Are we really done already!?

Phew! It’s our last blog post!! I can’t believe finals really start tomorrow this is crazy!! I’m glad I have a pretty easy final schedule, I’m REALLY worried for my math one on Wednesday that one is going to rock my world.   Also, cleaning my apartment before I move out is a lot of work, I did not know I had so much stuff to move out and clean up ahhh!  I really don’t want to get fined with anything either, they’re really strict on that at Freddy L

Anyways, I had so much fun Wednesday in class.  It was a good last class until the fall! Brady and I finally decided when we’re going to meet up and plan our lessons, and we’re pretty excited.  I’m looking forward to the point in time when we get to know our students and we can base our lesson plans on what we know they like to do rather than out first few lesson plans that are pretty much going to be a shot in the dark, I hope they like them!! Also, that game we played was a lot of fun.  I’M SORRY to my team, I couldn’t help but blurt the answers out…I didn’t even know I was doing it until I was like yelling and you all were like glaring at me and I’M SORRRRRRYYYY!!!!! But hey we won so no big deal right!? J

Well, I hope everyone has a successful finals week, and enjoy your summer whether it’s here in Ames or back home!  Can’t wait to see everyone for our retreats in August!  Have a wonderful summer break!

Peace out girl scouts! J

Semester really over already!?

Holy cow, I cannot believe it’s the end of the semester already!  Where the heck did the time go!?  I’m ready to be done and go home to kind of relax.  I will be taking summer classes unfortunately, but hey it bumps my credits so that’s good.

Anyways I had a lot of fun in class on Wednesday.  Being able to ask the previous peer mentors some of the questions that had been on our minds was really helpful.  It kind of made me nervous though because I will be taking 17 credits next semester plus having a job on campus.  I can’t afford to drop a class in the middle of the semester after I realize I can’t handle it so maybe it will be beneficial if I take one of the classes out and take it in the spring.  Either way, my schedule is probably going to always be packed between now and graduation after I had just switched my major again just a month ago.  It just makes me nervous and I’d rather not stress myself out too much. 

The whole time in class I was just waiting in anticipation to find out who I was going to be a co-peer mentor with.  The puzzle activity that they had a do was a pretty neat idea, probably better than just reading out names off of a list.  I think I preferred the hands on part of it!  I’m so looking forward to being able to teach a class with Brady in the fall!! We are all going to do a great job, and this makes me even more excited to start in the fall! J  I’m also really looking forward to deciding what to do for the retreat, we are going to make it a good year guys!  

Peer Educators/Reading Article

Finished filming today guys good job!! I feel like we definitely hit that last minute mark on the project but I can’t wait to see the finished product on Wednesday in class! Oh, and we’ll get to see who we’re pared up with, soooo exciting!! J

Anyways, this past week Tanner and Brooke led our last class with us mentors teaching! Man did it fly by, good job guys we all did great!  This time we had pretty much tied everything all of us taught all together and it was a good review because I honestly forgot what we had covered a few months ago, I may or may not have short term memory loss haha.  We focused on the peer educators we have on campus and as a class we came up with a very decent amount!  Some of them I don’t even think about we just use it, does that make sense?  We have it so good here with how many leaders/peer educators we can go to if we need help, I’m very thankful for that.

We also then discussed the article we had to read.  I never really thought about how important personality went into the decision process of hiring someone.  I mean I work for my parents and when they had asked about people from high school that they could hire I always told them pick this person they’re really nice and responsible and blah dee blah but I guess I just wasn't aware that I was doing that at the time.  I would prefer to work with someone who I can get along with and have a good time and still be responsible and get my work done than someone who just makes work utterly terrible and is always one of those strict bosses.  I hope I can remember this for when I start interviewing for jobs and hopefully I’ll be the person they’re looking for!

Ethics

Hello guys!  Tonight we had the etiquette dinner and it was SOOOOO much fun!! If you didn’t go you really missed out on a good time, good food and plenty of good laughs (mainly at me but it was goodJ ).  I really do like these random opportunities for us peer mentors to get together and get the chance to bond outside of the classroom environment!

