Resoures to be familiar with

Hopefully everyone had a great break and didn’t have to much trouble getting back into the swing of school.  I know that I had a busy week last week with it being last week to drop, so I was glad when Friday came around.

This week’s learning session was taught by Megan and Jessica.  It was all about campus resources and how you can refer these resources to your students.  Let’s start off with the Hixson intro which was “If you could be famous for one thing, what would it be?”  This was clever and very different.

Having the class brainstorm all of the resources we either know of or have used was a good way of getting everyone involved.  It brought up some resources that some of us hadn’t used or may have never heard of like McFarland Clinic First Nurse.

I think the whole class can agree that the best part about your learning session was the Jeopardy game even though we didn’t make it all the way through the game.  It was very obvious that you put a lot of work into the slides and it was a fun yet informative activity.  For instance, a large portion of us had no idea about the biofeedback program at the student services center.

Overall, I think that the two of you did a great job.

The handout that Chelsee gave us at the end of class looks like it will be a good resource for us as peer mentors to help us suggest resources to our students in the fall.

Finally, I want to comment on the little flyer that Debra gave us about our MBTI.  I thought that most of the nouns on mine seemed pretty darn accurate of my personality.  Some of them are even words that were on mine I have even used to describe myself before we even covered MBTI.

Not what I expected- Diversity event

This past Wednesday I attended a lecture entitled Extra-Ordinary Experiences and the Emergence of New Visionary Movements-Mormonism and the Golden Plates by Ann Taves for a diversity event.  I thought that this would be an interesting talk for a couple different reasons.  The first was that I had a Mormon friend in high school and the second was that I like to learn about different religions. 

So, around 7:30 I headed to the MU without thinking since all the other talks I have attended have been there.  Soon I realized that this was wrong and after a few confused minutes I quickly headed to the Sceman Building.  Apparently I need to learn to read a bit better. OOPS!

Unfortunately, I was disappointed in this lecture.  I guess I went into the lecture thinking that there would be some explanation of the core beliefs of Mormonism and the significance of the Golden Plates.  Instead, the main topic had more to do with whether or not the Golden Plates actually existed or if they were a delusion.  Dr. Taves went into some philosophical reasoning which I find really hard to follow.  In addition to it being hard for me to follow, it was a very dry talk in general.  It was clear that Dr. Taves knew what she was talking about, but I think she had a harder time connecting with the audience.  I found myself watching the American Sign Language interpreters most of the times while still listening to Dr. Taves speak.

 This has been the first talk that I can honestly say that I did not enjoy at all.  Yet, I still am walking away with something and that is the motivation to take some time an research Mormonism on my own to satisfy my curiosity.  I think it is important to at least be familiar with different religions and that is what I try to do.  I find that learning about other religions allows me to examine my beliefs and to decide how happy I am with them.

"Harlem" shake & Strategies for academic success

This week was a little different.  We spent the first half of the class discussing the “new” Harlem shake dance.  It is true that when most people are viewing these videos on the internet they do not think to look up the history behind it.  Most of the time people are just viewing them to laugh at the newest internet fad.  It turns out that there is a long history behind the Harlem shake, but not the one that these newest videos are depicting.  The real Harlem shake originated in Harlem around the time of the Harlem renaissance and is described as moving just your upper body with rhythm by some Harlem residence.  After hearing the history of the real Harlem shake, it is understandable why the residences of Harlem are offended by the “new” Harlem shake.  To Harlem residences this “new” shake is making fun of not only the old Harlem shake but their culture as well.  I think it was really important for us to talk about the history of the Harlem shake before we include it in our digital storytelling, but it was also important to just hear about it in general.

The second half of class consisted of Shelby and Steph taught their learning lesson over strategies for academic success.  I thought they did a good job of switching back and forth and giving clear directions to the class.  I liked that they used their resources and had the class take a short quiz to find out their learning style.  One thing that the girls did was to leave the class with the following question: how can you apply knowing your learning style and the strategies associated with it to improve your academic success?  The best answer I can come up with right now is that just being aware of your learning style so that while you are in class, taking notes, and/or studying that you employ some of those strategies.

Well that's about all I can think of to say about class this week so I hope everyone has a great Spring break!

What makes a leader: Leading groups effectively

Another busy week, but a week closer to warm weather! Whooo!

This week Brady and Josh lead the learning session about leading groups effectively.  They had a very cleaver (and maybe a little odd) question about your talent in the Miss America pageant.  They did a very good job referring to the book and incorporating that information into the lesson this week.  One thing they did that I thought was very helpful was having us write down some qualities needed to be an effective leader.  Although my list wasn’t very long, I think that you could make a list that would go on forever.

At the end of our chapter this week it talked about problem personalities.  I thought this was a very important part of the chapter, because we are likely to run into a few people with these types of personalities in the fall.  So, we have to learn how to deal with them effectively.  First there are monopolizers who will dominate the group verbally and draw attention to themselves.  This type of personality can lead some members of the group to withdrawal and not participate.  The next type of personality was manipulators.  People with this type of personality will do almost anything to ensure protection for themselves and to have a sense of control.  The third type of personality is distractors.  In my mind these are your typical class clown trying whatever they can to get off topic.  Then there are aggressors who create disturbances in groups.  The final type of personalities the book mentions is harmonizers.  They try to prevent conflict at all costs which is bad when it is a topic that needs to be discussed.  Knowing how to deal with each of these personalities will be a useful skill in the fall.

