The book I decided to read for the semester is Inside Mrs. B's Classroom. It is a book about a journalist in the southside of Chicago that decides after all she has seen going on in the public schools through the news she decides to join the Teacher for Chicago program to try to make a difference in some of the kids lives.
I am just over halfway done with the book, when I started I wasn't sure if it would be interesting but whenever I sit down to read it I just cant stop it's extremely good and really opens your eyes about things that go on in these schools and the problems that many of the inner city children face. At times the book is very heart wrenching.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Monday, September 26, 2011
MBTI
Hey Everyone!
This was a very busy week with lots going on but I thought it went very smoothly! The Christina visit went very well and I think all of the students enjoyed getting a chance to meet her and see who she was. In my personal opinion being a peer mentor is a great opportunity to get to spend a little more time with Christina and get to know her a little more then the freshman year meeting. It was a great experience.
As for MBTI, I love when we look at the MBTI reports because I think it is so interesting to see what everyones preferences are and to see what their opinions about why they are those is very interesting to me. I think my results, ISTJ fits me almost perfectly. One thing that is beginning to change is I still love to have everything planned out and color coded of when it needs to be done by but I have been starting to put my homework and projects off to the last minute kind of like someone who likes to work under pressure, I am really not sure why I have been doing this but it is way out of my comfort zone and I need to work back into my normal grove of things! Every time we discuss MBTI I always learn something new about myself or someone else in the class.
Hope everyone has a great week, see everyone tonight!
Jenna
This was a very busy week with lots going on but I thought it went very smoothly! The Christina visit went very well and I think all of the students enjoyed getting a chance to meet her and see who she was. In my personal opinion being a peer mentor is a great opportunity to get to spend a little more time with Christina and get to know her a little more then the freshman year meeting. It was a great experience.
As for MBTI, I love when we look at the MBTI reports because I think it is so interesting to see what everyones preferences are and to see what their opinions about why they are those is very interesting to me. I think my results, ISTJ fits me almost perfectly. One thing that is beginning to change is I still love to have everything planned out and color coded of when it needs to be done by but I have been starting to put my homework and projects off to the last minute kind of like someone who likes to work under pressure, I am really not sure why I have been doing this but it is way out of my comfort zone and I need to work back into my normal grove of things! Every time we discuss MBTI I always learn something new about myself or someone else in the class.
Hope everyone has a great week, see everyone tonight!
Jenna
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Scavenger Hunt!
Last weeks class Allie and Silas put on a scavenger hunt for us peer mentors. I thought it was really fun to go around and try to find all the places that were listed out such as Study Abroad Center, Thielen Health Center, Student Services, Financial Aid Office, and a few others. I felt that this activity was a great one for us peer mentors to participate in because next year when we have our mentees they might have questions for us about where certain places on campus are and it would be great if we could lead them right to where they need to go. I thought it was also a great group bonding time because we had to work together in our groups to figure out where everything was and manage our time to get back to the Hixson Building before the time limit!
This blog is extremely short but there’s not much else to say about class except it was a great scavenger hunt and filming after class went pretty well I thought, we have a lot to work on before Tuesday but we will get it done!!
See you all at the retreat in a couple hours! Hope everyone had a great VEISHEA weekend!
:)
This blog is extremely short but there’s not much else to say about class except it was a great scavenger hunt and filming after class went pretty well I thought, we have a lot to work on before Tuesday but we will get it done!!
See you all at the retreat in a couple hours! Hope everyone had a great VEISHEA weekend!
:)
Diversity Event
Last Sunday I went to my diversity event, World Religions 101. This event consisted of a panel of students who were from different religious backgrounds. They each discussed their religions and what each of their religions believed. They had it set up so if you had a question to ask any of the panel members or just a general question for the panel as a whole you could text in your question and they would answer whatever question you had.
There were a couple different students that talked in depth about their religions some included Muslim, Atheist and Christianity. I thought it was really interesting to hear what they all had to share about their religions and the different outlooks they have about religion. Some of the students weren’t very religious until they came to college or until they started high school and they all shared their experiences on how they found their believes and everything.
