Honors Peer Educator - Project Summary
Summarize your proposed experiential learning activity, including the primary focus of your activity, your intended actions, and the expectations of your supervisor and/or organization/partners. I plan to engage in experiential learning by acting as a Peer Educator for incoming Honors students. I will take part in a training course (Honors 397) this spring in order to prepare, and then instruct a section of the introductory Honors 100 course for students in the fall. My work will be guided and supervised by Carissa Mayer and Claire Grant, two of the UW Honors Program's advisors, to ensure that my students are receiving the material they need to learn, ideally in an engaging manner, and that I am receiving any support I might need to make my classes the best they can be. Explain how your activity demonstrates the values of the Honors Program Experiential Learning area you selected. Rather than reiterating our definition, outline how your activity embodies this definition. To me, teaching is the ultimate opportunity for, and challenge in leadership. As a teacher, you are responsible for the engagement, wellbeing, and learning of the students entrusted to you. It is your organization, guidance, and commitment that will set students on their path towards success. I think that being a Peer Educator is a particularly helpful model for taking this plunge into leadership in that there is a community of other Peer Educators around you taking the same plunge. As a Peer Educator, I hope to practice leadership by collaborating with my peers in order to craft the best possible experience I can for my incoming Honors students, and help them to find their home here at UW. How and why did you select this engagement? What skills or experiences do you hope to gain from it? From the moment I realized my freshman fall quarter that Honors 100 was taught by fellow undergraduate Honors students, I envisioned myself in that position. I really value the community that Honors has provided for me since my arrival here, and I wish to pass on that same sense to incoming students. As someone vaguely interested in exploring education as a career, I look forward to this chance to improve my teaching skills, as well as learn strategies and ideas from those around me, who have different experiences and perspectives. I hope to become a better teacher, leader, and student through this experience. How does this activity connect to your concurrent or past coursework? How does it speak to your broader education goals and experiences? Still being a freshman myself, I remember very well my own experience taking Honors 100. I think that this proximity will help me to understand and relate to the position my students are in, hopefully easing their transition. I also have a passion for education, and am interested in exploring a minor in Education, Learning, and Societies. This practical teaching experience will help me in my knowledge and understanding within this field. Finally, the UW Honors program has been important to me so far on my undergraduate journey, and this experience will help to strengthen my connections and bonds there, both with the people and with the program as a whole. How will your activity contribute to the larger goals of the organization/your partners? The Peer Educator program is an excellent one for the UW Honors community because it provides incoming students with a role model and support in a transition time when they may need this most. The fact that students teach other students makes these connections easier and more genuine, as Peer Educators are quite familiar themselves with the positions that incoming students are in, and remember their own experience in that position. I hope to help both my incoming students and the Honors program as a whole through patient and enthusiastic instruction of critical introductory Honors program material. Reflection - December 10, 2019 This reflection represents my closing thoughts on being a 2019 Honors Peer Educator, and also my final reflection for my Leadership Experiential Learning activity. Through being a Peer Educator, I learned about myself as a leader in a new context. I have lots of experience teaching through my job as a martial arts instructor, my interning experience in elementary classrooms, and more, but rarely have I worked with students older than about age twelve. Working with college students was a new challenge for me, one I found quite intimidating coming in. I worried that my students would judge me, find my activities lame or my teaching methods laughable. I didn't know how to be a peer and an educator simultaneously. This quarter quelled much of that uncertainty. On the first day of class, I decided I would be upfront with my students about my uncertainty; they were all almost my age and would likely be sympathetic. This worked out extremely well. Moving forward, I didn't have to feel bad when my explanations weren't perfect or I fumbled with technology. My students understood that I was trying my best. I think this candor also helped humanize me from the beginning and helped me to forge trusting relationships with the students in my class. In leadership roles moving forward, I think I will remember that I do not need to appear polished and perfect all of the time, that I am allowed to be human. I also will hold onto previous strategies that continued to work for me. I long ago discovered that being bubbly and positive is contagious, and through displays of enthusiasm, I could even get reluctant students to participate and find value in activities. My students gave me positive feedback about my clear level of commitment to the course, with bolstered this approach further in my mind. Reviewing my autumn self-evaluations gave me further