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Students Teaching Students: the Power of Mentorship | Erika Raskay | TEDxArcadiaUniversity


I was at a conference one day very much

like this one and I remember one of the

speakers saying that the roof of the

word education to reduce means to draw

like to draw information from an

individual and I thought that this is

really interesting courses sounds very

next philosophically but being the

skeptical person that I am I decided to

look it up and I found that there isn’t

one but two routes to the word education

and they’re both very different the

first in new cherry does meat drop but

the second a new car a means to train or

mold so these two ideas like I said are

very different perhaps even the

antithesis of each other and they have

the potential to play very different

roles and how we go forth with our

education policy here in the US I think

that our current education system

reflects the training molding method and

this is shown you our reliance on common

core and standardized tests all done and

with the goal of testing and training

students and very specific knowledge

bases however we also know that our

schools here in the US are very flawed

and a lot of ways as a result of these

very narrow refuelings our teachers have

lost the ability to cater to students

needs as individuals and we know that

this can helps contribute to a larger

group at risk youth especially in areas

I pulled up here where resources are

very slim between public schools in fact

we just had a whole social justice we

carry our cadia talking about the school

to Prison Pipeline and this is just one

aspect of this issue so what do we do

about this I think that we need to shift

our focus from the training and molding

to the drawing out method

education and while it was very

difficult for educators to do this given

current education policy which is harder

to change I think we can accomplish this

through mentors and mentorship programs

in public schools mentors are wonderful

sources because of their relatability

and their understanding in the classroom

so what do you think of I popped icons

like Hamilton or Monty Python they’re so

great because they’re able to take these

really complicated topics and channel

them figure local narratives that people

can still understand similarly mentors

our multiple resources for crossing the

divide between student and teacher were

readily resulting in a much more

interpersonal relationship I say this

for two reasons first mentors have three

space to help students as they need

we’re not educators bound by curricula

me or my standards even though we have

certain topics which were meant to cover

our only real goal in a classroom is to

help that student however we can do you

are neighbors alumni leaders in our

community and we have the experience to

help these students which is the second

point because we are so close

generationally to our students as

mentors coming

by the years of course we are able to

help them with issues that arise in

current society so we can help because

we’ve been there put it simply whether

it’s learning how to cope with your high

school experience they’re getting ready

for college or going through the job

market we have that label experience

that is useful to our students and of

course this goes both ways because then

as mentors we learn about our future

co-workers our future fellow citizens

which is also very helpful for building

a society so then the first off of

Mentor i think is to build self

confidence within the student which in

turn encourages confidence between the

student and the academic system so when

i think of this Technic of examples you

may have seen in social media teachers

using personal information a part of

their daily routine they do these really

large high five teams on the way to the

classroom gets big amped up or the hot

students stand and do local

confidence-building exercises and I

think these practices are nothing short

of amazing to make students whose

experiences that education system are

usually less than positive suddenly

excited to learn and excited we working

towards their future and I had the

privilege of being the start of heart

would want such an organization on the

breakthrough collaborative Greater

Philadelphia Philadelphia I was a

student teacher there for a class of

middle school students on saturday

morning at school so as you can imagine

it’s very different and difficult to

teach you in middle school students on a

Saturday morning without inspiring a

sense of positivity and

so every morning we had about 50

students in a room we haven’t stand and

they would say our mission statement but

we would say the mucin inspiring

community and we would say it while

moving around and dancing and doing all

these great things that just really

encourage your positivity and so then

what I learned from this experience is

that our goal as teachers is to build

this confidence within students so that

they let us hear their opinions and

ideas and then as mentors we take those

opinions and ideas and we listen the

goal is to actively listen to what

they’re saying not just for the right

answer and then so their ideas they

don’t feel is that they’re cast aside or

misinterpreted and then finally as peers

we take this understanding and we

validate them and we validate their

viewpoint in the world while also

challenging them to enlarge that scope

and to think of others of their

experiences and other possibilities and

we do all this and hopes their students

become successful citizens which after

all is the ball status goal of Education

not just a number on the page so as

students who have been there and who are

still there who better than us through the hope and find a way

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