Students Helping Students in the 11th Week

This week in class, Easten and Alex taught a learning session on ethics. I feel that this lesson was EXTREMELY relevant to everyone in the class. There are many rules and guidelines that peer mentors must follow if they are to help younger students and succeed in being role models. My favorite part of the lesson was the part where we tried to solve problems in various scenarios. I liked the scenarios because they all seemed like issues that would come up next fall. This week’s lesson has greatly prepared me in understanding how to handle certain situations and has cleared up some misconceptions I had with the position as a peer mentor. In addition to the lesson, Allie and Silas had the whole group play a safe version of “Would you Rather.” I enjoyed this because it gave me a chance to see what was going on in my fellow peer mentor’s heads. This is definitely one of the icebreakers I will use when I teach a recitation next semester.

            For this week, we had to read Chapter 11 in Students Helping Students which was about various peer education programs in college, and the responsibilities of peer leaders in these programs. One type of peer education program is a community service program. This program can be local like America Reads/America Counts and Alternative Breaks or international with students traveling to countries like Kenya or Turkey. The peer mentor role in this program is usually filled by the coordinators. Another peer education program is a health and wellness program. These are groups such as SHAPE, SNAC, AND Healthy Decisions. Peer leaders in these groups promote wellness as well as help students stay healthy and eat right. Overall, I feel that these organizations are an essential part of any college campus. I also think that it is a wise idea for each one to use peer leaders for these various programs because students can relate to other students. This is what the book is all about, and I feel that if I employ the methods learned from the WHOLE course next fall, I will succeed as a peer mentor.