As the years of high school go on, students gradually earn all of their credits required to graduate. However, some earn them faster than others. When all their credits are earned, there are many options for how they can spend the rest of their school day including, being a teachers assisstant (TA), mentoring, or independent study.
For Senior Andy Ortmann, mentoring was the way to go in his eyes.
“I choose to mentor because I’m going into teaching and I thought it would be a good experience,” said Ortmann.
Andy helps mentor the ELL students third block. ELL students are students of different ethnic backgrounds such as Chinese, Hispanic, Russian, and Hmong. After third block, he heads over to the Buffalo Community Middle School to shadow a teacher for more experience.
“I help the students with different topics such as English, grammar, reading, and how to write,” said Ortmann.
Not only does Ortmann gain experience with helping students, he gets to do what he enjoys, which is helping people. Ortmann also gets to learn about different cultures and expand his knowledge of what life is like in other parts of the world.
“I really like the relationships that I have made with the students,” said Ortmann, “I also like learning about all the different cultures and backgrounds they come from.”
Besides the basic learning of the English language like grammar and reading, Ortmann and the students also participate in various activities to have fun while learning.
“We did this Poetry Slam. We all wrote poems and presented them in front of the whole class%
