What I Hope to Gain/Learn

Before I talk about what I hope to gain and learn from this mentorship, I want to talk about how my week went! This week was only a short, two-day week because there was no school on Friday! So, on Tuesday Mrs. Zawisza practiced with the kids on learning place value! This is new material for them so they don’t have the hang of it quite yet! It was fun seeing Mrs. Zawisza use newer technology when she linked the iPad to her computer and then onto the projector so she could use a place value app for all the kids to see! It was also exciting because the kids replied to a twitter message Mrs. Zawisza got from a first grade classroom in Virginia! It is great how connected with the world they are! The kids also finished the Zoo maps they made, and wrote out directions using North, East, South and West!

On Thursday, I was very busy because Mrs. Zawisza let me work with 3-4 kids all at once at my table! I’ve been wanting to work with more kids at once and I sure did get it! It was difficult to spread my attention between all of them because we were working on math problems and some of them were stuck on different parts of the problem, but I believe I handled it fantastically and learned pretty fast how to move ahead with some kids and how to go slower with others. Then, I played a new place value math game with a group of kids and that was the end of our math session! Next, we moved on to sharing and reading Zoo maps to the whole class! It was cute looking at the different maps and animals that students had!

Oh! I almost forgot that I was surprised with a bag of Valentines waiting for me at my table! Check out the picture in my Gallery! I’m so happy that the kids thought of me and included me into their celebration! They passed them out at recess though so, I didn’t get to see the “party” (technically it wasn’t a party because J.W. changed their policy so they weren’t allowed to have a party but could pass out Valentine’s). It’s the thought that counts though!

Now, I want to talk about what I hope to get out of this mentorship experience! I have five goals that I hope to accomplish by the end of my mentorship:

1. Read a book(s) to the classroom!

2. Mentor with an older elementary school grade!

3. Mentor with another 1st grade classroom that is working on different subjects!

4. Learn class management and better communication skills (with the kids and other teachers)!

5. Learn different techniques to educate students and how to motivate/ inspire them to want to learn!

Although, these are my top 5 goals, I will not limit myself to only 5 goals! As I get more experience and learn more about a first grade classroom, I will eventually have more things I want to learn and therefore more goals! I also want to stretch myself (get out of my comfort zone) throughout this mentorship by slowly putting myself into positions where I have to speak in front of my students and my mentor, like my first goal of reading a book. Then, maybe by the end of my experience I could do a small lesson with them! Moreover, I will use all of my strengths to achieve my goals by always staying positive at my mentor site, being restorative and fixing any problems that may come my way, using individualization to learn everyone’s unique personality, being an achiever to get things done, and then being responsible to do things right and to be seen as a dependable person.