling early mornings and late nights are going to be needed to accomplish that.  So with out further ado, I give you

Mentor Monday:

 

I've been meeting pretty consistently with A, my mentee.  Holidays tend to fall on Mondays so we had to adjust the schedule.  Since I am behind I think I'll break it down:

How it is going:

A is a talented, funny, artistic girl who is very much 15 years old.  15 is apparently a very hard year to live through.  I seemed to forget this but when talking to K the intern she reminded me, "Kelly, every day is the worst day of your life when you are 15."  Thinking back, she is right.  10th grade, not so fun.  Moving on.   

It is a challenge to get A to say what she wants to do rather than worrying about what I would like to do.  One meeting we spent coming up with a plan for our meetings because the hour goes by very quickly and I also need to know what to wear.  Doing Just Dance 3 in a black dress and bare feet is not something I want to repeat again.  It took the full hour to come up with a three session plan, which shows you how difficult it was to get her to just say what she wants.

What we've been doing: 

Me trying to copy A's art

A's art...much better than mine

I had to make one for Dolly, K the intern got one too!

The world's worst sugar cookies

Some day, I promise to learn how to do a photo collage, I am sure Picasa makes it easy.  But it's early Monday morning and that is just not happening right now.   

As you can see above, A is an artist so we spent one session drawing, one session coming up with a list, after planning so I could bring work out clothes, we started a ZUMBA video series with the instructional party which really informative.   I've been doing ZUMBA for a few years and for the most part I've just learned as I went along.  Having them moves broken down and taught one by one helped me realize why I trip up some of the steps.  Next time we'll do one of the work outs.  The last session we baked cookies.  The world's worst sugar cookies that everyone else claimed they liked. I  didn't realize that sugar cookies from scratch (as opposed to Betty Crocker) need to set.  These did not set and we had to mix them with a hand mixer because that was all we could fine (at first).  Hand mixer, you know one of these puppies:  

Source

Not the best way to create cookie dough.  They were thick and dry so we slathered them with homemade lime frosting (once we found a real mixer) and called it a day.  Hopefully her younger siblings enjoyed them, with a big glass of milk.

Going forward:

Tonight I am looking forward to a game night, probably Apples to Apples and then adding to the schedule.  We are going to exercise every other week so next week will probably be ZUMBA.  I am going to continue to encourage her to speak up for herself and tell others what she wants. It isn't an easy thing to do, especially when she takes on a lot of responsibility for her younger brothers and sisters.  Hopefully our sessions are a place where she can be free, confident, and have time to focus just on herself.