Progress Tracker
By Helen Li
I joined PupilPrep as a new mentor in the fall of 2021, because I loved teaching kids and wanted to extend my knowledge to other students. Thanks to PupilPrep, I was able to create lesson plans, schedule meetings with my mentees, and conduct them over Zoom. I also got to learn more about my students, which helped with determining what I should teach that week. I dedicated a few hours every week to creating compact and engaging lessons for my mentees. I taught multiple subjects, but I mainly focused on reading and writing. I also told my mentees to send me their notes after every session via WeChat, so I could keep track of their progress. They would write down all the vocabulary words they were not familiar with for me to create definitions (and upload pictures) next to them.
I became a mentor and mentor coach in the spring of 2022. Since my mentees learned a lot during our fall session, their parents sent an email to PupilPrep to request me as a mentor for the Spring Term. In addition to teaching mentees, I helped other mentors with their lesson plans and answered all the questions they had regarding PupilPrep. I also participated in group meetings with directors and other mentor coaches. For instance, Emily, Tasmia, and I were all hosts for Career Day. We introduced different types of careers, talked about our role models, and discussed what jobs we wanted to have in the future. We also talked about ways to incentivize more mentors to join PupilPrep. For instance, I suggested increasing the amount of hours mentors would get by adding their work to Google Drive, responding to weekly feedback forms, and continuing to regularly meet with their mentees.
I participated in PupilPrep’s journalism program and further developed my writing skills last December through a six-week writing course. Since we focused on a different topic every week, I got the opportunity to explore more writing genres and develop better collaboration skills. I loved how inclusive our meetings were, and we touched on deep topics such as mental health and abortion. We also collaborated with other interns by creating a children’s story to be published on PupilPrep’s website. To sum up, I became more open to others’ ideas and developed a more holistic approach to speaking out on certain issues.
I have always been an introvert, and before joining PupilPrep, I would stray away from public speaking and taking leadership roles. Being a mentor and mentor coach gave me a sense of responsibility and helped me step outside of my comfort zone. Since I would always be communicating with other mentors, my mentees, and my mentees’ parents, I learned just how important communication is and started reaching out to others more often. Before PupilPrep, I mainly just communicated via text, but now, I use WeChat, Discord, and Gmail in order to stay connected with everyone. Overall, I have had an amazing experience with PupilPrep, and I look forward to working and growing with them over the summer!
