Mentor Conferencing Journal with First Year Teacher

First Year Teacher: Su Wanying

Teaching position: Green Ville Immersion Kindergarten teacher

Daily schedule:

9:00-10:05 Chinese

10:05-10:30 snack time

10:30-11:40 Math

11:45-12:30 Lunch and Recess

12:30-3:30 same for switching class.

3:40 end of school.

Mentor Conferencing Journal 1

7:30 – 8:15, Sep 14th on WeChat.

Wanying is the immersion kindergarten teacher in Green Ville. I think she did a great job since

this is the first year for both of her and her student on Chinese. I even learn some small things

from her description on classroom setting and cooperation with school staffs. Since she is a new
teacher and her students are beginning Chinese learners, she met with many troubles and feel

struggle on both giving instructions and classroom management.

Wanying asked me several different questions about instructional issues. The most struggle and

emergency issue she picked is using target language. Every time when I meet some problem, I

think from two side: what students need? What is teaching target? From the students’ side, I

totally agree with that kindergarten students are too small to absorb a lot Chinese in one day.

They might can only remember one sentence from Chinese class each day, like one simple

sentence or one direction word. Therefore, teacher should keep doing repetition of the target

sentence. Take teaching “wo jiao____. (my name is ____. )” as an example. After students

repeat following the teacher, a self-introduction game is needed for practice. Teacher can ask

each students “ni jiao shen me ming zi? (what is your name?) and let students answer in Chinse

“wo jiao ____.(my name is ____. )”. Students can listen and speak repeatedly during the game

by listening and speaking. Meanwhile, teacher can assess and correct each students’

pronunciation. After sitting on the carpet, kindergarten students need some movement. One

simple game is: play music and let students walk in the classroom. When music stop, meet with

someone closest and introduce with the sentence “wo jiao ____.(my name is ____. )”. In this

process, there are plenty repetition happened which can meet students’ need. Meanwhile,

repeating the question “what is your name?” in Chinese can help to prepare for the next class.

Wanying also asked a question about management issue. She mentioned that there are one

student not very engaged in Chinese class. From my personal experience, I suggest her build

connection with the student first, and see the student interested in. Build a behavior system or a

reward system might be helpful.

In my opinion, the conference goes well because I understand her feelings and I know what she

exactly asking for. I tried my best to give her answer. She likes the games I offered for teaching

language. In the same time, since I am teaching language and culture, I am not very confidence

on giving suggestions to an immersion classroom teacher. For her issues, I tried more on giving

specific solutions that she can directly use in her classroom. However, a specific solution can be

just applied on one situation. How can I support her more in the limit time? Instead of just giving

suggestions, maybe describing the process that I think and work on a problem is more important.

In the future, I will focus on teaching her the process of solving problems instead of giving

solutions. On the other hand, I noticed that making connections between real classroom and

learned theory is very challenge for new teachers. For instance, she learned scaffolding, but she

doesn’t know how to use it to make class goes smoothly. As a mentor, I will also pay more

attention on teaching her how to apply the theories into real class.

Title: Mentor Conferencing Journal 2

8:00 – 9:15, Oct 13rd on WeChat.

1. Target language

Wanying mentioned her struggle to using the target language in the last meeting. She couldn’t

give instruction and direction without English, because students don’t understand Chinese. When

students didn’t understand her, they started to cause a classroom management problem. For

enhancing the percentage of using Chinese, I recommended she do more repentance with simple

words and sentences. She tried and gave me some feedback. One thing makes us happy is she

can use 90% Chinese to give instruction! She said the students reacted and applied those words
she kept repeating. Thus enough repetition is workable for her students. It is naive to image how

much work she did for applying Chinese in teaching beginner kindergarten students. She said she

tried those theories and strategies of teaching language I gave her last time. I am very glad my

suggestions worked. On the other side, she still feels doing classroom management with Chinese

is hard. She feels like she has to use English when the class needs a talk. I agree and I think a

serious talk about behavior problems can be in English. The point is how to avoid the situation

that needs a serious talk. I suggest her making the reward and punish system more completely in

Chinese. Therefore she can cultivate students’ behavior in Chinese. She created some callbacks

in Chinese. Like “嘴巴不说话，眼睛看老师。” (mouths are zipped, eyes on the teacher.) In my

opinion, it is an effective method for enhancing the opportunity of speaking Chinese for students.

