Blog 1: Mentorship Component

Literal: Orange Elementary- 21 hours

Contact Information - Susan Stowell: (951) 736-3455

   
 • Set up Mrs. Stowell's 1st grade classroom

    • Assisted with organizing and recorded all paperwork for children's safety protocols

    • Helped students with writing and math worksheets

    • Assisted the teacher with any other tasks she needed done i.e. tearing and sorting 
out papers
• Created "Mountain Math" notebooks
• Read with the children and tested them on their books with an online program

    • Kept track of students. None died. I count this as a success

Questions:

    • Why would anyone work with children?

    • How do you apply and receive a teaching job to attain for over 20 years?

    • How does teaching high school differ from teaching elementary school?

    • What is the most effective way to communicate to your students the lesson plan 
for the day?

    • How do you maintain a peaceful classroom?

    • How do you appropriately deal with conflict that arises either with students or 
parents?
• What is the process in which to successfully create a lesson plan for a year?
• Are there techniques to maintain control in the classroom without losing your
patience?
• What are the main differences between teaching elementary school and teaching
high school? What drives a teacher to chose between the different levels?

Interpretive:

What is the most important thing you gained from this experience? Why?

I learned how to approach teachers and how to receive an opportunity to get service learning hours. Although I do not want to use teaching first grade as my topic, I did discover that I do want to do something under teaching; this project allows me to obtain experience for my future career.

Applied:

  How did what you did help you choose a topic?  Please explain.

I realized, after completing my mentorship component, that I never really want to leave school. I love teaching just not necessarily fond of little children. I love chemistry though so I believe that teaching high school chemistry would be an interesting topic for senior year. I have talked to Mr. Pang about it, and although I could not collect my 50 hours by helping him throughout the year, I have been able to be listed as a tutor to students, take a college level chemistry course, and contact college professors at Cal Poly to help in the stock room. I realize though, after many phone calls and scathingly painful email replies, that most teachers from other schools do not trust nor want to be reliable for a high school student to be around chemicals. My goal for next year is to find a teacher willing to let me become a teacher’s assistant so I can finish my service learning.