Annika Desando

Natalie Atkin

GART 4000

19 November 2021

Week 11 Reflection

I have enjoyed my time as a mentor. I have appreciated being able to lead my mentees

towards success and help them in any way I can.

One highlight of my mentor experience has been my mentees. Every time they ask me for

help with something or need something from me, it makes me feel happy. I enjoy being able to

help my mentees just like my past mentors have done for me. It is nice to know that my mentees

feel comfortable enough to come to me whenever they need something.

Another highlight of being a mentor has been creating lessons. In my program, we make

lesson plans all the time, but we rarely get to execute them. Because of COVID, I have not been

able to fully experience a teaching placement to learn what works and what does not for a lesson.

Getting this experience from mentorship has taught me so much about lesson planning for the

future. I now know how to identify what works in a lesson and how to make changes to any

challenges for the future. I have also been able to gather resources for future lessons (ex. blob

tree warm up, word walls, crests).

A highlight that I also enjoyed was discussing lessons with my fellow mentors. In class,

we were able to hear about each other’s ideas, triumphs, and challenges to learn from each other.

Hearing these stories not only helped me with my planning, but also allowed me to realize that
my fellow mentors and I were all going through the same thing so I should not feel bad if I have

low participation one day or if a lesson does not do well.