Culminating Blog

During my hours mentoring for the Senior Capstone Project, I faced many difficulties that needed me to move outside of my comfort zone. Mentoring at an after school care program gave me the opportunity to work with kids, one of the many interests I was thinking about pursuing. The time I spent there was only for 25 hours, but it felt as though I had worked there longer. Many of the children also had a few issues or quirks of their own that I had to understand and overcome to be successful for my project, such as autism or superiority complexes that made the children hard to deal with. Along with my time with the students I assisted my mentor in tutoring the children with homework, watched them complete activities, and helped prepare other activities for upcoming days.

The first couple weeks mentoring I felt very out of place and awkward, it was hard for me to use my voice to tell a student not to do an action or have them complete a project without me telling them multiple times. I always observed my mentor and her way of handling difficult students like that, she had good control of her tone of voice and authority to get them to do what she demanded. I was able to slowly show more of myself to the children and have the connection with them to be able to tell them directions and correct their behavior when needed. I improved on this skill in the duration I mentored at the program. I was also able to create a sort of adult figure image to the children while still being a friend to them, something that I wanted to achieve.

When having to deal with difficult children, I had to put myself in their position and perspective to see what they were looking at, and why they were acting the way they were. I was able to handle a rising temper tantrum of an autistic student by telling them to calm down and breathe, and to not overreact to the situation at hand. I was successful at distracting their attention away from what was bothering them and diffusing a bad outcome. With another autistic student I wanted them to complete a coloring project for the program and a few other activities they needed to complete, and I had to negotiate with the student to come to an agreement of a couple pages of coloring a day so that they still had time to play. I did this to a few other students who needed to finish projects as well and I was in charge of that area when I was visiting to mentor. I learned to have patience for the children to get them to understand me and for me to understand them. Along with patience, I gained a skill at handling situations calmly without making the kids feel agitated or more irrational. 

Twelfth Meeting. May 5, 2014. Running total - 25 hours.

For the last couple hours of my mentoring, I walked into the classroom with the students and my mentor in time for the Mother's Day activity they had planned out. The students were to write on a piece of lined paper three things they loved about their mothers. When that was done they would glue the paper onto a colored cut out of a mother drawing. It was a cute activity they could take home afterwards. 

When that activity was about finished my mentor showed me the completed "All About Me" projects that were put into individual binders for the students to take home. Each one was unique and it was nice to see they were finally done, after the kids had colored the covers of their binders to take home. I ended my meeting by helping my mentor cut out the now lamenated math game cards I helped glue the other day into separate cards to hold and store into ziplock bags. 

Eleventh Meeting. May 3, 2014. Running total - 23 hours.

This day I arrived during the last ten minutes of the class's outside time and observed with my mentor their activities to make sure they were playing safely. We all walked into the classroom and that day there was no homework session because they had done it earlier in the day. I was given a task to cut and glue multiplication problems over addition ones for a math game the program was making for the kids. I was accompanied by an autistic student who usually didn't like new staff/volunteers, and he sat beside me as I was working on the game. He would draw tulips and chatter nonstop about them to me, which I was enthusiastically responding to him on it too. A couple times he would grab my tape/glue and mess with it, resulting in me having to take it away and telling him not to do it.

I was given another project to cut out silhouette outlines of animals for an activity the program was planning and the same student was still sitting beside me, this time cutting out his self-drawn "pine cones" which looked just like suns and placing them into a basket. A one point another student made a comment about the autistic student's pine cones, resulting in a temper tantrum. My mentor had to calm him down and console him on his drawings. I had to make an intervention to the student because it was time to clean up, and the tantrum was starting up again. I told the student to calm down and breathe to stop whining and being angry. My mentor praised me for that action.  

Tenth Meeting. May 2, 2014. Running total - 20 hours.

For this day I arrived during the time the class was walking back to the after school program room. I spent the day helping students with their homework assignments. Most students had trouble with math and some self-answer worded questions, which was normal. I walked around the classroom making sure each student wasn't having difficulty with their work and they were staying on track.

I was also given the task by my mentor to do some paperwork for some of the students' projects for the upcoming end of the year. It wasn't difficult, but I did the task I was given as a volunteer staff and student. Not much different happened on this mentoring day.