In this experience, I trained for and completed the role of a Peer Leader for Shanon Cunningham's Friday morning section of UHP Gateway, an introductory course for the University of Cincinnati's Honors College. 

 

During PL training at the 2018 UHP retreat, I found myself slightly nervous at the idea of being a mentor figure for incoming students - first of all, we're nearly the same age (and I'm a small person) so I wasn't sure how trustworthy or knowledgeable I could appear to the students I was supposed to be a mentor figure for. But as I learned over the course of a full semester of interactions with people who are now my peers, none of that mattered what-so-ever.

 

Shanon was an *amazing* faculty member to work with, receptive to my feedback and worked with me to implement or try new ideas. She pushed me to think about students learning needs both collectively and individually, especially to anticipate possible learning roadblocks or pushback. But even when things went off script or not according to plan, she and I navigated them as positive learning experiences together. 

 

As far as my own learning goes, I realized a few different things about being a mentor or teacher figure:

 

1. As much as you want it (teaching) to work perfectly, and your students to have *revelations,* it's not always (probably very rarely) going to work out the way you would like it to. And that's OKAY! In fact, being honest, transparent, vulnerable, and willing to publicly fail were big lessons I had to learn for myself. I have always been the kind of person to place imaginary pressures on myself, so to catch them in the early stages of this experience and re-evaluate how I handled them in an educator role was definitely an improvement; as well as a testament to lessons I learned from reflections in the past. Progress!

 

2. Being a student is forever, and learning never ends. I outlined some goals for this experience with my lead faculty, Shanon, and the main one was to be able to expand my teaching capabilities for higher education and impactful mentorship. Before being a Peer Leader, I had only ever taught or mentored younger children in art class settings. Now I was taking on the challenge of communicating to and helping develop in adults life lessons and personal skills. I realized over the course of this experience that just as much as I was helping teach the course materials and mentor students, the students were teaching me about my own habits, learning style, and values.

 

I remember a music teacher once telling me that in order to master a concept, I had to be able to teach it. And while I think that is true; I learned that even while I was teaching a topic or communicating an idea, I was developing my own understanding of that idea and building the skills to adapt language/delivery/presentation in order to best benefit a student. In short, while I was teaching I was learning, and I think that cyclical relationship between student/mentor/teacher is so crucial for effective pedagogy, but especially so in higher education.

 

3. Get. Organized. Always have the bigger picture in mind. Logistics note - plans will fall through. You will eventually mess up a presentation, activity, meeting, etc. It's not the end of the world. A), being organized and planning ahead (like long term ahead) helps avoid some awkward situations. I have never been the most timely person, and usually, I just suck it up and deal with the consequences of bad organization by myself. Not ideal, and can definitely be improved upon. But additionally B), have the bigger picture in mind! The bigger lesson picture - what takeaways are most important? what impact does the student need to understand? Keeping a long-term or multi-step plan in mind requires us to remember the bigger picture, especially when it seems like things are going haywire.