opportunity to reflect on my growth. I learned both practical skills such as time-management and adaptation to tech in the classroom, and overarching ideas about leadership and being a peer leader, as referenced above. I was proud to see my progress, and how issues that plagued me at the beginning of the quarter faded into the background as the quarter progressed. I still don't think I ever got my students to confide in me or use me as a resource to the extent that I had hoped, but I do believe this was not entirely on me. I expressed my availability to my students frequently; it was up to them to use me as a resource. I have to remember that I can only do the best that I can to teach, and my students have to figure out on their own the best way for them to learn. I cannot solve all of their problems for them. This is something I must face in my leadership positions and personal life alike and serves as an excellent reminder. No matter how hard I try, I cannot do it all. I have to trust others to take care of themselves sometimes. In our last H397 class session, we wrote letters to a future group of Honors 100 Peer Educators. While I hope this advice is able to serve a future generation, I also took a picture of the letter I wrote for myself, about imposter syndrome and perfectionism, making friends with fellow Peer Educators and writing out times on my lesson plans. I firmly believe that learning is not a linear process, and even though I have gained leadership knowledge and skills this quarter, I am still far from mastery. I intend to continue finding ways to be a leader in the future (though how, exactly, I'm not yet sure - maybe working as a tutor, becoming a TA or interning in more classrooms, or even reapplying for Honors Peer Educators!) and I want to remember my own advice, be able to relearn it later when I inevitably forget and need reminding.
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This reflection represents my closing thoughts on being a 2019 Honors Peer Educator, and also my final reflection for my Leadership Experiential Learning activity.
Through being a Peer Educator, I learned about myself as a leader in a new context. I have lots of experience teaching through my job as a martial arts instructor, my interning experience in elementary classrooms, and more, but rarely have I worked with students older than about age twelve. Working with college students was a new challenge for me, one I found quite intimidating coming in. I worried that my students would judge me, find my activities lame or my teaching methods laughable. I didn’t know how to be a peer and an educator simultaneously. This quarter quelled much of that uncertainty. On the first day of class, I decided I would be upfront with my students about my uncertainty; they were all almost my age and would likely be sympathetic. This worked out extremely well. Moving forward, I didn’t have to feel bad when my explanations weren’t perfect or I fumbled with technology. My students understood that I was trying my best. I think this candor also helped humanize me from the beginning and helped me to forge trusting relationships with the students in my class. In leadership roles moving forward, I think I will remember that I do not need to appear polished and perfect all of the time, that I am allowed to be human. I also will hold onto previous strategies that continued to work for me. I long ago discovered that being bubbly and positive is contagious, and through displays of enthusiasm, I could even get reluctant students to participate and find value in activities. My students gave me positive feedback about my clear level of commitment to the course, with bolstered this approach further in my mind. Reviewing my autumn self-evaluations gave me further opportunity to reflect on my growth. I learned both practical skills such as time-management and adaptation to tech in the classroom, and overarching ideas about leadership and being a peer leader, as referenced above. I was proud to see my progress, and how issues that plagued me at the beginning of the quarter faded into the background as the quarter progressed. I still don’t think I ever got my students to confide in me or use me as a resource to the extent that I had hoped, but I do believe this was not entirely on me. I expressed my availability to my students frequently; it was up to them to use me as a resource. I have to remember that I can only do the best that I can to teach, and my students have to figure out on their own the best way for them to learn. I cannot solve all of their problems for them. This is something I must face in my leadership positions and personal life alike and serves as an excellent reminder. No matter how hard I try, I cannot do it all. I have to trust others to take care of themselves sometimes. In our last H397 class session, we wrote letters to a future group of Honors 100 Peer Educators. While I hope this advice is able to serve a future generation, I also took a picture of the letter I wrote for myself, about imposter syndrome and perfectionism, making friends with fellow Peer Educators and writing out times on my lesson plans. I firmly believe that learning is not a linear process, and even though I have gained leadership knowledge and skills this quarter, I am still far from mastery. I intend to continue finding ways to be a leader in the future (though how, exactly, I’m not yet sure – maybe working as a tutor, becoming a TA or interning in more classrooms, or even reapplying for Honors Peer Educators!) and I want to remember my own advice, be able to relearn it later when I inevitably forget and need reminding. List your teaching goals for this week’s session. Did you feel that you were able to meet these goals? What helped or hindered you in that effort?
