You Just Got Taught

This week Brad and I taught our session on problem solving with individuals. It was fun doing this again. I had taught a group of freshmen all of last semester with my co-leader, so it was interesting to finally work with someone new. Brad was an easy person to work with. I feel this is because we share similar mindsets, but I do not think we share similar MBTI types. Based on experience, I know that my co-leader next fall might not be in the same mindset that I am. I think this is an important thing to remember for all peer mentors. Allie, Chelsee, and Debra try to match peer mentors, but we are such a diverse group of people, that it doesn’t always work out like that. The thing to remember here is that your co-leader and you might be two totally different people, but it’s important to meet them halfway. I think this class helps with that because it gives us a semester to bond with each other so that we feel comfortable doing this next Fall.

Another thing I liked from my session was that everyone was easy to teach and contributed something to the lesson. Again, based on my experience this probably will not happen next Fall. There might be some students who are quiet, and there might be some students who dominate the discussion. This is an important thing to remember when you teach next fall. How you engage the students will factor into your lesson plans and your methods of teaching.

As for utilizing our lesson for next semester, I feel that summative and formative evaluation as well as positive goals will help us and help the students next fall. Knowing the difference between positive and negative goals will help us academically, and it will also help us with our interactions with the students. For example, your co-leader and you could say that you don’t want student to fail their classes. However, this would be a negative goal. Instead, you could say that you want to recommend the student for a tutor. It would allow you to be a better mentor, and a student might adopt this strategy themselves. As for formative and summative evaluation, I feel that we will use plenty of this next semester. Allie and Chelsee have two-on-twos each work to check our progress. This seems like an example of formative evaluation. We will also use it when we check on the mentors during our two-on-ones. Perhaps, we will use this when we make our lesson plans each week. I think this is an important form of evaluation because it allows us to do checkups. We can see how we are doing while we are doing it. As for summative evaluation, we will use this at the end of the semester to see how the students liked our teaching and how they liked the class in general. This plan allows for end of the semester feedback, but if students have any issues during the semester, I feel like they are ignored.

This is all important to know for next semester. Here is a video from Office Space that features a form of evaluation.