Honors Peer Facilitator
During the fall of my sophomore and junior year, I served as a peer facilitator for the honors program. This role allowed me to lead a group of 10-12 first year honors students through their first quarter at UW. I taught 5 class sections on topics that ranged from honors curriculum to communities at UW to health and wellbeing and even about how to craft their own honors portfolio. In preparation of class, I took a preportory course the previous spring. These are the reflections I wrote after the prep class in the spring and the experience in the fall
Spring 2018
This past spring quarter, I have seen a lot of change and growth in myself. I think that this is the quarter that I have changed the most; which is interesting since some people will say the same for fall quarter being away from home. With the self reflections that we have been doing in Honors 397, this has allowed me to really look at the person I am. What did I want to change about myself, what were things I liked about myself, and what were things I didn’t like about myself.
​ I have always thought of myself as a leader. All throughout high school, I served as an ASB officer. Because of this, I thought I knew everything about what it takes to be a leader. Little did I know there were actually a lot of aspects of being a leader entailed. Serving a leadership position varies from the environment you are in. In Honors 100, the role that I will be serving as is a peer educator for the students. This position is kind of tricky in how you can undergo how to serve. I think this position is very vital for first year students. Not only will I be serving a educator role to them, I will also be a peer. Someone for them to go to if they have a question about honors or UW or really anything about being a college student.
At the beginning of the class, I was actually pretty shy which is weird because that's not usually how I am. Overtime, I opened up more and felt more comfortable around my fellow peer educators. The reason that I picked the picture from the retreat is because I grew a lot closer to my classmate in those two days than I had before in the five class periods we had spent together. Typically before class started, i was usually on my phone because I didn’t know anyone else. I used it as a way to hide that fact. However, after the retreat, I grew a lot closer to everyone and started talking to people before class.
My teaching skills have definitely improved over the course of the quarter. For our first teaching activity, for the group teach where we taught about anything, I was pretty nervous. I rushed through my five minute teach and finished my teach in three minutes. I learned a lot from this teach; first that I needed to slow down my speaking, and that it was pretty chill. Teaching, in this environment, shouldn’t be something to stress about. For our second teach, the group curriculum teach, I did a lot better but there was still room for improvement. At the end of the quarter, with the individual teach behind me, I know I need to work on my pacing and how fast I speak. This are both things I can control; I will just need to practice.
My first year at UW has come to an end but I have experienced a lot of change as a person. This is exactly what I wanted, I wanted to go away to college and come back a better person. I have grown a lot. It’s funny being in honors since they really push for reflection. If I hadn’t done all this reflection and thought about myself, I would have never realized the growth I’ve done. I am grateful for the past year; although it has been one of the hard years I have ever gone through, I am very fortunate about all the experiences I have undergone. I am excited for what is to come in the next three years at UW.
Fall 2018
Serving as a honors peer educator has allowed me to lead a group of incoming honors students through their first quarter at UW. This was a position that I wanted to serve since I went through Honors 100 and remembered the impact it had on me as a student. Being on the other side of Honors 100, the peer educator rather than the student, allowed me to not only better understand the honors program itself better, but also hone my leadership skills. My freshman year I didn't really get to serve in any leadership positions and I am happy to have been able to step into a leadership role this year.
As a way to reflect on why I originally wanted this position, I looked back on my application for the position. One of the main reasons was because of my peer educator who brought so much energy to what could have seemed like a mundane class. This was something that I wanted to do my for students; I wanted them excited about the different classes they would be able to take, not worried about all the requirements in honors. I also wanted to welcome them into the honors program without worrying about any expectation that they think are put on them.
Looking back on this quarter, I feel that I was able to achieve these goals. I like to think that I ended up with a good group of students who were very attentive to what I was teaching and liked doing the activities. Based on how the small section classes went, my students seemed eager at the content. They were intrigued by the different classes that are offered through honors and fortunate for the resources offered.