She has a good start.

2. Classroom management

The other question Wanying asked in the last meeting is about classroom management. To be

more specific, it is about a student, who is not very engaged in Chinese class and has behavior

issues. My suggestion was to build a connection with the student and make a reward system. She

did build a relationship with the students. She knows more about the student’s background: his

parent has been divorced. Both of us believe it is a reason why the student always wants more

attention and can’t control himself. However, she still doesn’t know how to help the student on

self-control, growing up and being mature. I asked her about the rewards and consequences. She

said she is using the system used in the whole school. The prize is collecting stars for the star

jacket, the consequence is three warning – quiet place – send back to English teacher – send to

principle and call parents. The system is not very workable for this student.
The situation of this student makes me related to the experience of teaching special needs

students. Therefore, I suggested she do an individual support system for the kid. I introduced an

effective method I used before: a behavior record book. A behavior book is used for recording

student’s daily behavior. On each page, there is a form. On the left side, there is a student’s daily

schedule. On the right, there are 3 circles match with each period.

A simple example:

morning O O O

Chinese O O O

lunch O O O

math O O O

If the student does a great job in the morning, he or she can color the smiling face green. Warns

mean color the second circle yellow, and send to principle means red in the last circle. This

record can help both teachers and students visually. For teachers, the color data can show the

time and the period that the students easily get into trouble. For the student, he or she can see his

or her behaviors in the whole day. Meanwhile, parent can see the day of their child. For making

the record book more useful, there should be a reward system with this record book. For

example, all green in the day means to pick a friend to sit with during lunch. 6 green means free

to walk with a teacher in the school. I am not sure about how useful the record book can be for

Wanying’s student, but I think it deserves to try. We are going to see what will happen in the

future.

Mentor Conferencing Journal 3

10:00 – 11:30, Nov. 3rd on WeChat.

This is the last meeting with Wanying. We still focused on the two main problems, one is using

the target language and another is classroom management. I asked her how everything was

progressing so far and received many positive feedback. She said the problem of using the target

language has been completely resolved. Except for managing serious behavior problems with

certain students, she can use 90% percent Chinese during the school day. It is an enormous

improvement compared with the beginning of the school year. On the other side, the problem of

classroom management hasn’t been completely resolved but was improving in a good direction.

She is more confident in dealing with classroom management issues and controlling students in

the classroom. She said now she knows what needs to do when recognizing issues instead of

with nothing in mind. We also talked about the naughty boy who we were concentrating on.

Wanying mentioned that the boy may need more time to get used to the reward-punishment

program we created for him, but he is much better with significant development. I am glad to

help her and witness her growth in teaching.

This experience provides me some new realizations on myself. I was very nervous in the

beginning because I didn’t have the confidence to be a mentor. Even though this is my third year,

I still have confusion and struggles with my own job. How can I help Wanying with her issues?

After meetings, I feel this role gives me a chance to look back at myself. There many same issues

with Wanying I had in the first year. This connection helps me better understand her and provide

suggestions. Meanwhile, I can see the reason why I, and most new teachers, have same struggles

in the first year. I can see the process how I learned and adjusted through the past two years.

At the same time, I also learn new things from Wanying. She is at the position of immersion

which is very different from mine. Therefore, her class design gives me many new ideas and
refreshed my mind on teaching. We talked about Pinyin and Characters, which is my confusion

recently. She encourages me to focus more on characters since she got many positive feedback

from her students on it. We talked about teaching resources and share what we have.

Wanying is a positive teacher with all passion and effort. I cannot imagine how hard it is for her

and how much she did as a first year teacher. I feel my passion and enthusiasm for teaching is

stimulated by her. I start to examine my thoughts and philosophy on teaching. Even though this

year is the last year for me in the program, there are still a lot I can learn from new teachers, and

of course, other experienced teachers. This experience is a treasure learning moment for me to

improve and develop. I am very glad to have been given the opportunity to be a mentor and

excited to enhance my teaching with what I have learned.