I thought the diversity event was really interesting and I’m glad we went to it because it very educational and interesting to have these students from the different religions inform us about things about themselves that I didn’t know.
There were a couple different students that talked in depth about their religions some included Muslim, Atheist and Christianity. I thought it was really interesting to hear what they all had to share about their religions and the different outlooks they have about religion. Some of the students weren’t very religious until they came to college or until they started high school and they all shared their experiences on how they found their believes and everything.
I thought the diversity event was really interesting and I’m glad we went to it because it very educational and interesting to have these students from the different religions inform us about things about themselves that I didn’t know.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Goals- Week 12
Hey Everyone!
Last week Zach and Karen presented the topic of different types of goals to us. SMART Goals and the Four M's. The SMART goal I chose for next year, as a peer mentor was to learn all my students’ names within the first 2 weeks and learn a handful of people in the large lectures names as well. I believe this goal is very specific because I want to be able to have the connection with my mentees right away, whenever a mentor, t.a, professor knows my name it always makes me feel like the care, that may sound weird but I want to have that connection with my mentees. This goal is measurable because I will be able to tell by the end of the two weeks if I have accomplished this goal, I believe that I can accomplish this goal because I am very good with remembering names and faces. Attainable I think falls under the same reasoning as measurable; I know that I can know all of their names by the end of the second week. Relevant, I believe it is very relevant because knowing my students names will help build that connection between us and I wont always have to be saying "What’s your name?" I think the daily introductions will really help me with reaching this goal because hearing someone say the same things over helps them stick with you. Time Limited because I have limited myself to reaching this goal within the first two weeks of the semester.
The Four M's, I thought this strategy was a little hard to make goals for a short-term goal because to me the four m's is a more in depth goal setting strategy. Overall I think that the SMART goals work best for me and with the incoming freshman having them set SMART goals would be most beneficial for them during their first semester.
Hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful VEISHEA weather!
Last week Zach and Karen presented the topic of different types of goals to us. SMART Goals and the Four M's. The SMART goal I chose for next year, as a peer mentor was to learn all my students’ names within the first 2 weeks and learn a handful of people in the large lectures names as well. I believe this goal is very specific because I want to be able to have the connection with my mentees right away, whenever a mentor, t.a, professor knows my name it always makes me feel like the care, that may sound weird but I want to have that connection with my mentees. This goal is measurable because I will be able to tell by the end of the two weeks if I have accomplished this goal, I believe that I can accomplish this goal because I am very good with remembering names and faces. Attainable I think falls under the same reasoning as measurable; I know that I can know all of their names by the end of the second week. Relevant, I believe it is very relevant because knowing my students names will help build that connection between us and I wont always have to be saying "What’s your name?" I think the daily introductions will really help me with reaching this goal because hearing someone say the same things over helps them stick with you. Time Limited because I have limited myself to reaching this goal within the first two weeks of the semester.
The Four M's, I thought this strategy was a little hard to make goals for a short-term goal because to me the four m's is a more in depth goal setting strategy. Overall I think that the SMART goals work best for me and with the incoming freshman having them set SMART goals would be most beneficial for them during their first semester.
Hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful VEISHEA weather!
Monday, March 28, 2011
Facilitating Learning
Hello Everyone!
This week in class we had two lessons plans due and Silas and Allie led us in the discussion about Facilitation and learning styles. We were asked to write down what we thought facilitating meant to us and I wrote down I thought it was leading a new group; introducing new topics to a group.
The activity we did as a group was really fun and interesting to see how different peer mentors learn best. We had to decide which learning styles were our top three between bodily/kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, logical/ mathematical, musical/ rhythmic, naturalist/adventurer, verbal/linguistic, or visual/spatial. I think this is a good idea of an activity to use next fall with our mentees to get them to understand maybe what kind of learner they are or distinguish between what works well for them. Coming to college maybe quite the change for some mentees and adjusting their learning styles, their learning styles may have to be altered due to big class sizes or teaching styles of professors, I believe that it is our job as peer mentors next fall to give them ideas, strategies, or ways to help them adjust.
Thankfully the weather didn’t turn out as bad as it was going to be :)
See you all Tuesday for a wonderful Movie-making day!!
