The Art of Making Friends With Children
By Michelle Wang
Over the course of 9 months at PupilPrep, I have regularly organized engaging lessons on math and English, holding weekly meetings that have allowed me to build not only an academic but also a personal relationship with three individual kids with who I have seen flourish despite their difficult circumstances. I joined PupilPrep because I grew up as a financially disadvantaged child who had language barriers due to the lack of academic support from my immigrant parents. I always felt like I was lagging behind everyone who was receiving tutoring from prestigious after-school programs and had to work very hard to get the same results as my peers. Though this experience helped me develop a strong work ethic, it was exhausting on my mental health and confidence throughout my student career.
Joining PupilPrep was a way for me to help struggling students and use my love for children in a way that benefits the community. PupilPrep helped me grow as a person in that I learned to strengthen my communication skills which are especially important when facing children who are more prone to getting distracted and have low attention spans. Along with this, adaptability was crucial in keeping my lessons interesting and I learned to mold to the needs of my mentees to maximize their learning experience. There is also the added element of working with the child’s parents to meet their needs for their child as well. Though I prefer our meeting to be more freeflow and tailored to the current progress of the mentee, it is also important to take into consideration the will of the parents which I do through consistent communication about my mentee’s progress and as well as my recommendations for future meetings based on my evaluation. It can get intimidating simply because I am interacting with an adult, all of my mentee’s parents have been awesome to me, and I even got a gift card for Target from one of them (it was the sweetest thing!).
Becoming a mentor coach this past summer was a step out of my comfort zone, and through presenting in the PupilPrep Internship and Bootcamp, my public speaking skills were challenged as I spoke to a crowd of highly engaged and passionate peers. One of the most gratifying experiences from my career as a mentor was when I first started tutoring and took on a mentee who was labeled as “difficult” and “easily distracted”. Though at first her camera was always closed, and she scarcely interacted with me, after weeks of opening myself up to her and actively trying to search for new educational games and topics that appealed to her likings, she too, began to reciprocate the enthusiasm I showed her, raising questions that she didn’t understand and asking me for more advanced material. My overall experience with mentorship has been an extremely positive one, especially with the support system created by the PupilPrep team and their dedication to provide for not only the students but also the mentors. It is also a constant learning process for me as a mentor because I am always renewing my knowledge when teaching the material to my mentees, and it is challenging to phrase a familiar subject more simply to allow for the accurate comprehension of the material by the student. I am always adding new facts into my database that I otherwise would not have known because of my mentees, such as the newest Roblox game that just came out or even new “slang” words that my mentees have taught me. Keeping up with the kids can sometimes be hard for me because of just how fascinated they are with all the material that I teach, but it is always adorable to see them get excited about something new. I have aspirations in the pediatric dentistry field and my time here at PupilPrep has further solidified my commitment to serving the community, as well as my intent to work with kids as part of my future career path.