Goal (from lesson plan): I hope to create an honest discussion of the importance of mental health in college, identify resources for students to help them with the transition or any other issues they are struggling with, address and normalize mental, physical, and emotional health This sort of worked. I liked the activities I chose, but I'm not sure if I gave enough context as to why we were doing them. For instance, I did both 'self-care wheel' and 'turn off the editor.' I enjoyed the activities and found them useful, but I couldn't tell if my students came away with anything of substance. I listed some resources available at UW, but couldn't tell if any of them found it useful. Oh well. I put the ideas out there for them to consider, and hopefully some of them will take it to heart. Please assess your teaching and classroom experience in each of the following areas: Planning and Preparation Strengths: Helen and I workshopped lesson plans this past weekend in preparation for today's class. I found this hugely helpful, as Health and Wellness was the lesson I was most worried for. If nothing else, I went in knowing I'd put time and effort into my plan and making it the best it could be. Areas for Development: My activities all ended up taking much less time than I anticipated. Luckily, I put my Global Challenges discussion towards the end, and I was able to fill time with that. I also decided I didn't like having my self-care wheel and turn off the editor back to back. Even though I had time to discuss in between, these activities felt too similar, too much silent writing and reflecting right in a row. I just didn't quite have time to include another activity, but I could have used something else in between to break it up. Classroom Environment Strength: I love my students. I say that entirely genuinely. I'm always so excited to see them and so flattered when they ask me questions or for advice. One boy said he liked my Moth Radio Hour snippet I'd shared with them so much that he'd sent it to his sister, who had recently moved. If I ever become a teacher for real, I definitely run the risk of becoming far too invested in my students' lives and success - but it's such a good feeling, to be appreciated, and to try my hardest to touch their lives in some small way. Area for Development: Still couldn't get people to talk! Health and Wellness is a topic where I really don't feel comfortable making people share... so I was forced to rely on the power of awkward silences. I think a lack of desire to share was part of the reason my activities took so much less time than I expected, too - I was picturing our Peer Educator retreat, where everyone was rather willing to participate and share and be vulnerable together. This is not something I could force on my classroom if it didn't arise naturally, but goodness, I wish I could. Instruction Strength: I was proud of my facilitation of our Global Challenges debrief. After all the positive feedback from fellow Peer Educators about the event, I was a bit surprised to hear some of my students' negative reactions, but I took it in stride, doing my best to validate their concerns without taking over the conversation. The comment I was most proud of was after a student complained that he didn't agree with the perspectives of one of the speakers on the topic. I proposed that maybe that was one of the beneficial takeaways from the event: if students had just agreed with everything the speakers had to say, they wouldn't have had a chance to learn. By disagreeing with some of the ideas and positions at play, students had the chance to reflect on and formulate their own perspectives and practice their critical thinking skills. I was proud of having come up with that on the spot, and felt it reflected my discussion-mediation abilities well, one of the teaching skills I've always been most proud of. Area for Development: I find it difficult to talk about health and wellness, as important as I find the topic. Maybe it's because I find self-reflection difficult sometimes, especially in front of an audience. I hate showing any signs of vulnerability. Though I muddled my way through my health and wellness activities with my class, I don't think I was able to impart the wisdom I wanted to with each of them. As mentioned previously, I don't feel like I quite imparted the purpose of the self-care wheel and turn off the editor in a way that made the activities feel worthwhile to students. Though I wrote myself a script for Group Juggle, I don't even think students came away from that activity with the same sense of wisdom that I did when we engaged in that activity on our retreat. I don't know if it was the time constraints of the class, the students' reluctance to discuss, or my own discomfort teaching the material, but I really wanted my health and wellness lesson to feel important and relevant and worthwhile to my students, and I cannot tell how well that came across. Drawing on your reflections, list at least three teaching goals you would like to achieve in next week’s session: 1. I (still) want my students to come away with a positive impression of Honors 100. I want them to feel they got something out of it, whether it was a new friend, a funny podcast snippet, an academic strategy, or a life lesson. I know I can't force any of that, but I can certainly try. Trying to leave time to incorporate 'Taps: Connect with Someone Who...' would be a great way to do this, I feel. 2. I want portfolio presentations to run smoothly. I would love if my students can have fun with them as well, but I know I can only ask so much of them :) 3. I want my students to know they can come to me with anything, even after the quarter ends. I'm truly rooting for them, and want to help in any way I can. I really want them to believe this and feel comfortable coming to me. Do you have any questions or concerns for the Honors 100 instructors this week? If so, please provide. Not at the moment. I've had so much fun with H100 and H397 alike this quarter, and I'm so sad that they're ending so soon. List your teaching goals for this week’s session? Did you feel that you were able to meet these goals? What helped or hindered you in that effort?
