For my blogging mentorship, I chose to comment on Kathy Cassidy’s grade one students.  I was interested in working with her grade one’s because I am beginning to think I would like to teach in an elementary school rather than a high school.  I love to be very creative and do crafts with young children.  I also think young students are more likely to enjoy being taught and like their teacher.  For my mentorship, I tried to blog to a number of students once a week.  I tried choosing and commenting on student’s blogs that seemed to have fewer responses than others did.  In my comments, I tried to relate to them with my own life by creating conversation of similar interests and asking them questions in regards to their blogs.  I also commented on their grammar skills.  Although I commented approximately once a week to some of their blogs, I did not get a response.  However, I still have a better understanding of how blogging and blogging mentorships can benefit a child’s learning.  Specifically, they will see how many people have read or viewed their work which will make them more proud of what they do and take their work more seriously as they  get comments about their work from people around the world, not only by their teacher, classmates, and parents.    

            I also tried speaking to Kathy`s Class on Yack Pack but they must have not been in the classroom when I was in.  However, one night close to mid-night as I was doing homework, I suddenly heard a voice say, “Hello, is anyone there?  This scared me at first not realizing I still had Kathy Cassidy’s blog page open on the task bar.  Therefore, I went to the Yack Pack and clicked on it replying, “Hello.”  From there I realized I was talking to a young 11-year-old student of Ms. Hayes in New Zealand.  This student learns and interacts with students in Kathy Cassidy’s classroom.  Therefore, I began to make conversation about who I am and why I was on the computer so late at night.  This student laughed when she found out that I was still up at mid-night doing homework.  We also talked about our day, our interests, and our hometowns.  We also talked about the weather and time difference.             

Looking back on my mentorship, I wish I had spent more time trying to be more creative with my comments.  I think I should have made a voice thread or done something unique for the students to be interested and engaged into my comments.  Anyways I think I will have many opportunities to experiment with things like this in my future.  I look forward to posting my own students videos and works on the computer in my future as a teacher.  I think this not only engages the students but also the parents into the schools functions and goals.  I am sure all of these students parents are very proud of their children’s work and recognize Kathy Cassidy for the extra time she puts into this blog in order parents, friends, and family to view their activities, progress, and accomplishments over the year.  

            Above all, I think learning about blogging mentorship and classrooms that have their own blog page and personal pages was a very positive experience, even though I struggled to get responses.   

Click Here to visit Kathy Cassidy’s Grade One Classroom