2 Is Better Than 1

Yay for co-leader pairings!

I'm beyond stoked to be paired with Mr. Taylor Burgin and I think he's kinda excited too. I think all of our pairs turned out really well and I think all of us are going to work together wonderfully.

As for class last week, I thought the 2 hours flew by. The panel did a great job of answering questions, and I think it helps us immensely that we have Randi and Kris to go to with questions if we ever were to need help. I also loved our lil famous pairs game and I'm thinking we might need to incorporate that into our recitation in the fall.

I can't believe were already at dead week! This semester and class literally flew by. And our last 311 class is this Wednesday! Can't wait to see everyone there, and hopefully we'll all keep in touch over the summer!

Early good luck on finals! :]

A Little Thing Called Confidence

Well hello there everybody, hope your all doing well today,

ok so VEISHEA got the best of me and I totally forgot that I had to blog, or that I had any responsibilities for that matter...

Alright so confidence! I feel VERY confident about all of our abilities for the coming semester and am so excited to finally get going on it. At the beginning of the semester I was pretty overwhelmed and apprehensive about how I would do as a mentor, but as the semester is progressed I feel more and more prepared. My confidence in my lesson planning and presenting to other has increased and I feel like after the first couple classes are under my belt I will be good to go.

Hope everyone had a great VEISHEA! see you all for dinner and class Wednesday!

ps: since were getting dinner, I think Allie, Heath, and Debra should put on some sort of show for us all... thoughts?

Put a smile on your face...

Hello everybody!

Hope everyone is as excited for VEISHEA week as I am :] In fact I'm sitting in the Hixson computer lab trying to get as much accomplished within the next few days so I can really enjoy it. Working on the E-Portfolio has actually been a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I've realized lesson plans are getting a lot easier, and that thinking about finally getting to teach gets me insanely excited!

I wanted to thank Kris for coming across that great hand out we all got. Having that around will be beneficial for everyone, whether we were teaching this class or not. I've heard a lot about of the resources we have on campus, but I definitely haven't utilized them like I should. Hopefully having that around will help me get on that!

As this semester comes to a close everything can get really stressful, and I know I've been feeling that a lot lately. The past couple of weeks have been pretty intense, and I know it's only going to get worse. I keep trying to keep my chin up, and this class really helps that out. And I wanna thank all of you for that :]

Love you guys :]

Working together, we get the job done!

Hey Everyone!

So this past week was my first time teaching a class and I think it went really well! I'm not gonna lie I was super nervous before class. Actually I was kinda trippin out lol but it was alot of fun and I hope everyone enjoyed it like I did!

So since I gave all of you an accountability activity I feel I should probably do it too! I feel like I can be really effective as a group member because I don't ever leave work up to somebody else. I like to work in groups where work is divided equally between everyone, but I know that doesn't always happen. Overall I would just say that I like to do my fair share of work and maybe a little more to ensure that the project or what have you will be completed.

I think I could improve in groups by taking into account how different everyone's style of doing projects might be. I'm a girl who works well under pressure, but not everyone is like that. If I need to complete my part of a project before another person can start there's, it can sometimes be difficult for me to get up the energy to work way farther in advance then I would if the project was just done on my own. It's something I need to improve upon, or my time management skills in general lol

Hope everyone has a happy Easter and enjoy the beautiful weather :]

Never get old :]

Hey errrrebody :]

So yesterday was a BLAST! I love being a kid and I had so much fun doing that with each and everyone of you! Especially when I dominated in NASCAR racing ;) I believe we should have more Hixson family bonding time ASAP! I thought the scavenger hunt was a great idea and it was good to work in our small groups. I loved mine! and thank goodness people knew where stuff in Ames was because I was lost basically the entire time lol

The time is coming near when finals is going to be approaching and I know all of us are getting super busy and cracking down on the last things that we need to accomplish in the next month or so. One of those things is our E-Portfolio, and I know its something that is going to take a big chunk of my time to do well. Matt and I had a meeting with Heath and Allie yesterday to go over our lesson plan for this coming week and my frustrations with lesson planning kind of came out. Hopefully everyone will agree with me when I say lesson planning is hard work! Its probably my biggest stresser for this class. It's hard to plan some type of learning activity that will be helpful to a group of people, and be entertaining and keep it flowing in a constructive manner the whole time. It's kind of exhausting. I thought the class Heath and Allie led on Wednesday was so helpful for that. I took an obscene amount of notes on the green sheet they gave us and I know that will be very helpful to me in the future when I have to construct a full semester worth of these things.

Hope everyone had a great rest of the weekend! Spring has sprung :]

Guiding Values

ok so I totally SUCK and forgot to blog on time :( have mercy on me Heath and Allie!

