12th Grade — Mentoring the Next Wave: A Studio Job With an Underclassman Partner

⏰ Do Now — Start Here

Think of something you're genuinely good at now that felt impossible in 9th grade. What actually made it click?

🎯 Today's Big Question

What do we understand better about our own skills once we have to teach them to someone else?

📈 By the End of Today, You Will Be Able To

Pair with a 9th, 10th, or 11th grade student and run a real (or realistic practice) studio job together.
Explain and demonstrate at least one production skill clearly enough for a less experienced student to use it.
Reflect on what teaching the skill revealed about their own understanding of it.

🧰 What You'll Need

A real or practice studio job
An underclassman partner (coordinated in advance with another class)

📋 Your Plan for Today

Day 1: Plan the Handoff

Do Now (5 min, above).
Plan (30 min): break your chosen skill into clear, teachable steps and plan how you'll explain it to your partner.

Day 2: Teach & Work Together

Paired work (40 min): run the job together, with the senior explaining and the underclassman doing as much of the hands-on work as they're ready for.

Day 3: Finish & Reflect

Finish the job together (25 min).
Write (15 min): a reflection on what teaching this skill revealed about your own understanding of it.

🖥️ Today's Slide Deck

Short, on-the-board pacing slides — project these to follow along. (The full details are in the handout above, not here.)

📚 Key Words

Mentor: Someone with more experience who guides a less experienced person through real work, rather than just doing it for them.
Scaffolding: Breaking a skill into smaller, teachable steps instead of expecting someone to just watch and absorb it.

✅ What Your Finished Work Should Include

Finished job checked for quality; reflection checked for genuine insight into their own skill, not just a summary of what happened.

Exit Ticket: What's one thing you now understand better about this skill because you had to explain it out loud?

📊 Before You Leave

Quick, anonymous class check-in -- takes less than a minute.

Class Check-In

📁 Portfolio Update — Once a Week

Once a week, add your best finished or in-progress yearbook (or, later, studio) work to your portfolio with a 1-2 sentence caption -- and once you're in the Design Studio phase, a photo of the piece in its real, installed location if possible. This is the same evidence trail you'll use for Archive & Portfolio and any PBAT/portfolio review.

✍️ Example description for your Google Sites portfolio (fill in YOUR blanks -- don't just copy this):

For this piece, I made ______________ (name what you made) for “Mentoring the Next Wave: A Studio Job With an Underclassman Partner.” This project asked: “What do we understand better about our own skills once we have to teach them to someone else?” I used Mentor by ______________ (explain how you used it in THIS piece). The hardest part was ______________, and I solved it by ______________. I'm proud of ______________ because ______________.

🔗 Want to Learn More?

No extra links for this lesson.

🚀 The Extra Mile

Cross-Class Connection: The same teaching/pedagogy skill relevant to any Education-track elective.

Career Connection: Mentoring and leading underclassmen previews real studio-lead and art-director responsibilities.

Go further -- turn this into a portfolio piece:

Write a short "lessons for future mentors" guide based on the experience. Start here: write down the one moment mentoring felt hardest before trying to generalize any advice from it.
Ask your underclassman partner to write a short testimonial you can add to your portfolio. Start here: ask for it the same week you finish working together, while the experience is still fresh for both of you.