:)
This week in class we had two lessons plans due and Silas and Allie led us in the discussion about Facilitation and learning styles. We were asked to write down what we thought facilitating meant to us and I wrote down I thought it was leading a new group; introducing new topics to a group.
The activity we did as a group was really fun and interesting to see how different peer mentors learn best. We had to decide which learning styles were our top three between bodily/kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, logical/ mathematical, musical/ rhythmic, naturalist/adventurer, verbal/linguistic, or visual/spatial. I think this is a good idea of an activity to use next fall with our mentees to get them to understand maybe what kind of learner they are or distinguish between what works well for them. Coming to college maybe quite the change for some mentees and adjusting their learning styles, their learning styles may have to be altered due to big class sizes or teaching styles of professors, I believe that it is our job as peer mentors next fall to give them ideas, strategies, or ways to help them adjust.
Thankfully the weather didn’t turn out as bad as it was going to be :)
See you all Tuesday for a wonderful Movie-making day!!
:)
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Communication
Hey Everyone!
I hope you all had a great week of spring break! But now back to blogging, the last class Chelsee and Brandon talked about effective communication, I thought they did a wonderful job presenting the topic and their activity was a great one you use for the topic, I thought the activity was fun to see how the picture ended up at the end of my line and we all realized that I cannot draw a lawn mower very well :)
My favorite way of communicating is via text messaging, I think it is very beneficial to be able to just send a quick message to someone and have them read it and be able to respond right back, but it isn’t the most effective in some instances because it is not easy to read how people are coming across in a text message. I personally just like how fast a quick someone can receive your message and you can get a response through a text because I hate waiting.
The biggest change in my communication in coming to college is using e-mail, I had an email account in high school but I hardly ever checked it let alone sent an email from it. When I came to college I started using email on a daily basis to contact different people around campus and my professors or T.A's with any questions. I think it is hard for some people when they come to college to get into the routine of checking their email everyday and learning that is a necessity here at school. Also email is becoming accessible just as fast as a text message in some cases because a lot of people have smart phones that receive emails right away.
I loved the week of twitter and I found it so easy because before I always tweeted so it wasn’t hard for me to tweet and add #ust311 to the end of my tweets. I think twitter is a good way of communicating and I know a lot of people dislike twitter and don’t want anything to do with it but once you start using it, I think it becomes just as addicting as facebook. I read Chelsee's blog the other day and she mentioned having a scavenger hunt or a question of the day for your mentees to answer and I think that is a great idea because it will give them something to tweet about on top of some other random tweets that they feel like posting.
See everyone tonight! :)
I hope you all had a great week of spring break! But now back to blogging, the last class Chelsee and Brandon talked about effective communication, I thought they did a wonderful job presenting the topic and their activity was a great one you use for the topic, I thought the activity was fun to see how the picture ended up at the end of my line and we all realized that I cannot draw a lawn mower very well :)
My favorite way of communicating is via text messaging, I think it is very beneficial to be able to just send a quick message to someone and have them read it and be able to respond right back, but it isn’t the most effective in some instances because it is not easy to read how people are coming across in a text message. I personally just like how fast a quick someone can receive your message and you can get a response through a text because I hate waiting.
The biggest change in my communication in coming to college is using e-mail, I had an email account in high school but I hardly ever checked it let alone sent an email from it. When I came to college I started using email on a daily basis to contact different people around campus and my professors or T.A's with any questions. I think it is hard for some people when they come to college to get into the routine of checking their email everyday and learning that is a necessity here at school. Also email is becoming accessible just as fast as a text message in some cases because a lot of people have smart phones that receive emails right away.
I loved the week of twitter and I found it so easy because before I always tweeted so it wasn’t hard for me to tweet and add #ust311 to the end of my tweets. I think twitter is a good way of communicating and I know a lot of people dislike twitter and don’t want anything to do with it but once you start using it, I think it becomes just as addicting as facebook. I read Chelsee's blog the other day and she mentioned having a scavenger hunt or a question of the day for your mentees to answer and I think that is a great idea because it will give them something to tweet about on top of some other random tweets that they feel like posting.
See everyone tonight! :)
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