Third Meeting - April 1, 2014. Running total: 6 hours.

For the third meeting with my mentor I arrived just in time for the after school group to start on their art activity, which was a watercolor project. Each student had to paint within the lines of overlapping circles and not paint adjacent spaces with the same color. I figured it was to promote color recognition and placement. I assisted my mentor in handing out the activity paper and paint brushes. 

During the activity, my mentor gave me a small ongoing project to attend to on my own or when I had the time to do so. I was to help students who were behind in their "All About Me" booklets from the previous blog finish their pages whenever they had the free time to complete them. I was able to get two students to complete a couple of pages for themselves after they finished the watercolor activity and started on free time. That was the main part of my meeting for the day. This would help me to communicate and learn to get the students to comply with what I wanted them to do as a project and mission for myself. 

I also observed whenever a student was misbehaving, that my mentor and her staff member had complete authority over the students to get him or her to stop acting up just by requesting them nicely or to tell them out loud as a command of discipline. It was interesting to see that they usually had a stricter tone whenever they had to discipline verbally, and I had wondered if my voice was authoritative enough to calm students down if they started to act up. 

I ended my mentoring time by playing card and board games with the students that asked me to play with them. A good way to connect with them to get a better sense of how to care for them and for them to try and respect me as an older figure. A lot of times the students had trouble deciding what to play or who would have the first turn, and they would decide using rock, paper, scissors or another method they chose by their own accord. Sometimes it wouldn't work out and I'd have to intervene to settle disputes, or my mentor or her assistant would help me calm the children down. I still have to learn in my next visits.