Communication-Week 9

Hope everyone had a great spring break! I wish it was longer. Anyway to get to the topic we left off with before this wonderful week, communication. This is a very important subject when it comes to everything in life. We use communication every day. My favorite forms of communication are texting and email, but as we discussed in class these are also some things that I need to watch out for. Because this is a form of communication that is not direct, some things can be taken the wrong way. Sarcasm is something that can be misinterpreted in non-verbal situations. Speaking of misinterpretation, the picture-telephone that Chelsee and Brandon had us do was a great activity that we could use in the fall. I remember doing this activity when I was an incoming student. It puts a whole new twist on telephone. It adds to the message that verbal communication can be misinterpreted, visual communication can as well. It was also a lot of fun to see everyone’s beautiful pictures! In the book, a section focused how mentoring communication is different from other communication. It is important for us to focus on this because we are interacting with students during a great life transition into college. We need to encourage students to be independent. We need to be there for the students, but we cannot let them over rely on us in our interactions. We need to keep the student’s best interest at heart. They can tell when we are being fake, so keeping trust, being honest, and mean and practice what we say is an important part of interaction. I did say in class that texting and reminder emails were a big help in the past class I co-taught. I just want people to be aware that some do get a lot of text and emails, so make sure it is okay with your students to send them emails and text message reminders. If it becomes a problem not sending them, then get more involved. Lastly, twitter was fun! It was nice seeing what everyone else is doing and not only on Facebook. It is hard for me to keep up with it, but I am trying to look at it at least once a day!

Hope everyone had a great week! See you all Tuesday! Don’t forget about lesson plans!

Awareness of Culture and ISCORE-Week 8

So this week we conveniently had our lesson on developing cultural sensitivity and ISCORE. Both were to focus on what we identify with and how we should react to what others identify with. The book focused on things like how your beliefs affect your attitude, not only the way you act, but what you think about others. This is very important to recognize as being a peer mentor because we don’t know where our students are coming from and where they have been or even what they do identify themselves with. We know our way of thinking, but we don’t know theirs and we shouldn’t assume that theirs is the same as ours. It also gave us strategies to use to go along with that. We should accept people the way they are. I may not have been abused or segregated for the way I look or what I believe, but I do know how it feels to be attacked for not having the same views as someone else. Being a Christian and being Catholic with that is something that I am really proud of being, unfortunately I do not know what is in the background of that particular denomination, let alone any others. It is difficult to stand there and not be able to say anything when someone is telling you what you believe is wrong.

On a positive note, I also am a sister. I am proud of all my family especially my brothers and sisters. They have helped me through a lot and I have helped them through a lot. I love seeing my little sister accomplish what she does. I hope that I am a role model to her, and that I influence some of what she does. A lot of people in the class also identified themselves as being this. I think that it is important to have those connections with family. I know that no one in the class is an only child, so everyone is a sibling. It just depends on if they identify with it or not.

At ISCORE I went to the session called “whose decision is it”. It was about the values that Latino students have and how these values and differences from their culture affect their choice to attend 4-year college institutions. They talked about Latino students having a responsibility to their family to make money, stay close to home, and attend a community college if even that. They said that some don’t go on to college because they are discouraged by lower performance in high school. I think that some of the ideas they had could be connected to some of the students in the fall. They may not be struggling with the idea to attend college, or maybe they are, but they could also be struggling with the support from home or the idea that you will be somewhere where you do not know anyone. Latino students need to get through the barrier of not being able to completely support their family, which can be difficult, which is why so many do not attend college.

I had a lot more to say, but I can see that I am already over 500 words. I guess I’ll end with what I have this week, and I will probably incorporate my ideas into future blogs.

See you all Tuesday!

Becoming a Role Model-Week 7

This week was about becoming a role model as a peer mentor. As was brought up in class, this chapter had us focus on peer mentors in our lives. My sister was the one I shared in class. She is only six years older than me and it feels like she has so much more accomplished in life then me. She is wonderful. The main part of this chapter was in the common values of successful peer mentors. I think my strongest values on the list are gratitude and kindness. My weakest ones are choice and purpose. The activity Amy and Rachel had us do in class was very interactive and made us think. That is where I came up with the strong and weak values. I think that knowing this about myself will help me improve and be a better role model in the fall. I feel like I used to be a lot more responsible than I am now. For some reason, if I don’t write something down, I forget it. That is why I keep such a detailed schedule. I guess that is something I can share with the future students that goes through the same thing. Choice is a hard one for me because I am so indecisive. The power to choose your own responses to things that happen to you. My goal with this one is to choose to have a positive attitude when I go to class in the fall. I want to be excited about class, so that the students can be excited as well. I think that I need some self confidence to help with purpose. It seems like I get down a lot and like I’m not good enough. I definitely ask the question, why am I doing this? I think if I can start answering that question, I will discover more of what I want. Well I better not type your eyes out, I’ll see you all on Tuesday.

