Days to Weeks, Weeks to Months, Months to Years

I am making this post on probably the most busy week I have had yet in my college career. This weekend I had quizzes, worksheets, and the first exam to grade for the class that I TA for which took up a lot of time, then I have two papers due for my classes, I had to edit my resume and begin drafting a cover letter for a summer internship in Alaska that I am extremely passionate about getting, and on top of all this my parents wanted to come up and take me out to eat. I have also attended several group meetings already this week for different groups that I am involved with like the Society for Technical Communicators, The Live Green Initiative, and the Sustainapalooza planning committee.
I regret not having read the chapter in Students Helping Students prior to this post, but I will have it read by class on Wednesday which is better later than never. I really enjoyed last weeks lesson plan on problem solving, and especially the discussion regarding being direct without being confrontational which is definitely the type of person I am. One thing I can take from the lesson and my extreme week of being busy is being able to be checked into what is going on around me and leaving conflict at the door especially in the position as peer mentor because its not just your partner but all your students that are counting on you to be fully  invested into each class.

Reflection of Lesson Plan First Experience

Last week my partner Lauren Huebbe and I developed an assigned lesson plan to teach a chapter out of our UST 311 A textbook, Students Helping Students to our fellow peer mentors in-training. This experience allowed me to break the ice on creating, developing, and implementing a real lesson plan, and overall the lesson went very smoothly. After learning from Amy's lesson and meeting with Allie and Silas prior to the class, we were really prepared for what was to come with presenting to our peers.
        I feel very confident now in my ability to address a topic and find a constructive way to create a lesson plan while knowing that no lesson plan is fool proof or written in stone. One thing I took away from Amy's lesson was being able to ask a question then ask another question to the response of a peer in order to further the discussion and make more connections. One thing that Lauren and I were able to do that helped our plan was divide the group into two, and split up to each group in order to mediate the activity and answer any questions our peers had about the activity.
       I am glad that I decided to get our lesson plan out of the way early and set the tone for the rest of the lesson plans. I really enjoyed the experience it offered, and I learned a lot about myself and my presentation skills and what I need to work on. I am really looking forward to the other lessons and being able to learn and take away from what others bring to the table.

Learning Community Annual Conference

Unfortunately I was only able to attend one session of the conference and the lunch. The session I attended was over identifying and utilizing personal strengths whether it is in yourself as an individual, or in a member of your group. The speaker presented an overview of an ISTRENGHs assessment which is very similar to the MBTI except it covers more and provides a broader scope of traits specifically strengths of an individual.
         One thing I took away from the meeting and the speaker was that as a peer mentor or any leadership role, you should always be striving to identify what your strengths are and develop new ways to utilize them when presented with different situations that require a different strength to overcome. The way I would apply this as a peer mentor would be to use this type of mindset whenever I am aware of a difficult situation that way I would find new ways to utilize either the strengths I have, or utilize the strengths of the people around me.
         The lunch was really good, and it was fun to sit around and discuss different sessions of the conference with other peer mentors and Silas. Everyone seemed to enjoy what each session had to offer, and after discussing it we all agreed that it was a very useful and applicative conference.
         This is the week that I am presenting a lesson plan over Ch. 3 in our Students Helping Students Book for the Hixson Peer Mentor class, and I am really excited to get my first experience with creating and implementing an actual lesson plan. After meeting with Silas and Allie, I feel like they were able to offer my partner, Lauren Huebbe, and me a lot of great ideas for the lesson plan which really helped us understand what makes a good lesson plan great.