Mentoring at Teach India

I thought it was very important to share my experience as a mentor to a student of std 11.To give you a very brief background, the boy who is my mentee has secured 86% in the SSC exams and has also managed to secure admission in a reasonably good college in the science stream.

He is an intelligent and bright boy and hence does not need to be taught any study skills.In fact he can teach these to us!!!What he requires was self confidence and that could be increased if he could speak fluent English so as to be at par with his peers in college. So together we set our goal

'To speak fluent English' by the end of the academic year.

Armed with this, I asked him to write about his first day in college. He wrote about half a page. Taking this as a base, I drew his attention to the importance of maintaining the same 'tense' throughout the piece of written work. We discussed a few examples and then he started correcting his work. He is a bright child and grasped well. In a few instances he has used wrong words to express e.g has written.The teacher came to 'learn' the poem in the English period instead of 'teach'.So I explained the relationship between 'teacher' and 'teach' and explained the concept of root words.

Then we spoke about adjectives and how use of adjectives enhances the quality of the written work. We discussed a lot of examples of use of appropriate adjectives and also learnt the meaning of a few new words. As he learnt newer things I could see his expression change.....He wanted to continue to learn more but I had to get back to my commitments.I am convinced that I shall be able to make a difference in this child's life!!!!