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.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
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!”
Sunday, February 17, 2013
More interpersonal on communication
I think I will be making a tradition of complimenting every
group that does their learning session during the week. So, here it goes. Katie and Coreen I think you guys did a
wonderful job of making sure that everyone in the class was involved. I also enjoyed your scenarios, because they definitely
helped us realize that most situations call for a combination of interpersonal communication
skills and advise giving skills.
On to the next topic. The next activity we did in class was
to pick an individual we admire and write a list of traits that describe
them. When we compiled all of our
answers together, we had a very comprehensive list of about 36 items. There are so many more that we could add to
this list with just a little more brain storming and a little more time.
Allie wanted us to focus on the characteristics of a helping
relationship in our blog posts. There
are ten characteristics of a helping relationship that the book mentions. I thought that some of the key ones are that
a helping relationship is meaningful, that it has a clear structure, it
demonstrates respect for individual self-worth, and finally that a helping
relationship is designed to produce change.
Each of these is important in its own way.
I hope everyone had a great time at the retreat today. I know I did!
Sunday, February 10, 2013
From cultural profeciency to interpersonal communication
This week Easten taught his
learning session over cultural proficiency, so I thought I would comment on
what I thought was good about his session.
I thought he did a wonderful job keeping his energy up and keeping
everyone enthused during the class period (I’m sure we’ve all had those classes
that just drag on because there is no energy in the room). The “All My Neighbor’s” activity that he did
with us was very fun and a clever way to help us realize the some of the many similarities
and differences that exist within our small group of peer mentors. I thought that the activity was a great way
to facilitate talking about differences that arise within groups. Finally, the worksheet that we worked on in
class was a helpful way to identify the things that shape our own personal
culture that others may not necessarily share.
To sum this up, I thought Easten’s learning session was a great example
of what we should be doing and he set the bar pretty high.
The other thing I thought I would
discuss this week was the chapter in the book.
This chapter covered interpersonal communication skills. The first important thing I took away from
the chapter was that, as a peer mentor, it is vital that you do not just “give
advice” to our students. Giving advice
does not allow the student to learn from their problems by themselves.
The chapter goes on to discuss a
model the book uses to help train people in the skills of interpersonal relationships
and creating the helping interaction.
This model consists of five steps: skills of preparedness, skills of
attending, skills of understanding, skills of responding, and skills of resolution. Since the first skill set was covered in
chapter four, this chapter only goes into the middle three skill sets. The final set will be covered in the chapter
we read next week. Of the ones that were
covered I found the skills of responding to be the most interesting. They focus on how you can ensure that you are
not just giving advice to your students.
These skills will become very handy next fall if/when any of the new
students come to me for help.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Mid-year institute and ISLE
Over the last few days we have had
a couple of different opportunities to learn about different aspects of
leadership and how we can apply them in as peer mentors and in our own lives as
well. Friday during the Iowa State
Mid-year Institute I was able to attend the highlighting your peer mentoring on
resumes and in interviews by Roger Bently.
Not only was this session pretty informative, it was partially
interactive too. We had the chance to
talk to some of the other learning community members in the room using some action
verbs that were provided. I think the
most important thing I got out of that session was S.T.A.R. which stands for
Situation, Tasks, Actions, and Results together these make a framework that can
be used to answer interview questions.
The second session I went to on Friday
was Community Building in Your Learning Community by Andrea Ramos and Kari
Teitjen. There were a couple of things that
really stuck out to me in this session.
One of these was the number of trainings that the WISE peer mentors take
some of which may benefit us as Hixson peer mentors. The second thing was Intent vs. Impact in
communication. Intent is what we mean to
say where as Impact is what someone else gets out of what you are saying. Sometimes these two things are not the same
thing. An example would be when people
use the word “gay” when they really mean dumb, unfair, etc. These are things that many of us do without
even realizing it or how it could affect someone else and until you make the conscious
decision to stop using such words.
Saturday was ISLE at the MU. The beginning key note speaker Dr. Darin Eich
was very interesting to listen to and his energy made me excited about the
day. The first session I attended was
Maximizing Leadership Potential and although it didn’t sound like I would be
interested in the topic I found it very useful.
We were given several chances to go through our elevator speech which is
something I’ve never worked on before.
After a delicious lunch of free
subway, I went to “Say Whaaaa??” (Which
if you were near me you probably heard me say the title reminded me of the minions
from Despicable Me because I love them.)
This session reminded me a lot of the second session I attended on
Friday and in fact it was actually taught by one of the ladies who taught the Friday
session. This one was more focused on
the Intent vs. Impact. We did an exercise in which we looked at a list of
phrases/words that can be offensive to groups of people.
The final session of the day I
attended was about emotional intelligence.
This is a topic that I feel very familiar with yet I felt that it was
still important to go and refresh my memory.
One thing I learned was that you should try to turn a complement into a
request when you are working with others to try and minimize potential
conflicts.
I had a great time in all of the
sessions, but I think my favorite part of the day was winning a subway gift
card. I mean who doesn’t like winning
things. J
Friday, February 1, 2013
MBTI Step 2: A better look
Woot MBTI! I think we can all agree that this was an
exciting week for the peer mentors all thanks to our new MBTI results.
I kind of had an idea of what I was
not only from last year but also just because of the review before Debra gave
us our results packet. I was indeed an
ESFP, but this step two of the MBTI goes more in depth so now I guess I am a
Conceptual, Original, and Planful ESFP.
I have been carefully reviewing my results to help understand how they arrived
at this conclusion. Even now, as I write
this post, I keep finding little things in the report that set off little bells
in my head and make me go “That is just like me!”
Since I could easily fill a page
or two explaining each facet of each letter, I will just go over one or two
from each, the things that were out of range for the items, and anything else
that sparked my interest.
Extraversion
Extraversion was one of my strongest
traits overall. The thing that
interested me the most about it was not what parts were considered in
preference for me, but the one thing that was in the middle the
gregarious-intimate scale. I was reading
the characteristics that they list for someone who is in the middle and two in
particular stood out to me: like large-group activities or one-on-one conversations
at different times and appear outgoing at times and reserved at others. I thought both of these “hit the nail on the
head” when it comes to me. It all
depends on my mood for that day.
Sensing
Out of all my results I found sensing
to be the most interesting. Under the
sensing trait I had two facets that were considered out of preference: conceptual
and original. While I was reading the
details below the thing that kind of shocked me was that it said conceptual
people may be more attracted to an academic career rather than being a practitioner. This is definitely not true for me. I plan to be a practicing child psychologist
and the idea of an academic career sounds terrible in my opinion. The other thing that was out of preference
was being original which again “hit the nail on the head.”
Feeling
The thing that stuck out to me was
not an extreme; in fact it was the opposite, in the facet of tough-tender I was
exactly in the middle. The descriptive points
that were provided confused me a little at first but the more I keep reading
them the more they make sense to me.
Perceiving
I was
considered out of preference under the planful facet too. I like to have a plan, but I do not have to
follow my plan to a T and that is pretty much what the points were describing.
The MBTI
is a perfect tool to help you understand yourself on a deeper level. Not because it is telling you what type of
person you are, but that it makes you think/reflect on all of the facets that
make up your personality.
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