Things to remember for next semester...

             It was really nice to have Megan, Brooke and Josh talk about some of their previous experiences with peer mentoring! This advice should really help me to be prepared for some of the situations I wouldn’t have thought about for next semester.

            Probably the most important thing that I learned from this week’s class is that the planning for the week will take a lot longer than I thought! I thought it would take at least a half hour but up to two hours, wow! Hopefully with this knowledge I can make sure to have this time blocked out on Sunday’s of next fall. Another thing I felt was important relating to making lesson plans was to start the plan for the week early so that you and your co-mentor have time to think about different ideas. This will help to reduce the time you have to work on this stuff especially when you have a busy week coming up! The final major thing I learned was that there will be some really awkward situations that we may go through as mentors. Depending on how we handle these situations it can be easily dealt or not so easy…but just make sure to keep it an enjoyable experience!

            One of the things that I am really worried about is the situation of having a student that will not do the blog posts, comments, or come to class. I know that they gave us an example of this however I didn’t feel like I received a strong answer of how to deal with this. To me it seemed like they pretty well had the student just continue to resist and not do the assignments so if anyone has a good idea of how to deal with this situation please let me know!

The final lesson!

Makayla and Nicole had a really fun presentation on Thursday! The game show “Clueless and in College” was super fun and exciting because we had great involvement from both the participants and the audience! Also, talking about good versus bad qualities of a peer mentor helped me to realize that there can be some bad peer mentors so that’s what I don’t want my mentees to have to deal with!

            I really liked talking about the different qualities that we think make up a good peer mentor. As most of us know, to be a good mentor you have to make yourself very available as a mentor. You must be able to put in the time to make your mentees appreciate your help and want to come back for more of your help and support. Some other qualities that we talked about were being able to refer a mentee to the correct person if you are unable to help out. This makes you more trustable to your mentee but also really helps your mentee out more than what you would have.

Now on to the not so good qualities that we talked about…..to start off I would like to talk about Sam’s drunk CA. When you’re in a mentoring position it is really important to remember that you are a role model to many of your students! When you go out and get drunk for a week strait that doesn’t go over well in you mentees eyes. Another good example we had was a mentor who didn’t have encouragement for group participation and activities as well as didn’t have regular meetings. This really discourages your quiet students from getting out and meeting new people but it also makes the group less connected.

After going through last week’s lesson I can’t wait to find out who my co-mentor is and meet my mentees this fall! Great job Makayla and Nicole on finishing out the semester with a fun lesson!