HCSD Preschool
My last post for Career Mentorship 1 is a little bit different than the others, I made a video reflecting on my experiences instead of a blog post.
Click here to watch my final vlog!
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Happy Thanksgiving! This week I want to share some of the things I am thankful for in my life. I am the most thankful for my parents, who always support me and have helped me grow into the person I am today. They have taught me how to be an individual and to not be afraid of being different. I am also thankful for my best friend, who is always there for me and has kept me sane throughout high school. Another thing I am grateful for is being a part of Darby’s yearbook staff. I am grateful for the opportunity to work with other students to produce a book that the whole school can enjoy. I am also grateful to be the senior editor, as it has allowed me to grow as a leader and set a good example for the underclassmen on staff. In addition, I am thankful for this mentorship opportunity that I have this semester. Finding a placement was a challenge, because I had initially wanted to spend time in a lab and studying blood. However, I still found a mentor site that I love, and I am grateful for the opportunity to spend time in the preschool and learn more about that career field. This week while mentoring at the preschool, there was a day when I was helping the preschoolers get their stuff ready to go home, but one student did not want to cooperate. He did not want to put his coat on or zip his backpack, and instead he took another student’s hat and tried to put it on me. In doing so, he basically just held the hat against my face, so that I could not see anything. He would not listen when I told him to stop or give the hat back. At the preschool, they talk a lot about the different "zones" you could be in, and at that point this child was definitely in the red zone. In that moment I was unsure of how to handle the situation. I decided to sit him in my lap and give him a big bear hug, holding his arms down, until the classroom teacher came to help calm him down. I am not sure how she got him to cooperate and get ready to leave, as after that happened I went to help other students that needed their coats zipped or gloves put on. If this or something similar were to happen again, I would probably handle it the same way, and allow a teacher who is better equipped to deal with the situation take care of that student, until I learn how to do so myself. Calming down a student who is uncooperative or misbehaving is one of the things I want to learn how to do before my mentoring for this semester is over. Since there are only a few weeks left, I need to start asking more questions when a situation like this occurs. So far, I have mostly been going with the flow of whatever happens in the classroom, but I need to be more purposeful when mentoring in order to learn what I want to learn and gain from this experience. At this point, I have learned that there is a lot of cutting, gluing, and other forms of crafting on the teacher’s end that goes on in preparation for the activities each day. Before this, I thought that it would mostly be the students doing the arts and crafts, but there is just as much designing and creating for the teachers to do as there is for the students. I would not mind that if I were to follow this path, but it is just something new I have learned while mentoring that I did not know before. One of the things I wanted to learn about while mentoring is how different specialists, such as psychologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech/language therapists, have an impact on a child’s learning and development. I have chosen the two that seem the most interesting to me, occupational therapy and speech/language therapy, and talked to my mentors about scheduling a day to shadow them instead of being in the regular classroom. I have learned that this experience is totally dependent on me, and that it is up to me to ask questions to get the most out of this opportunity. This is sometimes challenging for me, as I am typically a more reserved person, and I don’t speak up when I should. Outside of my mentor site, we have been talking about Twitter over the past couple of weeks in our mentorship class. The HCSD Preschool twitter page (@HCSDPreschool) is geared towards parents, since it is unlikely that students at the ages of three and four have their own account. They mostly tweet reminders for PTO events, book fairs, spirit nights, and other in-school activities. The HCSD Preschool Twitter account is followed mostly by their staff and parents of the school. The account follows their teachers as well as local education-related organizations, such as the Hilliard Education Association and the Hilliard Education Foundation. It also follows other schools in the district, including Alton Darby Elementary School, and other local organizations, like the Hilliard Food Pantry. For me, it is important to follow my mentor and my mentor site on Twitter so that I can learn what else may be involved with a career in this field that I may not see from only being in two classrooms. It is also important to learn what kinds of news is important to my mentor site, as that will also help to give me an accurate perception of this career field. I mentored two more days this week, and I am still adjusting to the classrooms. They are very different from the traditional high school classrooms that I have grown used to; there are fewer students and more adults, and there are a lot of things going on at once. While the main teacher is working with the majority of the class on a new letter of the alphabet or reading a story, sometimes there are other students who have trouble focusing or need other individual attention. Typically in these situations, an assistant will pull that student out of the main circle and sit with them and help them to focus their attention back towards the activity at hand. It gets a little crazy when there are multiple students who require individual attention, and that is how there ends up being so many different things happening in the room all at once. All of the teachers and assistants are amazing, though, and I want to learn more about the different techniques they use to calm those students when a situation like that arises. The teachers I am with are also super helpful in explaining what different activities are for and answering any questions I may have. For example, there was a day when one of the classrooms had a table set up with various counting activities, and I learned about the different activities that you can do with students all with the same materials, depending on their level of understanding the numbers. So far, mentoring in the preschool has been a blast, and I love watching the students as they are learning and processing new information. My favorite part has been watching their faces light up when something clicks in their mind and they begin to understand things better. I am looking forward to watching the students grow even more over the next few weeks! This week was my first time mentoring, and although I only mentored two days, it already