"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires." To summarize, teaching is not an easy job. Below, I've listed a few key takeaways related to the teaching process itself.
The America Reads experience not only involves mentoring itself, but also training sessions in preparation for mentoring. At these sessions, I learned about education more broadly. Here are some tidbits I picked up:
As the Ward quote I included above exemplifies, I think that the most important lesson I learned through my experience was that teachers truly have the opportunity to strongly influence students' lives. For example, sometimes you might be serving as a friendly conversation partner a student may not otherwise have. Helping a struggling student along that would not have gotten the support he or she needed without your interference is also a possibility. Around every corner, an opportunity awaits to help a young person progress through their life, and that is a special opportunity.
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I served as a mentor for America Reads, with the responsiblity of teaching young children how to read and write better. I volunteered at Lewisdale Elementary School in Hyattsville, Maryland, twice a week for roughly two hours every session. Assigned to a team with three other UMD student mentors, I was paired up with three students: - Scarlet, an outgoing, loving second grader with a passion for learning - Emeli, a motivated, quiet first grader with a quick ability to learn - Luis, a bubbly, energetic first grader with a love for drawing To start off the experience, I had to test the students' current abilities in order to be able to measure their progress over time. Students were tested on skills including the following: - Basic letter recognition - Basic word recognition - Ability to transcribe words over a span of a few minutes After testing, I was able to start working with the students to improve their abilities. I used some of the following activities to better their skills: - Spelling out words with magnetic letters on whiteboards - Reading out loud to them while I helped them track the words I was reading on the page - Continuously referring back to areas of struggle (e.g. practicing writing out words with "p" and "q" in them to make sure students understood the difference between the two) Though my experience was cut short due to Coronavirus concerns, I am grateful of the small amount of progress I was able to make with my mentees. Most growth was seen in reducing my mentees' fear of and aversion to reading. However, I think that change in the students will make a huge difference for years to come. Reading is truly the basis for future learning and educational success, and I was glad to help instill a stronger educational base for my students.
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