Leadership: Peer Educating HONORS 100
It's a very surreal sensation opening up my portfolio to write this entry about my Peer Educating experience, given that I just stumbled upon the "Honors 100" tab under my Freshman year. However, as thrilling as it is to physically see my life come full circle, that does not mean the memories of my first quarter here have been tucked away on some dusty shelf. In fact, it was my Honors 100 experience that informed both my desire to be a Peer Educator and my approach to teaching.
I think back to the time I spent in that class, expecting to be struck by a flood of warm recollections. Instead my mind encounters a canvas of gray. I'm not saying I hated Honors 100 or that it was the worst experience of my life. All I can say is that it happened. I was there. It was just such an insipid stretch of time that I can't remember it any other way aside from vague impressions of assignments completed or sitting in class. The one aspect that I do vividly recall is the silence. I would enter class and be met with a vacuum, an unsettling emptiness matched in frostiness only by the indifference of my peers. Group discussions were mechanical, simply sentences spewing from speakers that were counting the minutes until the end. We marched sordidly out at the end of class. At the end of the quarter, I was fated to forget nearly every face and name that I had encountered there.
The cold machinations of the class were inherent in the class itself. I do not mean to slight my Peer Educator. I have only the utmost respect for her and the time she devoted to her class. She had a thorough understanding of the content and articulated it in a straightforward manner. So why did I feel the time I spent in class to be less than conducive to my development? Why did I need to sit through a class where the information was readily available online? I enjoyed the assignments, found them to be meaningful and helpful, but section itself I found devoid of an integral component. What was it?
Spirit.
Without spirit, purpose cannot be abstracted from experience. It was with this understanding that I decided to be a Peer Educator. I learned two things from my time in Honors 100. First, as much as it is a class about learning the Honors requirements, it should overwhelmingly be about building a community, and fostering a sense of friendship with peers. Second, I learned that as a Peer Educator, one's duty must not simply be to allocate facts. To be merely a mouthpiece for the Honors Curriculum would make the existence of a Peer Educator redundant. No, the Peer Educator had to be something more: an interlocutor that could synthesize the Honors Department's core values and their personal experiences to produce an organic expression of knowledge and emotion that an Honors 100 student could form a connection to.
For me, this has manifested in being thoroughly engaged in the classroom. When I teach, I make a point of physically sitting down at the same level as my students. I have arranged the desks to form a semi-circle, in the middle of which I sit to ensure that the students have both a means of building community and a focal point through which to do so. When they enter, I make eye contact, I smile, I heartily greet them by name, and I make them understand that I - and their peers - care about them. When I speak, I do so with conviction and passion, without the slightest trace of apologetic recognition that "yeah what I'm teaching is kind of dumb".
This last point, I believe, has been my greatest area of growth. When we were preparing for these classes last Spring, a comment that I received several times was "your sarcasm sometimes belittles the message you're trying to send". This hurt, and I wasn't quite sure what to do with the criticism. Was I supposed to just neuter my personality, an aspect of the spirit that has made my Honors 100 sections so much more engaging than when I was an Honors 100 student? As I actually began teaching, I realized that it wasn't my personality that was at fault. It was my conviction. So as I prepared for each lesson, I realized that for every piece of information I was responsible for conveying to these kids, I had to take a moment and deeply consider what each one meant to me. This has been invaluable, not just to the benefit of my students, but for me as well (if not more). When I teach now, I speak with a passion because I know how the information has impacted me. Accordingly, the students sense that gravity. Sure, I make jokes in class; I'm bombastic and sarcastic. But if anyone makes a snide remark along the lines of "this is kind of stupid, why do we have to learn it?", instead of submitting to that sentiment like the old me, today I adamantly explain exactly how and why it is important, taking ample effort to ensure that my tone is one that displays utmost seriousness.
