Defining Roles/Establishing and Maintaining Relationships

I found this week's class to be a lot of fun and a great learning experience. Although, I was battling a cold, I still learned a lot from the other peer mentors. Nick and Kelly's lesson about defining roles was very informational. They did a really great job of giving their own views and experiences with the topic which is very important when being a facilitator. When we broke up into small groups, Cory and I discussed the role of the connecting link. Being a connecting link is very important and can be a very large role of being a peer mentor. Students will come to you and ask questions about situations and being able to guide them to the right place or person will impact them greatly. I found last year in my experience that students truly rely on us to be their connecting link to many things at Iowa State. It is very important that we as peer mentors know as many resources to help the students have the best experience they can at Iowa State. I also enjoyed in this lesson how Nick and Kelly allowed for us all to share our perspective on the different roles so we could gain other ideas about what the roles means.

Deborah and Joey's lesson was also a very good lesson. I really enjoyed how they chose to do role plays. Even though sometimes we look down on the idea of role playing, it is actually a very beneficial activity. We can really sit back and gain a lot of insight about what a situation might actually entail and how different people would handle the situation. Although we cannot even imagine all the situations they may come up next semester, it is important to know what can be done in the situation. I think they did a great job of getting feedback after each role play and discussing what was good and bad. It is crucial that we analyze these things now so we know how to improve on them in the real life situation. I have found that the rule of commitment is very important. If you tell your students you are going to do something, you should follow through with what you have promised. In turn, when your students are supposed to hand in assignments they will be more committed to it because you have shown your level of commitment to them. It is also beneficial to follow up with students, even when you have not formally committed it to them. If they are having a problem, check back in with them in the near future and ask them how it is going and if they need any additional help. Make a commitment to yourself to follow with students and show them that you really do care about how things are going for them. I believe that honesty is definitely another very important rule. You can not expect your students to be honest with you if you are not honest with them. Even if you tell a small lie to your students, and they find out that you did not tell them the truth, they will not trust you with anything in the future. Trust can be lost very easily in new relationships and it is not something that can be easily gained back. It is also important to hold students accountable for what they say as well. If they tell you they will turn something in and they don't, let them know that they have a responsibility as a Hixson scholar to be accountable for their responsibilities as well.

I have already gained many good ideas from the student lessons already this semester. It is really incredible how much we can learn from others ideas and feedback. Next semester it will be very helpful that we can come to each other for feedback and advise when we come along situations of our own. Have a great week everyone!