This week was also a peer mentor retreat.  Woot! Woot!  I hope everyone had a good time and didn’t leave too depressed after hearing how much debt we are likely to be in when we graduate.  Even though we hate to hear it at least we are aware which is better than a lot of college students.  Hope everyone stays safe this week.  See you Wednesday!

ISCORE!

I was able to attend two sessions at the Iowa State Conference on Race and Ethnicity on Friday.  The first session I attended was Nine Digits of Freedom: Analyzing Inherent Privileges that Come from Being a U.S. Citizen.  One of the main topics the student panel discussed during this session was the view of Latinos in this country.  They discussed how many people in the U.S. believe that illegal aliens are Latinos who don’t want to work or pay taxes.  This is all untrue.  The majority of illegal aliens currently in this country are not Latino.    Another large topic was the Arizona SB1070 law and how it seems a lot like racial profiling.

The next session that I went to was Dumb Things We Need to Stop Saying and Other Practical Steps to Increase our Effectiveness around Diversity.  Luiza Dreasher discussed four different concepts that can help you to stop saying things that may offend people without you even realizing it. The first concept was Intent vs. Impact.  This is a concept that has been a reoccurring theme at the last few conferences.  Concept two was the Pile on Principle which is when one thing upon another weighs on the person.  One thing you can do to help that person is to demonstrate empathy towards them.  The third principle was to recognize our privilege.  It is important that we recognize that our privileges give us a head start, but the most important thing is what you do with that privilege.  The fourth and final principle Luiza discussed was Raising the B.A.R.  B stands for breathing.  Taking a break to breath not only relaxes you, but it also buys you time to choose a better way to respond in a situation.  For example try to talk while taking a deep breath… you can’t do it.  A is for Acknowledge.  You should acknowledge the other persons points by asking and clarifying what they are saying.  Last, R stands for responding.  This is different than reacting because you need to think before you respond.

I enjoyed ISCORE and I wish the best for Kat and Sebastian at NSCORE this Summer.

Understanding Group Process

              This week Kat and Tyler taught the learning lesson about understanding group process.  I’m not going to lie after reading the chapter for this week I was a little nervous for the activities that they would have us do would be ones like having to cross one arm over the other, grabbing other people’s hands, and trying to untangle ourselves without letting go.  Not that these activities are not fun, but they are just ones that are well known and to be honest I find them difficult to do.  Instead I was pleasantly surprised by the activity they had us do.  It was one that I had never done before which made it exciting.  I thought the guys did a good job maintaining their composure and continuing on with class even though we were rambunctious this week.

                My favorite part of the day was probably the question of the day that Kat and Tyler posed.  It was very creative and fun.  The answers that we came up with were anything from practical to downright silly.  It’s good to have something just for fun every once in a while.

                I enjoyed the discussion about different groups that either worked well or did not and why.  We’ve all had experiences with both types of groups and it helps to be aware of the different ways that can cause a group to be unsuccessful.  Two things that came up were communication within the group and getting individuals to take responsibility for their responsibilities.

              In the chapter it gives a list of ten things that define people as a group.  I thought it was fun to think about how each of these ten things related to our peer mentor group.  After doing this I would have to agree with what Kat said in class; we are going to make an excellent peer mentor group for our students in the fall.

Problem Solving with Individuals and Social media week

Well, another week has come and gone.  Time does seem to fly by faster these days.  This week is another exciting one for all of us in UST311 because it is social media week!  Wooo!  I’m doing more tweeting on a regular basis than I usually do, so hooray for that.  Hopefully everyone will enjoy the remaining couple of days.

                The lesson this week was taught by Sebastian and Brad.  I thought you guys did a great job making sure that the directions were clear and that the class knew what was expected of them.  I also liked the fact that you took turns when explaining the activities so that you each explained one.  It showed me that you both were interested, but not stepping on each other’s toes.  Although, that could have been an entertaining and inventive way of visually demonstrating how students could implement problem solving.  Just a wild thought.  Seriously though you guys did a very good job.

                One thing that really stuck out to me in the chapter this week was the strategies for problem solving section.  To be more specific the goal setting section is what caught my attention because it reminded me of our SMART goals.  Like SMART goals the book states that goals should be attainable, clear and explicit (in other words specific), and that they need to be measurable.  There were a few things that the book says about goals that are either not specified when I’ve talked about SMART goals in the past or that were just plain never said.  The first thing was that goals should be relevant to the person.  I feel like this was not clearly stated when I’ve done SMART goal setting in the past, because it is assumed that the goals you are making mean something to you. 

Something that the book brought up that I had never heard of before was that goals should be stated positively.  I think this is a very import thing to keep your moral up when you are working towards a long term or especially challenging goal.  The first activity that Brad and Sebastian did during their lesson had to do with stating goals positively and I think that was a very good choice.

Well I think that’s all for today so I’ll end with a quote from the goal setting part of our chapter.  “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never know if you’ve arrived!”