Blog 2 - Summer Mentorship

1. List the contact name, phone number, and organization of the person with whom you volunteered.

• Name - Jenna Baumann
• Phone Number - 1 (951) 505-3553
• Organization - Teacher at Anderson Elementary School

2. What qualified this person as an expert in your topic choice?     

•  Mrs. Jenna was a qualified expert for my topic, because she has worked with special needs children for many years. She has been my brother's teacher for the last two years and the improvement in him is astonishing. Therefore, I knew Mrs. Jenna would be a great mentor, because of the impact she has on her students. 

3. List three questions for further exploration now that you've completed your summer hours.    

• How does a repeated lesson affect your whole lesson plan?
• What helps the students to learn easier?
• When does the teacher know to move on to a different lesson?

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

• The most important thing that I gained from this experience is patience. I learned to be patient because of the students. The students at Anderson Elementary all have special needs, therefore the faculty and I had to be very patient with the students because of their disabilities. For example, Mrs. Jenna had planned to learn about farm animals for only one day, but since the students had a hard time the lesson ended up being two days more than expected. Some students learned quicker than others, but others still had trouble. Therefore, I would have to sit down and go over the same topic more than once, but with the patience that I gained throughout the days it became much more easier on me and the students.

5. What is your senior project topic going to be?  How did mentorship help you make your decision?  Please explain.

• I'm still confuse on what I would want my senior topic to be. I was hoping to have the topic of the development of students learning. My mentorship helped me with my decision because seeing how each student learn differently can really affect them. Some students used puzzles instead of cards to learn the different animal sounds. Also some students had different worksheets. The worksheets would all have the same topic, but some would have more pictures or more color than others. Some students would learn with the iPads. They would push the sound or color of the animal to explain themselves or to name out the animal that was being shown to them. Seeing all the different ways the students can learn made me want to learn more and wonder why they need to learn that way.