Adah Siegel

EDUC 369: The Dream Project

Winter 2022
Event Log

CELE Winter Quarter Training: Racism in the K-12 Education System

January 19, 2022, 6-8pm on Zoom
Although I unfortunately couldn’t stay for the entire duration of the training, this was super

informative and applicable to what we had been learning in Educ 260/369. I thought it was really

impactful how Dr. Brobbey talked about how the education system in the US is inherently racist.

This quote really stuck out to me: the education system““...does not produce greater equity, it has

always historically produced greater inequality because that was its function. That is why we

take unstandardized children from unstandardized backgrounds, with standard resources, who’ve

been to unstandardized buildings and learning institutions, and then give them standardized

tests” (Wise, 2021; p. 112).” This really connected to what we learned about whose culture has

capital, and thinking about that when interacting with students.

I also appreciated that a lot of the things we talked about connected to the school-to-prison

pipeline and restorative justice, which are topics that I am really interested in. We also talked

about historical practices that have segregated schools like redlining, and extreme disparities in

public school funding, especially with schools having more students of color receiving so much

less funding. I also learned something new with terminology regarding using “achievement gap”

verus “opportunity gap.” Opportunity gap reflects what is actually happening with differences in

academic performance because achievement gap implies that students of color/lower income

students aren’t capable of achieving as much when in reality they don’t have access to as many

opportunities.
Adah Siegel
EDUC 369: The Dream Project
Winter 2022
Franklin High School: Mentorship
February 4, 2022, 11:15-1:20 at FHS
I want to start off this reflection by saying that I had a blast being in person with the MCIs and

some other mentors! It was really nice to see people in person and listen to music in the car. I felt

so comfortable, and it was a great start to the visit! Good vibes all around.

This was a good experience for my first mentorship visit. I was kind of nervous, but also really

excited. I also realized that I was probably more prepared to mentor with material related to

actual college admissions, and not FASFA or WASFA. It had been a while since I had filled it

out, and I didn’t realize that is what we were going to be doing, or I totally would have refreshed

myself using the links provided on the Canvas page. With that in mind, I was pretty hesitant to

help people out since I knew that my knowledge wasn’t completely up to date.

I worked on how I felt unprepared for the visit by refreshing my knowledge of the financial aid

applications, especially how to work with students who don’t know how to access their parents’

tax forms and the hard things like that. I am proud of the effort that I put in, and think it payed

off for the next visit I did.

Mentorship isn’t only about teaching, though, it’s about supporting and forming relationships

too! I had a good time at this visit checking in with the few students who came up to us while we

were sitting in the library. It was especially fun (and kind of strange) to run into students I knew.

For example, there was one student sitting in the library who is my neighbor at home and I

actually babysat for her when she was younger! She is a sophomore though, so not quite thinking

about college applications yet. I told her about the Dream Project for her future, though :)
Adah Siegel
EDUC 369: The Dream Project
Winter 2022
Franklin High School: Mentorship
March 4, 2022, 11:15-1:20 at FHS
After I knew that we would be mentoring students with their FASFA and WASFA (which in

retrospect, makes so much sense considering the college application season is over), I used the

links available on the 260 Canvas page to refresh my memory about navigating the forms—How

to FASFA and How to WASFA. While they definitely renewed my frustration in how

complicated getting financial aid is in the US, they were helpful.

I definitely got more of a mentorship experience with this visit; I thought the way Nahid had

organized a spreadsheet to stay connected with students mentors had worked with previously was

awesome. I worked with a student named Elena, who was working on her FASFA. I think I did a

good job of introducing myself and getting to know her, establishing a trusting relationship. I

told her that I had gone to Franklin, which hopefully made her feel more comfortable knowing

that I had gone through a similar experience as her.

Elena hadn’t started her FASFA yet, so we started a new form for her. She seemed super stressed

out about it and I tried to comfort her and tell her that uploading the forms is the hardest part of

the process but when she does that she is basically done. I mentioned this in my reflection paper,

but I thought I did a good job of using asset-based mentorship and meeting mentees where they

are at by asking if she would rather fill it out in Vietnamese (her first language) when we got to

that question on the form. She said she didn’t want to, but I still thought that I employed a lot of

what we learned with that action.

Adah Siegel
EDUC 369: The Dream Project
Winter 2022
This was a good mentorship visit and I felt bad that I wasn’t going to be coming back to Franklin

to work again with Elena. This goes to show the importance of continued mentorship, which

isn’t necessarily possibly within the boundaries of a class, but definitely as a professional mentor.