Copied from lesson plan - Goal: to understand the importance of and process for completing the Experiential Learning component of Honors, and how these activities lend relevance and value to classroom learning. Also, to have students set up their portfolios and understand the basic platform requirements for the portfolio. I think I did a decent job with this goal. I conveyed all of the necessary information about experiential learning and the portfolio to students; however, due to the reshuffling of our lesson plans, I did feel like I was a bit rushed to cram in all the material. I believe students came away with the understanding that they needed to, but I would have liked more time to include activities for engagement, and to allow students more of a portfolio setup/workshop time Please assess your teaching and classroom experience in each of the following areas: Planning and Preparation Strengths: I was careful and meticulous with my lesson plans. I am again eternally grateful to have clock times on my lessons for what times I should start and end each activity (3:30-3:40, etc). I felt that my information was thorough and I felt confident in presenting it - it helped that I had just reviewed and updated it all last night, as well as reviewing the flow of my class. I timed my break well, just when students seemed to need it, and broke up some of the talking flow with activities in an effective manner, particularly in the Portfolio section Areas for Development: I should maybe test-run some of my games and activities beforehand - my icebreaker today got a little messy in my initial explanation, though it worked itself out and ended up being fun. Also, even though I checked all my software before class started, my projector went out right before I was going to talk about Experiential Learning, and I had to do that portion of the lesson purely lecture-style instead of using my slides. I got it up and running again for the second half of class. Can't always win when it comes to technology. Classroom Environment Strength: My students seem pretty comfortable around each other and around me. I even had a girl hang up her phone call to her friend when she came in so she could tell me about an major-advising meeting she'd been to and was incredibly excited about. I like being able to joke with my students and be candid, and to have them reciprocate rather than just look at me strangely. I feel comfortable in my class, and I think many of my students do as well. They were even all happily chatting while I tried to sort out my technical difficulties. Area for Development: I really hope that my students feel as comfortable as I do in our class and around each other, but of course I can't tell for sure - especially the shyer students. I have a couple who speak very little, only when required or prompted (which I'm glad I do - otherwise I'd never hear them!) I don't believe in cold-calling, but I really would love to find ways for them to share their voices and their ideas. I also had two students absent today without notice or explanation, so I hope all is well with them. Instruction Strength: I thought my information was thorough and informative and hopefully helpful. I was particularly proud of my engagement aspect for the Honors Portfolio: I played a wonderful five-minute story clip from The Moth called Lost in the Supermarket that my students seemed to really enjoy - it was funny and heartwarming and they all seemed to be laughing and smiling along. I thought that was a really fun way to share with them the importance and power of small-moment storytelling à la Honors Portfolio. My students appeared to be enjoying themselves throughout the class and hopefully learned something. They especially liked my opening activities (weekly check-in, Assignment 2 check-in, warmup game - telestrations). Area for Development: I felt there was a lot of talking in this section - as referenced earlier, in part because of the need to cram in a lot of content, but also just in the setup of my lesson. I thought I did a pretty good job with pacing in the portfolio section, but the Experiential Learning segment was a lot of just me talking. This was admittedly in part because of my projector crashing and me having to adapt on the fly, but still could have been improved. Luckily, this portion was preceded by a game and followed by a break, and included a small-group-discussion portion, though perhaps a bit late in the section. I was never talking for more than ten minutes at a time though! Drawing on your reflections, list at least three teaching goals you would like to achieve in next week’s session: 1 - It's Health and Wellness week, one of the lessons I'm equally most excited and nervous for. I hope to keep my activities interactive and engaging, since this content is definitely not designed to suit a lecture like some of my other weeks. 2 - I hope to encourage my students to take the content seriously. This has not been an issue so far, but with Health and Wellness, students sometimes have a tendency to hide their discomfort with scorn or humor, so I want to try to make my class engaging and genuine so that students take it seriously. 3 - I want my shyer students to talk. I want all my students to feel welcome and included. I want my students to continue to become friends and take each other under their wings. I have no idea how to foster this other than continuing to model myself the respect and candor I aspire for them to all have, and encourage them as kindly as I can. 4 - I want students to know what resources are available to them at UW and feel like they have access and a right to use them if needed. 5 - Since the final class in Honors 100 is mostly presentations, this is my final chance to really interact with students. I want them to have a positive takeaway from their Honors 100 experience - I want them to remember me and this class fondly. I want them to feel good about the assignments they've completed, and the work they've done, and about Honors as a whole. I think a positive Health and Wellness day will help with this. Do you have any questions or concerns for the Honors 100 instructors this week? If so, please provide. Not really. I plan to continue to email my students during our little break from having class to make sure they're on track with their assignments, and to remind them I'm here if they need me. I will email Honors advisors as necessary if any problems arise. List your teaching goals for this week’s session. Did you feel that you were able to meet these goals? What helped or hindered you in that effort?