I thought this last class was AWESOME. Cody and Lauren did a great job with their lesson plan (hopefully me and Matt can live up to it!) and the after class discussion was great too. I loved how the class was set up and I think Cody and Lauren did a great job choosing values for each of us. I had choice, which is something that hit really close to home for me. I've been going through some unnecessary drama lately (when is drama ever necessary really?) and my choice of how to react to it has been something I've had to deal with regularly. I'm the kind of person who likes to avoid confrontation and fighting with people I'm close with and I tend to get walked on by those same people because they know that I would do anything for them. I use the value of choice everyday just to deal with small, random setbacks during the day, but using it for things such as this is slightly difficult for me. It's something I'm trying to do with situations of more importance, make the decision that is best for me and for the situation, not necessarily just for the other person. It something that is becoming a main focus in my life and hopefully I can work through all this to the best of my abilities.

Hope everyone is having a great spring break and I can't wait to see everyone soon!

Hixson-tastic week

Holy Hixson things invading my schedule this past week! Class Wednesday, campus tour on Thursday (ps great job Austin :) ), and ISCORE on Friday (pps great job Hannah :) )!!!

I'll work backwards. ISCORE was much more interesting than I assumed it was going to be, considering my sessions were during my weekly nap time. But it was totally worth attending! Hannah's session was really enlightening on the Hispanic culture and the prejudices they face in America. I know that I grew up around discrimination against the Latin culture. In high school I lived relatively close to Tyson, which was known as hiring illegal immigrants, which do not get the best rep in our country. What we all need to remember is that not everyone in this country who is of Hispanic heritage is here "mooching" off of us, but instead has the same goals and dreams as we do. I also attended the session on minority athletes on campus, which I found was more centered on student-athlete prejudice than minority athlete prejudice. It was good to be reminded what all they do and the hectic lives they lead in order to do what they love.

Thursday my campus tour was super fun and informational. Who knew Rice Krispy treats were invented here?! Not this girl! And it was super fun to be a freshmen again for a day, especially when I went to Seasons Marketplace for the first time and had absolutely no idea what was going on. :)

The topic of Wednesday's class was good to go over as well. It was good to be reminded about "checking ourselves" and making sure we know what were thinking and why were thinking about it. This also relates to acting, as I mentioned in class. We're going to have to act in ways in front of our students in the fall that might not be how we would act in a normal situation, say around friends, and we have to be conscious about that at all times in the upcoming semester. We have to remember how we appear to our students is incredibly important, since we will be one of the first role model types they might experience in college.

5 more days til break! Home stretch! yyyaaayyy!! Have a great week everyone! :]

Chatty McChatterson

Yo peeps.

Ok. Communication. Something I believe I am fairly skilled at. Well, talking at least.

Communication is going to be huge in the next few semesters with this program. We're going to have to be skilled communicators with each other, with Heath, Allie, Silas, and Debra, and with all the incoming Hixsons, not just the ones in our respective recitations.

Not only are all of our communication styles different, but so will all of the incoming freshmen. I am a very open and honest person, and I know I'm going to have a hard time drawing a line between communicating and over stepping my boundaries after I become friends with my students. It's going to be something I'm going to have to be conscious of, and making an effort at daily.

Another thing is incorporating the students who aren't the most skilled communicators. There are going to be students in our classes who will be, for lack of a better term, "socially awkward". There were some in my recitation, and I'm sure there were some in everybody's. What were going to have to do as peer mentors is make sure the communication style in our classes works for everyone, especially the people who might be having a hard time communicating.

When we attended the Learning Community Institute, my session kind of touched on this and one of the things that was discussed was how when it comes to getting everyone acquainted with each other the best thing to do is start small. Pairing people up at first, and then maybe expanding into small groups, and then the class as a whole is the best bet for keeping everyone involved and comfortable. Even I get shy meeting new people! Even thought I'm sure none of you will ever believe that.

Have a great week everyone! Spring is on the waaaaay! :]

Chels

Don't Matter If You're Black or White

Hey everybody!
So after bringing up diversity in class, its pretty apparent that its everywhere on campus. Its also very obvious how many diversity related jokes I see or say myself. As you all have noticed I can be one to put my foot in my mouth sometimes, and usually it doesn't even pass through my mind that something I can joke about could appear offensive if the wrong person heard it. I think this might be a struggle for Hixson's that we'll all be teaching, even if it doesn't come up in our presence. A vast majority of the new freshmen we'll have will have grown up in similar cultures, more than likely in small towns where there wasn't much diversity, therefore no reason to hold back from telling an off color joke, or making a racist remark. I think that's something we're all going to have to be aware of, and we're going to have to set the example for out students to see how we deal with diversity on campus. Not only because we are their peer mentors, but because we all come from pretty similar backgrounds and have been through the same transition they had.