This role did not really change my view of leadership. I had experience in high school to serve as a leader to my peers. Being a peer educator allowed me to continue this, at times feeling like a peer but also an educator. A friend but also a sort of teacher as well. I knew that I would need to be relatable with my students so that they would be able to listen to my advice. I also knew that I couldn’t be a pushover or too much of a friend to them. It was an interesting balance, but it is a view of leadership that I would want to continue depending on the leadership role that I am in.
​Something that one of the returning peer educators said for the last class about teaching honors 100 again was that you are able to mistakes or problems you saw in class. There were times in class where a particular activity did not work out the way that I wanted it to or I didn’t articulate the topic I was teaching about in a clear way. This is really good advice; we did self-assessments after each class and would talk about the problems we had in small section during class. However, if we don’t continue as a peer educator the next year, all the constructive criticism is left as criticism. There is no action to fix these problems. This is something that I learn after reviewing my self-evaluations. If I choose to be a peer educator again, this is something that I would want to achieve; being able to realize the mistakes I made this year and fix those problems for that year.
I genuinely really enjoyed serving in this role. Not only has this position allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of the honors program, but it has also allowed me to make more meaningful relationships with other honors students. I did not live in the honors LLC, which at first made me feel that I was missing out on this community. However, serving in this role and taking different honors classes has exposed me to all the extraordinary people that are in this community. I am really fortunate for the relationships that I have built over the last year and hope that they will continue to long-lasting friendships.
Fall 2019
At the end of my sophomore winter quarter, I decided to apply to be an honors peer educator again. This is a role that I have served in before and after a bit of reflection on my experience as a peer educator, I remembered how rewarding the experience was. I was happy the first day of the spring seminar to see some of the other returners and the newcomers. I feel like I was able to build stronger connections with leaders in the honors community. I saw this experience, not only as a sort of do-over but also as something that was going to be fun and not something to stress over.
My initial idea of leadership hasn’t changed as a result of this experience, especially since this was something that I have done before. If anytime, I gave me more experience to lead a group of students and try different ways to teach them about different aspects of the honors community. When I think about leadership, I think about it in a cause-effect relationship. I think about the impact that you are having on others. In this role, I think I made an impact on my students’ first quarter. I tried to make them excited about all the opportunities in honors without making it sound like I was just saying it or exaggerating. I wanted to be perceived as a transparent leader but also one that leaves a positive impact on a group. I think it is important to think about the effect you are having on a group, whether it is positive or negative, and try to be a leader that best caters to the needs of the group. In future leadership roles, I want to be the type of leader that is effective in their job but also has a positive impact on others. This was my idea of leadership in high school and I think it’s just as important today.
The group of students that I had this past quarter was awesome. There were so many of them that I could relate to one aspect, whether it was their major (most of them were biology majors), or the rso’s they were apart of (Many in the Greek system), or life experiences (one recently came back from a study abroad in Finland). I felt like I got lucky and ended up with a really good group of students, no complaints on any of them. I hope the best for them and want to hear in the future about the other experiences they have, whether it be honors related or just general UW experiences.
My junior fall quarter (doesn’t roll off the tongue like ffq) had been plenty busy with schoolwork, especially from physics. I saw this class as a break from all my harder coursework. It was fun leading my cohort and coming up with activities for them to get to know one another. This is an experience I would recommend to others as it is a really rewarding and fun experience. One of my goals, first and foremost, is to look for more leadership opportunities. Once I had another leadership role, I want to be an effective leader, one that others look to. I think of myself more as an example to others, and I think this is something that carries over into my leadership skills. I want to help influence others to be want to leaders themselves in the way that I carry myself and what I bring to the table. I think one of the biggest compliments is when you hear someone step into a role because of how a past leader has influenced them (new honors peer educators choosing to serve as PE’s because of the PE they had when they went through honors 100). I hope that my latest group of students is moved by their experience in honors 100 to want to serve as a PE.