Blog 4 - Half Way?

    Two weeks ago, right after my third blog post, I had two of my members show up and last week, I only had one show. I'm not so much frustrated with the participants as much as I am by the fact that the Chat Cafe is ineffective if so few people show up so sporadically. In my last blog post, I did mention the getting-to-know-you game I wanted to play with my members but haven't yet been able to do it since there hasn't been enough people.

    However, like the one previous time I only had one participant come, the conversation was really interesting! I didn't direct the conversation in this way, but the participant began discussing the education system in the USA versus South Korea, claiming he liked it more. And I was like, "Wow. I just talked about this in class yesterday." Which he thought was interesting and then we talked about our Writing 302 class and ended up talking past our hour time limit until someone kicked us out of the space that they had reserved before us. I really love the one-on-one interaction with my participants because it allows us to get to know each other much better. However, I do wish that all my members would come every week and we could all have these meaningful conversations together. I noticed when I had two members come two weeks ago, the conversation was a little slower. I'm thinking this was because the two members really hadn't met until that meeting. Even though we were already at week 6, it was like week two all over again.

    The participant that came last week asked why attendance was so slow and asked if we could change the time. I explained that this was not exactly the best thing to do as participants had a choice for which Chat Cafe they wanted to attend. This was the only advice he offered but I don't think it would work very well. Since we began Chat Cafe, all members have emailed to tell me if they would be coming, so I assume they are still invested in this group in some way. Last week, I had two no call no shows, but this was the very first time it has happened so I have been hesitant to send a list about no shows as almost all of the time my participants inform me whether or not they will be coming. Three weeks ago, I began explaining what the plan was for our next meeting, thinking this would make participants more likely to come. However, attendance is low as it was before. I guess I'll keep trying out strategies. I might also email my group and ask them to tell me if they are no longer able to come since I haven't seen two of my members since the second week.