Copied from lesson plan: Goal: to understand the scope of communities available on campus, both through Honors and elsewhere, and to begin to consider how to establish community in an individual and meaningful way -- beginning with the Honors 100 community! I think I was successful. I modified my lesson plan for this week based on my first session and my perception of my students, I think in a way that was beneficial. My main hindering factor was time - I had very little time to share the resources I wanted to with students, and felt slightly rushed. I think this was because I devoted a large chunk of my class to a campus scavenger hunt. It's a hard balance - my students loved this activity, and I loved the chance to get them out onto campus and physically visiting some of the sites and resources we talked about, but it was time-consuming. Hard to find the balance. Please assess your teaching and classroom experience in each of the following areas: Planning and Preparation Strengths: I felt good. My lesson plans again did me well. My welcome and icebreaker took a bit more time than intended, but I just shortened my scavenger hunt slightly, and it worked out fine. I felt my lesson flowed well and my students were engaged. Areas for Development: A little bit of timing to alter, but that sort of just comes with the territory of classroom management. No real issues this week. Classroom Environment Strengths: All my students are engaging well and I seem to be getting along with them. I'm having fun with my class as a whole, and I think my students are as well, at least with my activities so far. I even have students chatting with me during our break, which makes me far happier than I can possibly describe. Areas for Development: There are some of my friends bonding with each other faster than others, and though of course this is wonderful, I have to just make sure no one ends up feeling left out or on the outside of the group. Assigning pairs/groups to encourage inclusion and interaction may help with this. Instruction Strengths: I found some pretty good UW resources to share with students, including online directories for clubs/RSOs, and research/internship opportunities. I also made an effort to have my scavenger hunt guide students to places that could be resources for them in finding community, such as the Career and Internship center, the Honors suite, the ASUW and RSO offices, and their major offices. Areas for Development: I did not plan enough time for instruction this session. I had so many activities I wanted to try, from welcomes/check-ins to icebreakers to reflection on communities that students were already a part of to a scavenger hunt that the time I spent sharing websites and resources with them was minimal. I feel good about having put the ideas in their heads to explore on their own, but I wish I had been able to devote class time to students exploring the RSO directory, internships website, etc, to ensure they actually had a chance to utilize these resources before they escaped their brains, never to return. Drawing on your reflections, list at least three teaching goals you would like to achieve in next week’s session: 1. Continue to encourage students to ask questions, and go around to small groups during pair-share times to check if there are any one-on-one conversations to be had. I want my students to use me as a resource! 2. Strike a balance between time going over curriculum and time bonding as a class (through weekly highs-and-lows, icebreaker games, etc). I feel that both are equally valuable in different ways, but that being said, I need to have proper time allotment for both! 3. Try to be clear and articulate in my explanations. As previously stated, I talk fast when excited and sometimes jumble my words, and I want my teaching to lead to clarity for students, not further confusion. Do you have any questions or concerns for the Honors 100 instructors this week? If so, please provide. How thoroughly should we go through/break down the 3(!!) assignments students will have between next week and the next time we're in small session? They are all on Canvas, but at the same time, how much faith should I put in them... In going through and making my obligatory updates to my Honors portfolio to start the year off fresh, and to record for posterity a few artifacts I overlooked when they actually stumbled into my life, I found my initial application to become an Honors Peer Educator. This seemed like a wonderful opportunity for reflection if there ever was one!! I had no idea when I first filled out this application how much I would love being a Peer Educator: both working and learning with the cohort, and being in the classroom (though I'm currently only one week in! though I'm optimistic the feeling will continue throughout the quarter). I also have loved Peer Educators as a community and support network - it was reassuring just to walk in on the first day of classes to a room full of faces I already knew. I'm already sad about this experience ending, but so very glad that I filled out this application all those months ago.
