Role Models: Strengths and weaknesses

Last week’s class and book reading was over being a role model, the main point that Rachel and Amy talked about was the different types of values. This was really cool to think about between the three words we had to choose our strength and weakness. I never really thought in to these values too much to know which ones I needed to work on. One of my main weaknesses out of all these values would probably be focus because I am so easily distracted especially while doing something I don’t enjoy. Silas brought up a good point with this weakness. When have multiple things to work on to set out only the things that you need to work on in front of you. That way if you get distracted, it is by something else that you need to work on. I have start to do this while studying and doing homework at home. I have also found to remove myself from the living room area where my Xbox, DVD player, cable with all movie channels are, and Netflix. This help resist the urge to do any of those things and to focus more on my homework or studies. It was also cool to see where our other peer mentors stood on their weak or strong values. I notices that majority of the group ended up at the same word, which for some words is most likely the case because we are all leaders and have similar leadership traits. This chapter was quite a bit shorter than previous chapter but still very important to becoming good peer mentors. We will be these students’ first mentor/ impression of college, we really are role models for them. To be good role models we need to first know our own strengths and weaknesses so we can be good examples of college students.

Who Am I?

This week's class Anthony and Bethany talked about self-awareness, at first glance felt like knew exactly what that was but putting it into words was a lot hard than I expected. The book's defines self-awareness as "understanding your own thoughts, feelings, and actions." Now the tricky part of self-awareness is teaching our students to be aware of their thoughts, feelings, and actions and how these things affect them. I liked what Anthony and Bethany did with the go around talking about something that really changed your perspective and help shape the person you have become. Doing this made me think back at myself and what things changed my life, may it be a hardship I went through (i.e. My Mom's passing) or something that I was involved in that shaped me in to who I am today (i.e. FFA active member). Realizing where I have come up from makes me more self-aware, what choices do I make today that could affect my future self.

Our jobs as peer mentors are to help our students become self-aware and self-motivated. We need to push them to think about their choices they make but yet as some point to let them fly free and be self-dependent. Some ways I think I will help my students with this would be taking them to the rec so they know what is there and so we as a group can play a game or do something active. Another good physical awareness thing is already done with the big lecture of freshmen Hixson Scholars is the sex talk. It is good to go over since high school Sex Ed is sometimes pretty poor and the guy who spoke to us in 2009 (whose name escapes me at the moment) was a good speaker and funny. For social awareness, I personally sometimes need to be force into a position where I have to talk to a group where I know no one to get me to open up. For example the trip to Omaha zoo, we had a game that forced us to interact with others outside of are small groups so we opened up to more people and got to know more people. Some of the best questions a mentor can ask a student are an open ended question that makes them think about themselves and their choices. Perfect example would be Anthony and Bethany's question asking us to look back at a something in our lives that changed us in to who we are now. Another one of my favorite questions I like to ask myself is "Where do I see myself in 5 years, 10 years, or 20 years?" and then once I figure out that out I ask myself "What can I do to make this possible?" and set goals to achieve.

Looking at my Activity 5.4, my highest scored type of awareness is social awareness but lowest two is spiritual awareness and intellectual awareness. I figured social awareness would be highest because I am aware of my social status and I am happy with my social life. I also figured my spiritual awareness would be the lowest because I am not a very spiritual person. Don't get me wrong I believe in God and all that but I am not big on being a consistent church goer. I am happy with where I am at with my spirituality. I am at peace with myself and I feel like I have a purpose in life. With my intellectual awareness, I believe I could use some work here. I don't like to study so I usually put it off until I finally tell myself that I have to study. I am trying to actually "learn" the material for class as we go instead of figuring out what I need to know for the test and memorizing as much as I can. I have some work to do before I feel happy with my intellectual awareness level. I didn't score a 20 on any type of awareness but I believe that there's always room for improvement that I can always be trying harder in every type if it may be my social awareness (highest score) or my spiritual awareness (lowest score).

