Melina Mendez

Throughout my time at Lake Avenue, I facilitated small group and one-on one learning supports for 16 second grade students. I also managed and maintained productive classroom environment by teaching social and emotional skills such as how to self regulate, appropriate playtime behavior, and how to interact with peers. Part of my job there was also accurately evaluating and assessing student work and identifying areas for improvement.

During this field school I cleaned and preserved 300+ pottery shards from Byzantine and Bronze Age Greece. I was also a part of collaboratively excavating the lower-level town of acropolis in the ancient city of Eleon by leveraging ground penetrating radar imagery and hand tools to unearth archaeological findings. I also mapped artifact location on total station and catalogued artifacts by taking digital photographs and labeling unique properties in online archaeological database

I developed my communication skills and professional skills through making and teaching lessons in ancient Greek grammar for the class. In this class, I also aided in and led group discussion and built agendas for individually tutoring Elementary Greek Students. This course also helped me to discuss pedagogical techniques and learn more about classroom management.

These degrees have taught me new ways of thinking that I will continue to utilize both in daily life and in my career and future education. Classics in particular taught me ways of thinking within multiple pathways. Within the field, sources of evidence come from literature, material culture, language, and history, and it’s crucial to know how to synthesize and interpret the information. Anthropology, on the other hand, has helped me hone the ability to not only think about and articulate matter on dense topics, but also to become a better citizen of the world through learning about its long theoretical standpoints.