2019 Honors 100 Peer Educator Application Question 10. What interests you about becoming an Honors 100 Peer Educator? What do you hope to gain from the experience, and what do you hope to provide to your students? There is a rule I have for myself when it comes to acts of kindness and generosity. For every kindness done for me, I like to try and repay the favor. It could be to the same person, or it could be a favor passed on by a kind act to someone new. The Honors Program is a community I felt welcomed me with open arms when I started at UW this past fall. I want to help pass on the kindness shown to me to the next generation of UW Honors students. Teaching is something that I love, and as someone interested in studying education, I am excited about this chance for hands-on classroom experience. I want to provide for these students a friendly face, as much guidance as I’m able to muster, and if I’m lucky, even a pearl of wisdom or two I’ve gleaned from my college experience so far. Most of all, at this time of pivotal transition for new students, I want to put a little extra kindness into their lives. Question 11. As a Peer Educator, you will be asked to lead classroom discussions, prepare lesson plans, help new students acclimate to UW, and develop community-building activities. What experiences have you had to prepare you for this role? For the past three and a half years, I’ve had the opportunity to hold a part-time job teaching martial arts classes several days a week to children age four to twelve. This job has involved many of the above skills on the regular. For instance, one of my favorite roles while teaching classes is leading our “mat chats,” where we have miniature discussions about our ‘word of the month’ (usually some sort of character trait such as courtesy or respect). I love hearing the wonderful ideas that my students generate, and helping them brainstorm ways to incorporate these concepts into their everyday lives. I also must regularly generate miniature lesson plans for the methods I want to use to deliver curriculum to my students in a way that keeps them engaged and excited to learn. Finally, I am one of the primary instructors responsibly for teaching orientation lessons and helping new students to adjust to our school. All of these experiences have helped me to feel confident in organizing and running a classroom, and I would be excited to apply these skills to being a Peer Educator. Question 12. What was your greatest challenge during your first quarter in the Honors Program? Describe your experience and your strategies for working through that challenge. Personally, the transition into starting college was a difficult one. I worried about everything: living away from home, the classes I was taking, whether I was making friends fast enough in comparison to those around me. One of the principle strategies I used to stay on top of it all was constant positive self-talk. I reminded myself of all the things that I was doing well, and why the things I worried about weren’t actually as bad as my frenzied brain wanted me to think. I also turned to all the people I was already close to – such as my mom and my high school friends – to remind myself that I wasn’t as alone as I sometimes felt. These strategies helped me to push through the difficulty, and have what I felt was a relatively successful first quarter. Question 13. What do you consider the three most important topics for a new Honors student to learn in Honors 100? Explain why you believe each topic is important. I think the three most important topics for Honors students are how to take care of themselves academically, socially, and personally. Those are the three areas in which I felt most pressured my first quarter as an Honors student. Academics are important, as preplanning and foresight are only going to make the next four years easier. Social dynamics are key because having a supportive peer group can greatly help with feelings of loneliness or homesickness. Personal care is critical for both physical and mental wellbeing, and can have influence over the other two. It is particularly easy to overlook, and thus important to focus on. I think understanding that other students struggle with these as well when starting college would make the transition easier. I've decided to attach my Week Three self-assessment, from directly following the first Honors 100 section I taught, as I feel it's satisfactorily reflective to count as both an artifact and a reflective article.
