Student to Mentor!!!

   It has always been my dream to teach. In early childhood, I tried acting like my teachers, I had blackboards at home on which I wrote and taught nobody else but myself, or sometimes I played this with my friends, as most children do when they start going to school. But my dream of teaching was not so finite, which ended with age. I wanted to teach children, share the little knowledge that I had, especially with the ones who had limited sources. By now you must have understood! Yes, I'm going to talk about my journey in the field of Social Work. 

   How about being a teacher in reality? Somewhat similar, I started with it. Although I had little experience since I have always been teaching my brother, but being a 9th grader, I had no idea how things would work in such an organization! "Everything has its first time"... But of course nothing was possible without guidance. A session was conducted explaining how we were going to work and we began. I started making the PPT (Power Point Presentation). Days passed, classes were being conducted, weeks passed and the collaboration was still on. The children loved my classes, I too took great pleasure in teaching them. Finally, a month passed, the program was successfully completed, we wrote our reports, a graduation ceremony was held and I got my certificate.🙌  

                                                

   Not just one, but I participated in many programs of Tribes for GOOD, in all these fieldwork classes, I played the role of a teacher, after the first program, I was selected as a 'high performing student', I was obliged. After completing a few programs, almost a month back, I was offered the opportunity of being a student teacher mentor, which means, now I didn't have to teach but guide the teachers who would teach the students, (coordinator of the class). The students who would teach now were to be mentored by me. There was a short interview conducted before the selection of the mentors, I was chosen and I started coordinating the classes, I did have one or two classes where I had to teach and I was jubilant to see how friendly and comfortable the children felt with me, they responded to all my questions.😄

   This journey of being a student to teacher to a student teacher mentor was superb. I was told that the position of a mentor was one step further, leadership position, so it was not a piece of cake, here I had to mentor students who were even older than me, not only did I have to explain the process to them, but also give them feedbacks after the class, clear their doubts, alongside maintaining a friendly relationship with them. Mentoring also meant reacting to their work but in a polite manner of course, even if it was not up to the mark, I should know how to handle it with patience, advise the teacher to improve their work, how it can be done without many hindrances, what the issue was, what better ways can be used to teach, all such things but again in a friendly way so that the teacher too gets motivation to do better. This is how I learnt to work professionally. 👩

   I prepared games for the children through which they could understand better. I mainly had to deal with 8th and 9th standards. Earlier in the programs, we had also worked on other areas like Career Handbook which was a great and innovative way for the children to learn about more and more career options available for them (mainly in Science and Mathematics). It was a digital book created by us (student teachers) for the students. This little book carried lots of information. The next activity we worked on was making STEM kits, this was the one that I enjoyed the most. STEM kit simply means: Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics kits. This was an eye-catching method of learning some important Science and Mathematics concepts. We designed handy kits for the children which contained tools for Science experiments, Mathematics related concepts and things which made learning faster and easier. We gave our inputs, the kits contained a variety of objects and instruments for STEM which can prove to be excellent career options too. The coming age is scientific and we want to encourage more and more students especially girls to opt for the Science or Mathematics related professions, these are the most recommended careers too! STEM is really useful, we find such kits perfect for learning. Children apply their knowledge. This time, we worked conducting a career awareness session (STEM related).🎒

   It has always been wonderful working with Tribes for GOOD and for a pretty long time now! We learnt to be empathetic and not just sympathetic. Thank you so much for making my journey so beautiful! Student to teacher to a mentor.