Yes I AM Finally Thinking Before Speaking :)

This week was quite an enlightening one in class I must say. I didn’t go into class with the mindset that I was just going to sit back and let my fellow mentors lead the discussion, but as class continued I just felt more and more comfortable letting that happen. Or it might be that I couldn’t get a word in edgewise sitting next to a Mr. Matt Allbee… just kidding!

Anyways, I loved hearing everyone listing out and discussing the things they hold so important in their lives. I found it quite challenging to narrow down my list to only a handful of values, but I think the ones I came up with were very fitting of myself now. Since no one got to hear my list, they were listed as family, friends, positive outlook, sense of humor, intelligence, and confidence. When someone brought up that they didn’t think the list they made on Wednesday would match the same list they would have made a year or more ago, I looked at my list and completely agreed.

Family will of course always be number one to me, and good friends a close second, the following four values are some I’ve just come to realize in myself after coming to college. In high school, I never thought of myself as an optimistic person per-se, but looking back I definitely was. Also, I would say that I considered my intelligence to be more of a burden then a blessing. I mean come on, who wants to hang out with the new super smart girl? Uuummm… not many. And after coming to college and seeing all these aspects of my personality were valued by so many others, my confidence in myself exploded.

This week I decided that I was going to work on laying back a little bit and trying to not monopolize discussions and conversations, not just in class but in my life as a whole. When I announced this in class, I was shocked to hear such laughter, considering I was being quite serious with what I was saying. I guess that just goes along with the whole topic of how others perceive you, because that reaction proved I am perceived as far more outgoing and outspoken as I perceive myself to be. I’m honestly going to try to work on this, but don’t worry you all will still be hearing from me plenty!

Happy weekend everyone! If you don’t have a Valentine, go out and find yourself one! :]

I wanna get to know ya... and myself

Hi Everybody,

I was just getting my life together in the Hixson computer lab and remembered I should probably take a much needed study break and bloggg...
This past week in class I noticed our whole class really opening up around each other and acting more as friends then as classmates, which I quite enjoyed. I like getting to know all of my fellow peer mentors on a deeper level, unlike in most classes where you just know each other on a superficial basis.
I could also see us all opening up on the inside, and the wheels turning in our heads about who we really are and how we act around others, whether we're in a leadership position at the time or not. I know our discussion helped me realize how I have trouble taking people who are only a year or 2 older than me seriously when they are in a leadership position, and how I might have trouble having confidence in myself to be an effective and influential leader to the mentees in my future class. It's going to take me time to learn how to separate being a fun friend, and being someone who is "in charge" and who can be a person a mentee could come to for guidance and advice, and someone they can respect as well, instead of someone who is just entertaining during class time.
When reading other mentors blogs, I saw Austin also had realizations during class about things he needs to improve upon to become more effective... must be an ENFP thing ;)
Hope everyone had a good weekend and also has a great upcoming week. Good luck on any tests or assignments you might have! (Lord knows I have lots!)

See everyone Wednesday!!

Chels :]

Mini Institute Learning Sesh

Hi all!

So yesterday I attended a learning communities mini-institute session for new or future peer mentors and how to transition into that role. It was put on by Craig Zywicki (sp?) who is in charge of SI at the Academic Success Center. I was a little nervous going in because the group was very small and had a few staff members who are the heads of learning communities within their department, but it ended up working out great because they had a lot of great input considering they have done this before.

We paired up to do discussions and I was paired with a staff member in charge of the mechanical engineering learning communities. We talked about things I was worried about and ways I could support my men-tees effectively. He said that doing things actively and in the allotted time frame for the week is the best way to get through to students. Trying to schedule things outside of class can get rough and usually has a low attendance count, so to try and get it all out in class. Also, he eased my fear of lesson plans by letting me know that almost no professors knew how to create a lesson plan when they started, but you figure it out as you go, which made me much less apprehensive.

His counterpart in the mechanical engineering learning community was there too and she said that ice breakers are great and getting the students to talk to each other instead of just listening to you talk is the best way to start out. She said that in the beginning low-risk icebreakers are the best idea, so stick to one-on-ones with partners instead of throwing them out there in front of the whole group. This way they can ease into each other, and eventually get more comfortable with each other as a whole.

The most important thing I learned though is that I am not going to be perfect at this, especially not in the beginning, but that's ok. I just need to learn from the mistakes I make and move on. Also that communicating with my other peer mentors is the best way to learn new and interesting ideas for class, or to get advice on how to handle situations they might have already been through.

I would say all in all the session I attended was very informational and helpful to me, and boosted my confidence and excitement for becoming a Hixson Peer Mentor. :)

-Chels