WEEK THREE SELF-ASSESSMENT List your teaching goals for this week’s session. Did you feel that you were able to meet these goals? What helped or hindered you in that effort? Your Answer: Goal for this week, as listed at the top of my lesson plan: To welcome everyone to your cohort! And to understand the elements of the Honors curriculum (instruction, experience & reflection) and how to accomplish these curricular goals (alongside other requirements) in a personally relevant way before graduation. I feel like I accomplished this quite effectively. All my students seemed fairly comfortable with me and each other by the end of the first session, which was both a goal and concern of mine. I also felt I struck a solid balance between giving students necessary information that would help them feel as though the class session was productive, and fun activities that would help them enjoy the class session and feel comfortable in the space and around each other. I also gave them time to start establishing connections between the content I had thrown at them, and their own personal academic paths (MyPlan/Course Catalog scavenger hunt!) This will hopefully help them in their preparation for Assignment Two as well. Please assess your teaching and classroom experience in each of the following areas: Question 2 Planning and Preparation Your Answer: Strengths: I hyper-prepared for this class session, to the extent of bordering on obsession. I read, revised, tweaked and memorized my lesson plan in the weeks leading up, but particularly in the few days before. I also read and reread my students' surveys and "Who Am I?" essays over and over, and studied their pictures and majors on Canvas, wanting to get a sense of who they were before I encountered them in the classroom. This allowed me to go into the first session feeling quite prepared, though it perhaps wasn't the most productive use of my time. Areas for Development: Work to prepare lesson plans and feel confident with them, then take a step back. What is going to happen, will happen. Stressing and obsessing is okay to a degree, but at some point, I need to relax! Question 3 Classroom Environment Your Answer: Strengths: I was NERVOUS for my first class, but I decided to be honest about this. When my students came in, I greeted them all individually, wanting to learn their names and make each of them feel welcome. Then, in introducing myself, I told my class straight-up how I was nervous for the session, but I was going to try my best regardless. They all seemed incredibly understanding and sympathetic - a lot of them probably felt the same way, quite honestly - and I think this helped me to begin to forge a connection with my students. For the rest of class, my students seemed willing to go along with my activities and participate (even in icebreakers! which I love!) I was far more relaxed and pleased with my classroom environment that I expected to be. Areas for Development: Why won't students - of any age, of any level - ever ask questions? I'm exaggerating a bit - I actually did get some good one-on-one questions from students, and had a couple meaningful conversations. It was really when I asked the entire class as a group if they had questions or comments that I received few responses. Hopefully as the class becomes more comfortable with each other, and with me, this will change - or else I'll just have to force people to talk to me by having everyone share a question or idea (I tried this towards the end of the session; it worked well enough, my students didn't seem too resentful, and it really helped me to get a sense of what they were thinking about in terms of the content we covered.) Question 4 Instruction Your Answer: Strength: My students all seemed to comprehend the content well enough and didn't have too many clarifying questions (is this good or bad??) (and I was able to address the few they did ask.) Hopefully they came away with a good overview of what Interdisciplinary Honors looks like, and what they have to do to graduate with this label on their diplomas :) Area for Development: I talk fast. I know I talk fast. While I didn't receive any specific complaints from students about this, and I tried to make very clear my willingness to circle back to information or explain again in a different way, I still feel this is an area for improvement. I think this class section was my longest/densest lecture all quarter (on the Honors core curriculum), but if I do any other presentations, perhaps more practicing beforehand could help with this. Question 5 Drawing on your reflections, list at least three teaching goals you would like to achieve in next week’s session: Your Answer: 1. Continue to forge connections with my students so they feel comfortable coming to me with questions, concerns, rants, etc. I actually adore and look forward to receiving emails / contact requests in various forms, which I told my students explicitly! 2. Help students to begin feeling comfortable and at home within both UW and the Honors Program specifically by providing connections and opportunities to forge community. 3. For me personally: slow down, breathe, minimize the stress. My best is all I can give, and students appreciate it. I'm qualified to do this, and I've grown and learned so much since I was in my students' position last year - don't deny or forget that. Imposter syndrome is real, but all I have to do is fake it, and nobody is able to tell. (I feel a lot better about this after my first session, but I think continued reminders for myself throughout the quarter will be helpful and needed.) Question 6 Do you have any questions or concerns for the Honors 100 instructors this week? If so, please provide. Your Answer: I don't think so. I really want to hear how other Peer Educators' first sessions went, what strategies they employed that worked/didn't work, and what their plans for next week are. I'm not super confident with my Communities lesson plan and think I might tweak it, so I'm interested in what other people have planned. |
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