Introduction

Greetings All,

My name is Maurice Telesford and I am currently working with the College of Engineering’s outreach office at the University of Michigan. In this blog, I will try to capture some of the experiences that I have working as a teacher’s aid at Ypsilanti High School. I am the guinea pig of sorts in the sense that I am testing out a model for a partnership program between the UM-CoE and YHS (more acronyms…. UM-CoE = University of Michigan College of Engineering, YHS = Ypsilanti High School). In this partnership, we hope to be able to provide science and engineering graduate students who can work as teaching assistants in math and science high school classrooms. The goals of this program are:

To provide role models for the students

To allow the graduate students to gain practical teaching experience

To try to help motivate the students to be more interested in their education and STEM fields

To bring applications of science and engineering into the high school classroom

I will be working twice a week in a freshmen algebra and introductory science course assisting the teachers. This blog will touch on my weekly experiences, things that I’ve learned, advice for future teaching assistants and anything in between.

Feel free to post any thoughts, comments or advice that you have.