The question we were given to evaluate and discuss in our blog post this week is something that I hadn’t really thought of before.  Ethics is a very big issue with teaching others, and not crossing certain boundaries is very important.  The following five most important roles of ethics that are important for my role as a peer mentor would be:  

to know my limits (I don’t want to cross boundaries that I shouldn’t such as something with relationship problems), 

we talked a lot about emotional responses so that would be one too (be careful and aware of what emotion your giving off to others), 

don’t give advice to someone when you aren't really sure what advice you’re giving (suggest a person they could go to if they want to know more about something, if you don’t know what they need, it would help them more suggesting something else rather than steering them in the wrong direction),

be a responsible leader (these kids are going to look up to you, show them someone they can aspire to be), and lastly, respect all of the people around me (even though we may not agree on certain things you can still respect their opinion on whatever it may be). 

Alright guys that’s about it for the blog post about ethics.  I’m sure there are going to be many various scenarios that we are going to encounter in the fall and although it’s a scary thought that we’ll just be diving into it, it’s nice to know that we can always go talk to Chelsee or Allie if we ever need some help.  J

I hope you all have a safe and exciting VEISHEA!!! J

Resources

This past week was a very exciting one for me! Megan and I were teaching and of course that was my first time teaching the class and I was super nervous but everything seemed to go very well and you guys seemed to like the activity so that was a lot of fun! Thank you guys for being so awesome!!

Anyways, we were going over various resources on the campus that we have all personally used and I was surprised to hear some that I’ve never heard of before! But that’s just what we need to do in the fall is push those resources not as well known to the students.  I would have definitely used the on call nurse thing if I had known about it – good job Coreen for listing that because I think that was new for all of us to hear about (if not then it was just me haha)!

We thought it would be better to focus more on the resources available on our campus rather focusing on the book during our class time and when we did the quiz (I liked to call it jeopardy) everyone seemed to really enjoy it, and everyone got the answers correct with the hints so I would say I was very impressed, good job!

If class will be anything like it was Wednesday next year then I’m really looking forward to it now! J

Learning Styles

This week’s class was very interesting for me because I've never really known which learning style I preferred.  I know, I know it sounds silly but if you look at my results from the quiz we took in class I had two 5’s and two 3’s, so I suppose I prefer all four at some point, I'm not really sure what to think of it.  I remember when we went over this last year in our recitation class too and it was pretty much the same, no one style specifically stood out for me.  I like to think my learning styles are kinesthetic and visual because that’s how I learned best when doing my jobs back at home and at Hawthorn.  After I watch someone do something and then try it out for myself I feel like the more I do it the more I’ll get better at it and I like it that way.  I don’t think I can learn just by reading something, I feel like I work better when after if I do read it I apply it because doing whatever makes me learn better.  I like hands on activities. 

I’ll use a past experience as an example.  So when I was younger I used to dance, and when you’re learning a new routine we always watch the teacher and have them show it to us then we repeat what they do because just reading the whole dance on paper would be hard for all of us to pick up.  So I guess I’ve grown up with learning how to do that, watching someone do something then putting myself in their shoes and applying it myself.  I really hope that makes sense because it made sense in my head!

We did a certain activity last year in our recitation and I don’t remember literally everything but I want to try to do that activity with my students next year and hopefully they will be able to tell which learning style they prefer best.

Leadership

This week Brady and Josh led the class with the discussion over Leadership.  With leadership being such a broad topic I liked what we covered in class and how to go about this in the fall with our mentees.

One of the few things we discussed in class was seating arrangements.  I was taken aback by it because I have never really thought about how seating could affect our leadership but as we talked about it, it definitely made more sense.  I would say if I’m not presenting something and no one else is either my favorite seating arrangement(s) would be sitting in the circle or the living room one.  I like them because to me it seems like a relaxed environment and everyone can see each other and it makes discussion go very well. 

It was also brought up how we are to talk to our mentees in the fall during recitation and even the large lecture.  It seemed to be a touchy subject to use sarcasm with the mentees, but I’m a very sarcastic person in general so I think I may use it next year but use it lightly and be overpowering.  I know sometimes people don’t catch onto sarcasm as easily as others and maybe not take the people who use it as serious.  I hope I don’t get to that point, and if I do happen to use it, do it like Easton mentioned in class where he was doing it to call out certain people for not paying attention or what have you.

Overall, I’m not going to be able to know how to go about doing things until I meet and get to know who I’m teaching and how I’m going to go about differences within the group.  But as I learn everything in this class I’ll be able to apply everything to the best of my abilities.