"Coley, I thought we would have started already.... I feel like he's winning this war and just gets to laze around and do nothing on my watch. If you can't do it, that's fine, I'll just find something else to do with him..."
Meaning another military school or psychiatric inpatient unit or something else that won't work. He was pretty worked up, so I did what I had to do to calm him down. I have that great psychologist tone in my voice that can soothe a roaring bear, so I used it.
"I'll tell you what, we'll get started Tuesday. I understand your frustration, but it takes a little time to prepare all of this school work...." Et cetera, et cetera. It was the Thursday before the Tuesday I just promised to start upon; I had just made my challenge that much more difficult.
I took the weekend to prepare the week, make a schedule for the year, look over his transcripts and learn what we really intended to accomplish. Using Oak Meadow's requirements for graduating their program, I approximated the credits that he had earned versus the credits that we had in front of us: he had earned 6 credits of the 23 needed. Of what he passed, his grades weren't terrible (B's and C's). It was obvious to me that his problem is not that he doesn't understand, just that he doesn't do the work or care.
The dilemma is this: I will hopefully be starting my graduate studies in the fall of 2010. This will take me out of commission for about 7 years; I may be able to take a part-time fall, but after that I am living, breathing earning my doctorate. So we have a year, maybe a year and a half to complete this. Trevor turns 18 in April 2010. Can we fit 17 credits into a year and a half?
I made a schedule. Working on five subjects at a time, it is possible. He has some half classes under his wing, so we'll complete those first: Spanish I, World Geography, Algebra I, English 10, and Nutrition and Food Science for September and October. November, December, and January, we can power through German I (his choice since he doesn't care for the Spanish), US History, Geometry, American Literature, and PE. February, March, and April we can knock out Chemistry, World History, Consumer Mathematics, and World Literature (with some SAT prep on the side). Then from May through August we can accomplish Environmental Science, US Government, Psychology, Art, and if all has gone well to this point, I promised him he could take a correspondence course to learn Game Design (he loves that idea). Obviously, this is wishful thinking. I am fully aware it will take longer to complete these, and I am ready to go over schedule on all of it. But, it's a logical track for the courses, so I'll at least stick to that.
I show up to Trevor's house at about 1 pm on Tuesday. I have been awake since 4, worked at my office job from 7 am to noon, and I am prepared. And believe it or not, so was he. Trevor is a notorious sleeper; he stays up till who knows what hour playing WOW and then sleeps through the day. He opened the door for me and gave me a huge smile.
"What's up, man, you ready?" I'm always smiling and enthusiastic in hopes it will rub off. He gave me a big nod.
"Oh yeah."
"Great, let's do this!"
Trevor lives with his grandmother, who leaves for work while we are studying. We are allotted his dining room table for a study area; it sits far too close, maybe 20 feet, from his gaming computer. I know already there's no way we're staying at this table for the majority of our work; I already have plans to get him a laptop and myself a netbook so that we can travel around and work. So we sit down.
"In order to work in your favor, I have to know a little more about you. I'm a big believer in tests, so let's start there." I am a huge fan of the Myers-Briggs personality types. While they're no tell-all, they give a great idea of what general material we work with. So I had him take a personality test. "I want to work with you, so I'd like to know more about how you function."
I am an ENFP: Extroverted, Intuitive, Feeler, Perceiver. For more on Myers Briggs types, do a google search. I score very strongly on the E and the P; about 25%/75% split. I score just into the I and the F; I'm about 45%/55% on those. Trevor scored very balanced: no more than 45%/55% on all of the scales. But his result? ENFP. No wonder we get along.
So I pull out one of my favorite books, Do What You Are by Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron. It uses your Myers Briggs Type to suggest occupations that fit your personality (I highly suggest you look into it if you're still trying to determine a career path). We flipped open to his sections (we also looked at INFP since he scored 50/50 on that scale) and started reading. Turns out Trevor is very interested in architecture, so we discuss it for a bit.
"Speaking of things you're interested in, I want to know more about what you like so I can incorporate them as much as possible. Write down 10 things you're interested in," I said. He wrote me a list:
- Architecture
- Game Design
- UFC
- Guns
- Metal [as in music]
- Barber
- USMC [US Marine Corps]
- Weight lifting
- History
He couldn't come up with a 10th item. I asked him more about the barber thing, and he said he always thought it would be interesting to be a barber, like the old-fashioned type. Interesting indeed.
Moving on. I discussed the schedule with him, reminded him that this week would be short because I was finishing my last week at my office job, and reminded him that this week was a kind of "warm up," so to speak. We made a list of supplies and talked about the Spanish and Food and Nutrition courses he had already started (distance education). I asked him again: "Are you ready for this?" He just gave me a firm nod. My only choice at this point is to believe him.
As part of the English course, I was told that we need to work on his spelling. I decided to find out where he was in sort of a difficult way: I gave him a quiz on the 106 most misspelled words. I reminded him that this wasn't for a grade, but that he needed to put his best effort into it so that I can truly know his abilities on these words. So we began. This is where I first learned just how distractible Trevor can be.
Every other word, it reminded him of some story he needed to tell me. Mind you, up until this point, we've been chit-chatting over a variety of things, so I hadn't needed to redirect him. Trevor has a fantastic sense of humor, so he tells jokes and funny stories. I must have told him 50 times: "Let's finish this quiz first." It took forever, maybe 30 to 45 minutes, to get through this quiz. He got 25 of 106 correct, which is fine since most people don't spell these words correctly. I figured if we could get these tricky ones of front, the rest will follow through. I reminded him that we would have a quiz (for a grade) over the same words on Friday.
So we wrapped things up. It had been about 3 hours, all I had intended to do the first day, and we had gotten to know each other better. But he wasn't done with me.
"You have a minute? I want to show you something." Of course I agreed. He took me over to his computer and proceeded to show me funny video clips and stuff on YouTube. It donned on me how starved for friendship and attention he was.
Somehow we got onto his military school experience. He began telling me awful stories about what he had been through, including his inpatient experience. He told me how he was locked in a room for weeks, drugged, etc, and that his neighbor had killed his parents and sister with a clubhammer and his other neighbor wouldn't stop screaming. It broke my heart.
After listening to more stories, I finally had to go. He thanked me, and walked me to my car. My first day was done. I didn't quite know what to think.
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