Honors 100 Peer Educator Prep
This quarter I was a part of a class, Honors 397, to prepare myself and a select group of other honors students to be Honors 100 Peer Educators in the fall. Throughout the course of the quarter, we read articles about different teach styles and methods, participated in various activities to help us form a clearer idea of aspects of our personality, and how those will relate to teaching, as well as responded to weekly prompts about our community at UW, reflections about the articles or activities, or resources available to UW students. My responses to these prompts are below. While I did not include the questions themselves, a general sense of what they are can be garnered from reading my response.
We covered a lot of material during our class time each week. Originally I expected that we would dive right in the first week and start crafting our lesson plans, but the beginning five weeks were dedicated to looking into different types of learning and how various methods respond to those needs. Within our class we had a wide variety of personalities, with each of the other peer educators coming from different backgrounds and heading to a large number of places. Through many of the articles we read and the personality activities we did, I had a better sense of the way myself and the other future peer educators work in a participatory group setting. Even though I might be quieter in a large group, that does not have to be a barrier to the way I participate in class. It can sometimes be a challenge, but it’s my competition with myself to be as engaging as possible, to learn from the way my class works and the dynamic we have, and not to be afraid to try things. I am excited for fall to come and to have the opportunity to see how the knowledge that I have from this quarter looks from a direct perspective.
Autumn quarter will the be first time I have a position of leadership that comes from teaching valuable material to young freshman that have yet to formulate and process university life. I know that I would have loved to have a person guiding me during this first year, answering my questions and offering tidbits of helpful information here and there. Not all of my students will want that direct role in their first year, but hopefully they are able to garner as much as possible out of Honors 100 and their first year. I will be available to answer as many questions as possible and serve as a resource for any type of university or life related inquiry.
We covered a lot of material during our class time each week. Originally I expected that we would dive right in the first week and start crafting our lesson plans, but the beginning five weeks were dedicated to looking into different types of learning and how various methods respond to those needs. Within our class we had a wide variety of personalities, with each of the other peer educators coming from different backgrounds and heading to a large number of places. Through many of the articles we read and the personality activities we did, I had a better sense of the way myself and the other future peer educators work in a participatory group setting. Even though I might be quieter in a large group, that does not have to be a barrier to the way I participate in class. It can sometimes be a challenge, but it’s my competition with myself to be as engaging as possible, to learn from the way my class works and the dynamic we have, and not to be afraid to try things. I am excited for fall to come and to have the opportunity to see how the knowledge that I have from this quarter looks from a direct perspective.
Autumn quarter will the be first time I have a position of leadership that comes from teaching valuable material to young freshman that have yet to formulate and process university life. I know that I would have loved to have a person guiding me during this first year, answering my questions and offering tidbits of helpful information here and there. Not all of my students will want that direct role in their first year, but hopefully they are able to garner as much as possible out of Honors 100 and their first year. I will be available to answer as many questions as possible and serve as a resource for any type of university or life related inquiry.