Buddy

I had our bi-weekly call with A, the family rep. last night. She is very nice to talk to, we ended up talking for almost an hour (most of it not about Katie)!

Katie had a bit of an up and down week. The real up point was that she attended the 'Orientation' seminar, this time as a Buddy, and once again graduated. Orientation is the first seminar the kids attend, and it introduces them to a lot of the concepts. They assign an 'older' (meaning one who has been through it) girl to each pair of new girls going through it as a buddy, to help them out. Apparently she had mixed feelings about this, but ended up doing ok and graduating again from it. I tried to emphasize with her (in my letter this week) that this is a good thing, and there is always more to learn. Even teachers learn when they teach a subject (and in fact, you never learn anything as well as when you teach it).

Then in group later in the week things didn't go quite so well. She brought up that she felt she was being 'disrespected' by several of the girls there. After she finished, A simply stated that if she talked to the other girls the way she had presented in group, then it would instead come across that she was disrespecting them. She, of course, did not like hearing that one little bit.

So it was mixed progress. We'll wait and see where she goes now - if she takes the opportunity to learn and grow, or shuts down, falls back into her old patterns, and loses the little bit of momentum she had gained.