has been so much fun. Before I officially started, though, I met with the two teachers that will be my mentors on Monday in their classrooms. I learned some of the ground rules for their classes, and it was a nice practice run for driving there and making sure I know where I am going. My first days at the Hilliard Preschool were a little chaotic, because although I am older than the students there, I do not really know how their classes operate. Some of them would ask me questions that I did not know the answer to, but they probably do not realize that I am new and they actually know more about their class than I do. Outside of my mentor site, we have been discussing social media in our mentorship class. Most schools/teachers use social media to share what their class is doing with the parents of their students or with other teachers. I think social media is a useful tool for businesses/professionals to share what their goals are and how they are working to meet them. I also think that social media is a great way to share personal events and achievements with friends and family, as well as being a way for individuals to find other professionals and make connections with others in their field. If I had the ability to get rid of social media, I would not. It allows companies and individuals alike to connect with others on a professional or personal level, and is an amazing resource so long as it is used properly. During the past week, I have emailed two teachers at the Hilliard Preschool, and they have agreed to mentor me in their classrooms! I will be sitting in on their afternoon classes, which run from 1:00 to 3:30, Tuesday through Friday. We have scheduled a meeting on Monday for me and my program coordinator to meet with them to further discuss what the Career Mentorship Program entails. Throughout the course of the program so far, I have learned so many valuable skills for success in the professional world that otherwise I never would have learned how to do. One of the first things we did in the program was learn how to write a cover letter when applying for a position and address it to the right person. Another thing we learned how to do was create a strong résumé to showcase ourselves and our accomplishments. I have also learned how to communicate with other professionals and represent myself well, even though we are not meeting in person. For example, I learned how to make professional phone calls when calling the two independent labs and the American Red Cross as I explained in my first post. In addition, I learned how to compose professional emails and attach my cover letter when contacting the professors at Columbus State, which I described in my second post. I am so thankful that I have had the opportunity to participate in this program, and I am excited to start mentoring in the preschool classrooms this week! I am sad to report that I still have had no luck in finding a place that will allow me to mentor someone in their lab. As a result, I have been brainstorming other fields that I may be interested in learning more about. While medical laboratory science is my first choice for a career to gain experience in, there are other paths that I could also see myself enjoying, and I think would be worthwhile to explore those areas as well. My second choice for a career is early childhood education. If I were to explore this path, I would want to spend time in a preschool classroom and learn how to teach students at such a young age. I have always loved working with young children, and I already have some experience in working with preschoolers through my time volunteering at St. Brendan’s Vacation Bible School. Another idea for me would be to spend time with the biology teachers in my high school building. Biology is my favorite science course that I have taken, I remember loving almost every topic we studied in that class. If I cannot visit a real lab, I would still enjoy learning about that material and how to teach it to other students. Despite the fact that the direction of my path is changing and will be different from what I had initially hoped, I am still optimistic and keeping an open mind for new experiences that I had never considered before. I still do not have a mentor for this semester yet, but I have not given up searching for one. Since I have been unable to find a mentor from a professional lab, I have started contacting professors at Columbus State Community College to see if I could mentor with them in the lab they use for their students. I am already registered as a student there as a part of the College Jumpstart Program, which is also offered through the McVey Innovative Learning Center. I emailed one professor at first, but unfortunately she said she would be unable to provide me with an accurate reflection of the field of medical laboratory science. I then emailed the program coordinator of that field, but I have not heard anything back. In the meantime, I have been productive in using my extra time to get other work done. When I am not calling labs or emailing professors, I have been studying and even getting ahead on work in some classes so that when I do start mentoring I will not have a lot on my plate to do all at once. I feel that I am good at managing my time, as when I have free time I prioritize school work over watching movies or playing games. Although I am still searching for a mentor and I have yet to find a placement, I know that once I find one and get settled in I will still gain valuable experience in that field, even if it is a little later than I had hoped. Hi! I’m Amadea, a senior at Hilliard Darby High School. This year I am a part of the Career Mentorship Program offered through the McVey Innovative Learning Center. This program is an opportunity for high school juniors and seniors to explore a career they might be interested in pursuing. This semester, I hope to mentor with a medical laboratory scientist, who conducts tests on blood or other types of samples. Through this program, I hope to gain a more accurate perspective of the different responsibilities and types of tasks that someone in this profession would perform, and this blog will help me document my experiences and share what I am learning about each week. Since I do not have a placement yet, I have been contacting different laboratories trying to find a mentor. I have called two different independent labs, Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, that process blood samples for OhioHealth, as well as calling the American Red Cross. I have not heard back from either of the independent labs, but I learned that the Red Cross only has three labs across the country that process samples, and none of them are in Ohio. In addition, my program coordinator has been contacting various hospitals to try to find a placement for me, but we have not had any luck yet. Even though I do not have a mentor yet, I know that eventually I will find a placement, and no matter where I end up I will learn what I can about that career and make the most of my experience. |
AuthorA high school senior exploring the field of early childhood education. Archives
December 2018
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