Fifth & Sixth Meeting. April 8 and 9, 2014. Running total - 12 hours

Both of these days were very similar in that I arrived just as the after school class was finish their outside time at the playground. I headed inside with them and helped out the students who needed assistance with their homework. Again I mostly aided younger students who just wanted moral support and understood the content of their work. Many of the other students didn't need help or was assisted by my mentor as her staff member.

Instead of an art project, the class was mainly focused on finishing their "All About Me" booklets during the two days. I called over some students to finish some pages of their booklet while everyone else played during the free period and waited for their parents to pick them up. During those two mentoring days I learned how to have a little more control over how to handle the students, such as telling them to sit down in their seats properly or to focus on their own work in front of them. I was still not as observant or commanding as my mentor. 

Fourth Meeting - April 7, 2014. Running total: 8 hours.

For the fourth meeting with my mentor, I arrived during their last 10 minutes of play time outside on the playground. It was an extremely hot day and most of the kids didn't want to move around, and sat at picnic benches until it was time to go. One of the students constantly complained about feeling sick, which my mentor dismissed as nothing and only an act for attention. I observed this and the time a few other students decided to drink water when it was time to go inside. They could have waited until they were back inside the after school care classroom to drink water, but chose to make everyone else wait for them. It started with one student, and then added up to two others who were influenced by that one student's action. 

Back inside the classroom, the students all took out their homework for the working period of the program. I only helped out two students who needed assistance, mostly with a student who was likely in kindergarten and needed help with simple addition, subtraction, and identification of words that started with the letter "W". The student seemed as though they had an understanding of the homework, but just wanted an adult figure by them for support. 

There was no scheduled project for that day, because my mentor decided it would be a work day to try and get students to finish their "All About Me" projects. I was able to get a good amount of students to finish coloring and cut out pieces of a project to put together as a flip booklet that displayed themselves and the place they lived in. After having students finish some of their projects, I cleaned up and took my leave. 

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. 

Second Meeting - March 31, 2014. Running total: 4 hours.

The second meeting with my mentor was for another two hours on a rainy day. I arrived during the period the students do their homework and immediately went on to assisting any kids in need of help. I helped two 3rd grade students with math assignments involving long division, and a surprisingly new method of solving the problems that the school's system was teaching. 

Next on the agenda was an art project that would come together to form a booklet all about each student's life. From "All About Me" to "On the Day I Was Born" the students color and write about different categories of their life growing up in South San Francisco. Today's page of the booklet was a coloring page about their country, the United States. They had to color a bald eagle wearing a top hat that was carrying an American Flag. 

After the activity, it was free time for the students to enjoy and play games among themselves. I was accompanied by a student who invited to play a card game with him, which I would always defeat him in accidentally. I would be surrounded by a few other kids who would be playing on their own accord and another beside me working on a math workbook they didn't seem to understand the concept of at their grade level. I left and ended my mentoring place after two hours, near the time where most of the students had taken their leave with their parents. 

First Mentor Meeting - March 3, 2014. Running total: 2 hours.

The first meeting with my mentor lasted for two hours, starting from 3:30PM to 5:30PM. When I arrived at the after school program, the students were outside at the playground lining up to walk inside. They were a lot smaller than what I imagined, and my my mentor greeted me as we all walked to the portable which was convienently located within the elementary school. I received a name tag (sticker) and introduced myself to the class, where they were all either very friendly or shy.

 

I assisted the students with their homework when the time to do homework came up through the process of a countdown and a studying background song, which was pretty effective since the students acted accordingly to the music and my mentor. Many of the children had trouble with counting or math problems, but were able to do it when I told them to use their fingers to count or try it out on their own first and looking for my approval for the correct answer.

 

My mentor pointed out an isolated student to me during my drop-by, who was selectively muted to her peers and very talkative to her parents. I noticed she followed or stared at people or who she looked up to, one of which was my mentor. Hopefully during my next visits I could get her to open up more to other people, the same goal my mentor has.

 

After the homework period ended, each student listened for the cue of the music to clean up and prepare for the daily activity of the day, today it was an craft project using label stickers of rectangular and circular shapes as different objects like tables and desks in each student's classroom. This was an activity to also teach the children about spacial recognition and adjust sizes to fit each sticker object into their classroom, which was a sheet of graphing paper. Before the project my mentor explained the activity in a simple manner for the children to understand, stopping any questions from the kids to be answered until after the explanation was finished. All the students had access to writing utensils and scissors to better aid them in recreating their classrooms. Once the projects were complete all the students helped to clean up their tables and put the utensils away for their own individual free time.

 

It was a really cute first visit, all of the kids had their little quirks and I could see that a few students would be easier to handle than others. After the musical I'll definitely have more time to do my mentoring. (^__^)

First Thoughts about Possible Project

     When thinking about what kind of project I'll do for senior capstone, the careers and majors I'm interested in will have to reflect it in some way. Three kinds of careers I have some thoughts towards would be those in the entertainment/media area, child care services, or maybe as a school teacher for younger children. With entertainment it wouldn't matter if I was in front or behind the camera since I like working on both sides. For majors in college, I would like to have them relate to my career interests though I also would want to try new topics such as language or foreign cultures. Other major choices I might choose in college could be film or something with pursuing the child care career. I'm sure there are ways to find mentors to help with doing a capstone project with these interests.