Self Awareness-Week 6

This week was focused on self-awareness. I think that this is an important topic because you should know yourself and why you are the way you are. If you know yourself you can help others know themselves. My role in helping the incoming students become more self-aware is to encourage them on the importance. The book says that people who struggle with self-awareness do not recognize how their choices affect their lives. Self-awareness is has a lot to do with the success, especially as a student. I can help the students be more self aware by… 1) knowing myself. How can I help and teach something that I don’t know myself? 2) Discuss topics such as habits of mind, habits of mind can be good or bad, so I will discuss both and help the students recognize what they are and how they can change them if they feel that they need to. This will hopefully help for students to think in a different way. I guess a good question to go with that would be, what do you hope to get out of the class? (Some example answers could be…a good grade, a relationship with the professor, an easy A, the knowledge the class has to teach, or make friends with fellow students). All of these answers can be discussed to help the student identify with why they said that answer and with hearing other people’s answers they can hopefully learn to view the classroom in a different way.

I like the activity that Anthony and Beth had us do about why we are the way we are. I think we all learned a lot about each other and a lot about ourselves. I actually kind of went through something like that when I went through counseling at Student Counseling Services. I found out why I am such a perfectionist and why I establish relationships the way I do. I think that SCS would be a great place to refer students if they feel that they are having trouble being self-aware.

3 goals to improve my self-awareness:

1) Set up a sleeping pattern that allows me to get between 7 and 8 hours of sleep a night if possible. This would mean that I would need to get homework and studying done a little sooner so that I am not cramming the night before.
2) Get regular exercise by waking up a little earlier and doing Wii Fit at least twice a week. I bought it for this reason and I really should start doing it.
3) Start a savings account. I have enough money for one because of my scholarships and working. I need to save money and not spend it on “toys”.

Notice that most of my goals have to do with physical awareness. This one definitely got away from me after high school when I wasn’t in sports and doing high school classes anymore.

Well I guess that is enough for this week. I will continue to discover my self-awareness, so that I will be able to help the students discover theirs as well.

See you all on Tuesday everybody!

Difficult Dialogues-Week 5

So I went to my diversity event this week called difficult dialogues and managing conflict. It was in the memorial union and only about 10-15 people were there. Maybe about 5 students and the others were staff and interested others. Paul Ladehoff was the presenter and he is interim Assistant Dean for Admissions, Career Development and Student Services at the MU School of Law. It was a session that focused on what a difficult dialogue is and what to do with them.

I discovered that difficult dialogues involve more than just talking about sexuality, race, gender, politics, religion or others things people identify with. It can be any conversation that makes someone feel embarrassed, uncomfortable, or feel like they are being judged. This can be as simple as being called on in class, or telling someone bad news. That means that we engage in a lot more difficult dialogues then we thought. This can probably be worse with introverts because they may find themselves in conversations in which people expect them to talk and they don’t want to, which can lead them to feeling uncomfortable. I found this subject very interesting in the session. One subject that was brought up was, as a dialogue facilitator, as we will be when we bring up discussion points in recitation in the fall, what do we hope will happen in the discussion and what to we fear? This really got me thinking. As mentors to incoming students we can have very uncomfortable discussions and topics to cover. I fear that we may hit a breaking point for a student. Like if we get on the discussion of being homesick, or undeclared majors, or even stress management that someone could have a personal connection to. I hope that the students will feel better after the discussion and be encouraged to ask for help or try something different in their lives.

The facilitator gave us some facilitating strategies that I would love to share with whoever asks. He also gave us a list of guidelines for controversial conversations and even some signs and emotions to watch out for if something is getting too deep. I even found myself feeling a little uncomfortable when someone was talking about people storming out of conversations. It seems like every get-together in my family someone does that. I think that really helped me to pay attention and want to learn from this session.

I really learned a lot in this session about what to watch out for and how to facilitate these kinds of conversations. I really wish more people could have attended this so I could bounce ideas off of them. I guess the only question I would have right now is about me. What motivates my emotions in difficult dialogues and what is the goal I am trying to get through? I think with the students in the fall it is the dialogue goal. I want others to understand and appreciate the genuine differences of everyone.

Well that was a quick look at difficult dialogues. If anyone wants to see the handouts he gave us to learn more information, let me know!