Aruna answers the question:
What has the opportunity to COLLABORATE with many people
afforded you?

Penn Mentors

Penn Mentors are often the “glue” that helps students make meaning of their classroom student teaching experiences. Penn Mentors are seasoned, veteran teachers who share our values and encourage student teachers to think deeply and reflectively about their daily classroom experiences. Penn Mentors visit student teachers in their classrooms once per week, providing valuable feedback, advice and support to developing teachers. They meet with PennGSE student teachers in the school once a week to extend student teachers’ learning beyond a specific classroom, examining ways in which community events and school district guidelines can affect learning in the child and in the classroom.

Liz Barone
Secondary Mathematics Penn Mentor

Liz taught mathematics at Bok Technical High School in the School District of Philadelphia for 37 years. As a teacher, she was the Student Council sponsor and coached the varsity cheerleading squad. She was also active in different school committees and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers.

After her many years of enthusiastic math teaching, she joined the Penn Mentor team in 2005. She found the program to be unique because mentors are paired with student teachers that teach the same subject area. This allows for Penn Mentors to share their experience working with middle and high school students as well as their subject area expertise.

Liz recalled her 2006-2007 school year investment as a Penn Mentor “one of the most rewarding experiences in my life.” She says, “It was a pleasure getting to know my four novices. We shared our ideas, discussed what worked or didn't and how to make it better. Sometimes I just listened. As I read and commented on their journal entries, I could see them grow into the role of new teachers.” She was rewarded with the progress the teachers made throughout the year.

 

Joyce Ferber
Secondary English and Social Studies Penn Mentor

Before becoming a Penn Mentor, Joyce most recently taught middle school students Reading and Language Arts in a suburban school district. She really enjoyed working with 8th graders because they are getting ready for high school, but they are now the big shots in the school and can allow themselves to feel confident on some level. She finds that “teenagers really have their own set of rules and regulations on how they feel about the world around them. Our job is to make sure they can relate to and learn from it through literature we have to use within the curriculum.” As a teacher she was able to use Raisin in the Sun (her favorite), To Kill a Mockingbird, and so many other plays and novels to enable students to recognize the imperative for social justice.

Joyce has been a Penn Mentor for seven years and finds PennGSE’s program to be unique because it addresses the challenges of teaching for social justice while enabling teens to acquire skills necessary to become life long learners. PennGSE’s program also gives students experiences they will not get in a 6 week stint of student teaching by having students student teach for a full year. The teachers and administrators who enable our students to get this valuable time in the classroom while learning about how kids learn, alternative methods of teaching and assessment in the Penn Classroom make the program so rewarding. Another strength that Joyce enjoys about PennGSE’s program is that the program strives build a community through course seminars, which enables students to really get to know each other and share experiences. This creates a supportive environment for student teachers, to be able to fall and get back up and feel OK about it.

Joyce loves being a Penn Mentor because “I get to meet great new students every year, as well as work with some of the same great Penn Mentors and cassroom teachers. Every year I learn so much from the methods teachers as well. But I think the best part is getting to know our students as the people they are and watch them evolve into wonderful, caring, humane, energetic teachers and learners.”


Sites of Collaboration

As noted elsewhere, “field experience” begins within a week of beginning the program in July. During the summer you come to know youth, their communities, their interests and their “funds of knowledge” by being assigned in small teams to a community-based summer program. These programs include local libraries and playground programs. Our students are also part of programs sponsored by BikeWorks, Work to Ride, the Cobbs Creek Conservation Program, adolescent film institutes, Camden’s Hopeworks and others.

All students teachers are asked to complete a detailed survey whereby we get to know about students’ expected living locations, modes of transportation, special background experiences, and the appeal of working with various age and community groups. All of this helps us match teaching sites to student teacher profiles. In elementary education, student teachers have the option of choosing a different placement, in a charter, independent or even some suburban schools.