One majorly important thing my Mentor Teacher taught me was to facilitate personalized learning as best you can. The kids will love you for it. You’ll get to know them better, and you’ll (typically) grade their best work instead of their garbage. Another important piece of information he gave me was to offer students multiple ways to complete an assignment.

I had a student who excelled in film and media, but he was struggling immensely during the research unit. He was having trouble deciding on a topic to research and couldn’t seem to make the words flow in spite of being an exquisite writer. So, my MT allowed him to research something that was relevant to some of the other things he was studying and developing projects for. He is in the MAC academy at Berkmar, and his main area of study is film. My MT allowed for him to write a research paper on film editing. More specifically, he was researching the best approaches to helping a writer edit something for film. This student was not only relieved by this alteration, but he was ecstatic! This was a great learning opportunity for me when it comes to meeting the individual needs of my students.

I had a student who was far ahead of his class in terms of writing and editing skills. Not only that, but he was also very artistic. To get his classmates up to speed while also helping him grow as a writer, my MT allowed him to be the editor for this research project they were working on. He had to write a research paper too, but the word cap was reduced and he could research any topic. We knew we could trust him with this creative agency, and it worked out beautifully. When he wasn’t helping his classmates, he was working on turning his research into a comic book.

Both of these examples show how I was taught to facilitate a personalized, student-centered learning environment. It’s sometimes difficult to tap into our students’ values and interests, but it is a worthy battle.

And they’ll never forget you…