Honors 100 Peer Educator Reflection
Being a peer educator has been easier in many ways than I expected. Maybe I just got lucky with having a great group of students, or I was really nervous about having a quiet and unengaged group. This past quarter has been quite enjoyable. Coming into the quarter, I was nervous for a lot of things that were beyond my control. I can’t have that big of an impact on the personalities and interests of my students, and only a slightly larger impact of how much they value and get out of Honors 100. Thankfully, and I’m not surprised, that my students have been overly talkative, funny, and a great group to work with. It changes slightly from week to week depending on what all is going on in their other classes. Overall, it has been more difficult to get everyone to stop talking so we can come back together as a group and share.
At the end of spring quarter last year, I think I had a very different idea of this quarter would be like. Having my lesson plans done made me feel prepared, I knew what would be going on each week, and as long as my students cooperated, we were going to have a great time sharing everything about ourselves. The students in my cohort have much shorter attention spans than I expected. I’ve definitely reworked many of my lesson plans to involve to make them more active and so that I spend less time lecturing. While they’re good with a 5-10 minute lecture, anything beyond that gets a little boring for them, and tiring for myself. They are clued in to my body language and level of energy, so it’s important for those 80 minutes to be on top of my game, even if I don’t feel like it after coming from three hours of class. If I come into class excited, and also not afraid to change things up if things aren’t going the way I had planned, things turn out much better. For teaching the actual materials, it has been important for me to remember that all of my students come with different levels of knowledge about what we are going to be covering for the day. Because of that, I have learned to get a quick idea of where they are, most of the time by holding up a hand with a thumbs up, middle, or down, or putting up fingers on a scale of 1-5. Moving forward from this, I’ve learned that I can be engaging and excited. I was afraid that in section it would be my job to keep the conversation going, but that hasn’t been the case at all. Even if it were, I feel as if I would be able to do better than I have been able to. I am excited to continue to be a person that my students can come to if they have questions and to be able to connect them with other great people on campus and in the honors program.
As a group everyone has connected well and I have had some great individual conversations with some of my students. They come to Honors 100 to learn about the honors program, not become best friends with everyone in their class. For me personally, I’ve gained so much information about my personality, the way I interact with people, and why I have a deep appreciation for learning and learning communities. My students have incredibly varied interests, thoughts, political, and religious beliefs. I love learning a little bit more about them each week because it not only helps me to tailor my lesson plans to their interests, but also to point them in the direction of a class or club they might enjoy, someone I know who has been involved with something on campus they want to try, and for me to get to know them a little bit more because they are all really neat and wonderful people who I want to do well.
At the end of spring quarter last year, I think I had a very different idea of this quarter would be like. Having my lesson plans done made me feel prepared, I knew what would be going on each week, and as long as my students cooperated, we were going to have a great time sharing everything about ourselves. The students in my cohort have much shorter attention spans than I expected. I’ve definitely reworked many of my lesson plans to involve to make them more active and so that I spend less time lecturing. While they’re good with a 5-10 minute lecture, anything beyond that gets a little boring for them, and tiring for myself. They are clued in to my body language and level of energy, so it’s important for those 80 minutes to be on top of my game, even if I don’t feel like it after coming from three hours of class. If I come into class excited, and also not afraid to change things up if things aren’t going the way I had planned, things turn out much better. For teaching the actual materials, it has been important for me to remember that all of my students come with different levels of knowledge about what we are going to be covering for the day. Because of that, I have learned to get a quick idea of where they are, most of the time by holding up a hand with a thumbs up, middle, or down, or putting up fingers on a scale of 1-5. Moving forward from this, I’ve learned that I can be engaging and excited. I was afraid that in section it would be my job to keep the conversation going, but that hasn’t been the case at all. Even if it were, I feel as if I would be able to do better than I have been able to. I am excited to continue to be a person that my students can come to if they have questions and to be able to connect them with other great people on campus and in the honors program.
As a group everyone has connected well and I have had some great individual conversations with some of my students. They come to Honors 100 to learn about the honors program, not become best friends with everyone in their class. For me personally, I’ve gained so much information about my personality, the way I interact with people, and why I have a deep appreciation for learning and learning communities. My students have incredibly varied interests, thoughts, political, and religious beliefs. I love learning a little bit more about them each week because it not only helps me to tailor my lesson plans to their interests, but also to point them in the direction of a class or club they might enjoy, someone I know who has been involved with something on campus they want to try, and for me to get to know them a little bit more because they are all really neat and wonderful people who I want to do well.