Lessons Learned

Last Tuesday was a very crazy day for me. I started my day by unloaded vehicles for the career fair in negative 11 degree weather at 8 am. Then I had four hours of class and working the career fair for three hours, talking to employers and running around assisting where ever needed. By the time class rolled around I was exhausted, but I feel that I did a good job holding myself together during Kelly and I’s lesson plan. All and all, I felt good about our lesson plan, but it was good practice for next year when I’ll be teaching my students weekly. I now know some major things to keep in mind while planning a lesson plan next year. Both good and bad, but some of the things that I need to work on would be, being more confident in front of my peers. I feel that I was swaying and stumbling on my words when I was teaching. That is something I tried to focus on during our lesson plan but this also comes with experience too. Along with that, we need to keep in mind the seven second rule. After asking the group a question, in general we should have waited about seven second to see if anyone had anything else to add. When we asked if anyone had anything to add and then said ok next thing so I felt that I needed to stop and slow down to make sure my students can learn the material and not just rush right through it.

I really liked Deb’s and Joey’s way of doing skits to demonstrating relationship with our mentees. I think that Kelly and I should have done an activity more interesting like this. Ours wasn’t really that interesting and we should have had more discussing activity to engage the minds of the other peer mentors. That is just another major lesson that I need to keep in mind for next year when I am teaching to my students. I thought that the volunteers did a really good job role playing and knowing what to do as a peer mentor. I personally not that great at think on my feet so I give props to the volunteers for creating another person and being able to know what to do when thrown in that situation. My favorite was Greg’s sexy female voice hitting on Joey at a party. I thought Joey did a really good job handling the situation by just saying no and removing himself from that party. This also provided a good example of sometime that could maybe happen. Since most of us will be of age next year and none of our students should be of age we shouldn’t EVER supply or be around them while they or we are drinking if we do so. We as mentors also should remember that we shouldn’t become romantically involved with any of the 100- 2011 Hixson Scholar, at least for the fall of 2011.

Looking into myself!

Last week I went to the ISLE Friday session of Biofeedback. Before I went, I thought it was going to be about how your brain and body work together. Once I got there, however, I realized that it was definitely not what I expected, but it was, in fact, very interesting. Biofeedback is a resource available to all Iowa State students that can be located in the Student Service building. Once you go through the orientation, you can go in at anytime that they are open without an appointment and lie back in a lazy boy chair and practice relaxation techniques. These techniques help you think more clearly in high pressure or stressful situations (i.e. Exams or being attacked by a bear). I plan on going to the student service building and going through the biofeedback orientation, because in high school football before every game we practiced relaxation techniques to get us focused on the game. I really enjoyed doing this and I felt that it helped me tremendously to focus on my assignment and what I had to do.

On Saturday, myself and the other peer mentors attended the ISLE event with David Coleman, “America’s real life hitch.” I’ll admit that like most of us, I was reluctant to get up on a Saturday to go. Once we were there, however, I really liked it because he was funny and taught me some things about myself that I didn’t know. David touched on many subjects, including “what being a true friend really means” and “our weakest link list”. One of the main things about being a true friend is not keeping score (i.e. Buying a pizza and saying “you buy the next one”). I have always thought of myself as a good person, but in the “weakest link list” I sat down early and bounced a lot, which meant I had a lot of character flaws. Some of the main ones that hit home with me consisted of:

Road Rage

Swearing in public

Littering deliberately

Taking change when casher gives too much

Talking behind people’s back

Kelly and I are teaching chapter 3; “Our Roles.” I never really realized how different teaching is than from being a student. We as students tend to be extremely critical of our teachers, especially in hard classes. This chapter has opened up my eyes about the challenges of being a teacher, and this experience has helped me tremendously in preparing for next year as I take on my role as a peer mentor. With this experience, I will do my best to be an effective and fun mentor next year while guiding my students through their first semester of college.