Models and Mentors in My Life

Because of an EDS103 requirement to answer a worksheet on Models and Mentors in my life, I am posting this article as a response to that.

Here are my Role Models and Mentors and their Contributions

• My Mother – She taught me how to be strong despite of adversity, to be meek and humble despite achieving a lot, and to have faith that all will be well even when it doesn’t feel like it at times.
• My Psych101 teacher – He made me appreciate the things I can offer, and to be courageous to pursue the things that I desire.
• My College Best friend – She made me want to do more, achieve more, and be the first person to stand up for myself. She made me love myself (as cheesy as it sounds) and she made me appreciate myself and the hard work I put into relationships. She made me feel very much loved and cared for.
• My Supervisor – She allowed me to grow, and she supported in everything that I wanted to explore. She made me kinder to myself and she showed me that a leader can lead with grace and a benevolent heart.
• My Previous Boss – She was my mentor and she would push me to create quality work. She made me value efficiency and showed me how to do multi-tasking effectively. She was methodical and logical. She was articulate and everything she said were based on facts and cohesively tied at the end. When she facilitated sessions, participants are always wowed. I always look up to her and strive to be like her when I teach.

The type of role model I want to be for others (other learners)

The following are the characteristics and behaviors which I believe are most important for me to model to my students:

1. Kindness is strength, not a weakness most perceive it to be.
2. Resiliency – kids nowadays are much too prone to fatalism.
3. Persistence and Hardwork – most valuable things are achieved this way. There are no short cuts.
4. Being Courageous at taking risks – most surprises become your most treasured experiences that are both fun and filled with learnings.
5. Allow yourself to make mistakes – this is how you learn, the more mistakes you make, the more you can track your growth. And when you can track your growth, that can make anything more fulfilling.

How will I incorporate models and mentors in my profession as an educator?

The following section will now describe my systematic plan for bringing models and mentors into my students’ lives in one or more domains I plan to teach.

In order to become a mentor for my students in the classroom, I must first transition from being the dated teacher we all know – rambling incessantly for an hour while the students alternate from silently scribbling notes, doodling, or drooling. The new classroom with a dynamic mentor would engage the students mentally, physically and emotionally to solidify learning. Taking this course, I plan to use it to teach two domains: Culinary Arts and Psychology. They will be taught separately in high school, but if I also get accepted into a University, I will be teaching those two domains as a combined subject called Food Psychology.

For Culinary Arts, I have already devised a curriculum which hopefully allows for modelling and mentorship. For them to learn the basics of culinary arts from knife skills to appetizers, soups, salads, main course, and down to dessert, one must first see how it’s supposed to be done and then allowed freedom to do it on their own with close guidance. The format of each session will be as such but a culminating activity will allow for complete freedom by giving them a chance to choose their own dish and cuisine and must perform it in a competition-like format.

Each culinary session will be done in this succession:

1. A demonstration is done by the teacher and the finished product is tasted by the students
2. The students do a return demonstration under the time limit as the teacher goes around to guide them through the steps if necessary.
3. The output is submitted in front and a representative from each group will serve as the tester.
4. The tester has an evaluation sheet with him/her and will do the tasting on his/her own. After 3 minutes of evaluation, the tester would move on to the next plate (different group’s output) and evaluate it as well. This is done until all plates are evaluated.
5. The teacher will evaluate their work and will give them the necessary feedback.

For Psychology, I would first teach the subject in the different facets: General Psychology, Physiology, Developmental Psychology, Personality, Social Psychology (and a little of Organizational Psychology), Abnormal Psychology (and a little of statistics). There is an activity that encompasses all of these activities, which culminates on our last lesson Psychological Testing and Feedback.

Basically, the whole course would be revolving around the understanding of the self, which is what Psychology is really about.

1. For general psychology, it would be mostly input and examples for them to be introduced to the topic.
2. For physiology, it is trying out different triggers for their neurotransmitters and identifying which causes for which, and then jotting them down on their journals.
3. These journals will then include of their timeline to coincide with the learnings from developmental psychology.
4. These information would then be broadcasted and shared amongst their classmates for breaking down with the learnings from Psychology of Personality. During this time, the students would be free to dissect each other’s personalities and pinpoint where these quirks came from (using the knowledge from General psychology, Physiology and Developmental Psychology.) The teacher would then act as a facilitator to make sure that their discourse remains on track and purely for educational purposes.
5. After the activity, there would be a processing of the whole experience of divulging oneself with their peers, and thus connecting it with Social Psychology.
6. This would then translate to into making a short social experiment in relation to the stigmas of Abnormal Psychology, which would be analyzed using statistics.

And finally, psychological testing would be introduced to them by administering personality tests to them. After which, one-on-one interviews will be conducted to process them with the results and subsequently modelling how correct and ethical feedback is done.

Who will be my education mentor? What would my ideal education mentor be like?

Currently, as I am already practicing the profession while taking the necessary steps to become licensed, my education mentors are my supervisor from work and my parents.

My supervisor gives me feedback with all the teaching strategies, classroom management techniques, and lesson content that I am using in class. Her feedback is from her years of experience and from knowing the correct way of practicing the profession in the academe. She is calm, collected, and specific when giving feedback and is very patient of me. I find that her style of mentorship is very helpful for my growth and it is because of her that I have come to love the profession that I am in.

My parents helped me a lot when I was assigned as an adviser. As an adviser, I could feel the weight on my shoulders as I was my students’ second parent, a mother when away from home. But since I am single and have no real children of my own (except for my beloved pets), my parents helped me a lot in deciding what was best for the children in terms of disciplining and rewarding. They knew exactly how to approach difficult situations when dealing with quarreling children, or children who are seeking for attention. They also gave me advice on how to approach their parents respectively and give them timely feedback because as parents themselves, they could empathize with their plight very well.