ALYSSA K.

When I first decided to become a Peer Leader for UHP, I had thought that I would be helping my students learn more about themselves in their first year in Honors. In doing this, I had not expected to learn equally as much about myself and how I can continue to develop in the time ahead. Reflecting back on the goals I had made with my instructor, I remembered that one of my biggest goals for this experience was to become comfortable co-leading and sometimes leading in a classroom setting. I am so appreciative of my position as a Peer Leader because although I still need to work towards developing my skills as a teacher/leader, I realize that this comes only from working through these experiences. On my first day teaching with Mandy I thought I did terrible, talked too fast, and was unable to think and speak out to the class at the same time. However, Mandy helped me work through my own criticisms of myself and through this I saw that I had strength in connecting with my students, I just needed to have more confidence when leading.

 

Developing relationships with my students was one of my favorite parts of this experience. I knew how important mentors were to my own development in undergrad, but I had not realized skills were necessary in order to guide others through their academic paths. The training sessions we had with the peer leaders helped me to see how important it is to listen in a mentor relationship and provide support and encouragement. I felt that some of my students were positively impacted by our relationships in a genuine way and this is one of the things that was most important to my experience and reflection. It showed me how to be more empathetic and understanding of others’ work and progress.

 

The artifact that I chose to include from my experience is one of the games that I created and facilitated for our lesson on values. In it, I ask my students to consider ethical “dilemma” situations that includes how much they agree with cheating, and breaking traffic laws. When I was facilitating this I learned what questions I needed to ask to get my students to see the importance of developing their own moral codes and values. I enjoyed leading activities like this in class and doing so helped me reach my goal of managing group discussions, and feeling comfortable in front of the class.