That said, I'm not some kind of perfectly balanced shaman. Spirit, for all its benefits in my class, has proven to bear some ill consequences when expressed in excess. There are times in class when all my jokes are hitting home, but I might be feeling so high on mojo that I end up saying something or saying something in such a way that's out of line. There was one instance in particular when a student, in the most innocent way possible, asked if she could use the restroom. I chortled (and I hate the word "chortle", which goes to show how thoroughly disgusted I was with my behavior upon retrospection), and said something like "You're in college now, you're a grown girl, you don't have to ask me for permission." I meant it to be good-natured, but given the emotional context in which she had asked me, it was severely inappropriate. And it showed, because the look on her face was one of more than just being put-off: it was like I had betrayed her trust. She had looked to me as a jovial role model before, and I had treated her - pardon my colorful colloquialism - like an asshole. That look on her face is permanently burned onto my retinas, and I will carry it as a constant reminder that I can never exceed my bounds, that I must diligently consider each and every word and action that I produce. I later apologized to her, expressed how deeply sorry I was, and she was gracious enough to forgive me. But I'll never forget that look on her face. Neither will she.
Another issue of excess that I've grappled with is being too relatable, if such a state exists. My attempts at making a friendly and welcoming atmosphere may have worked a little too well, in the sense that it has diminished my status of being an educator to that of being a "pal". For example, there's a student in my class with whom I have fantastic rapport. He laughs at all my jokes, has a clear appreciation for the spirit I attempt to bring to my lessons, and we engage in banter almost every class. But I began to feel at a certain point that his banter was starting to sting. There was an edge at times, and I realized that the respect one should have in addressing an educator was diminished. It got to the point where it just wasn't fun talking to him anymore. So I talked to him after class, explained how I was feeling, and he apologized profusely. Honestly, as I was talking to him and describing how much I cared about the class and how he perceived me, I got choked up. I realized then that I actually did care about both of those things very deeply. And that must have gotten through to him, because he later followed up with me in an e-mail where he wrote:
"I just wanted to apologize to you again for not properly displaying respect... I just liked being able to josh with you (who actually uses the word josh), but I realize I need to draw the line and maintain respect the right way. I don't have a lot of friends here at UW yet that I feel like I can bullshit with, so I think I got a little too excited... Again, sorry, I'll definitely work on it. I feel like it's a testament to how much I appreciate your approach that I even felt comfortable enough with you to joke around, but I'll try to do that joking more appropriately in the future. You're the man."
We both did some learning about boundaries that day. I can't speak for him, but I know now what I have to work towards. I can be friendly, I can be warm, I can joke around and have fun, but I must always maintain a firm line which I cannot cross. It's not a matter of distancing myself from them emotionally, which is what I thought the case was before. No, being an educator and emotionally connecting to your students is not mutually exclusive. Rather, what is required is the ability to step back, assess each and every action that you take, and decide what's right and what's wrong. I've gotten better at this, but as my experiences with these two students demonstrate, I still have much to learn. The old-age bottom line: there's a time and place for everything.
I think back to the time I spent in that class, expecting to be struck by a flood of warm recollections. Instead my mind encounters a canvas of gray. I'm not saying I hated Honors 100 or that it was the worst experience of my life. All I can say is that it happened. I was there. It was just such an insipid stretch of time that I can't remember it any other way aside from vague impressions of assignments completed or sitting in class. The one aspect that I do vividly recall is the silence. I would enter class and be met with a vacuum, an unsettling emptiness matched in frostiness only by the indifference of my peers. Group discussions were mechanical, simply sentences spewing from speakers that were counting the minutes until the end. We marched sordidly out at the end of class. At the end of the quarter, I was fated to forget nearly every face and name that I had encountered there.
The cold machinations of the class were inherent in the class itself. I do not mean to slight my Peer Educator. I have only the utmost respect for her and the time she devoted to her class. She had a thorough understanding of the content and articulated it in a straightforward manner. So why did I feel the time I spent in class to be less than conducive to my development? Why did I need to sit through a class where the information was readily available online? I enjoyed the assignments, found them to be meaningful and helpful, but section itself I found devoid of an integral component. What was it?
Spirit.
Without spirit, purpose cannot be abstracted from experience. It was with this understanding that I decided to be a Peer Educator. I learned two things from my time in Honors 100. First, as much as it is a class about learning the Honors requirements, it should overwhelmingly be about building a community, and fostering a sense of friendship with peers. Second, I learned that as a Peer Educator, one's duty must not simply be to allocate facts. To be merely a mouthpiece for the Honors Curriculum would make the existence of a Peer Educator redundant. No, the Peer Educator had to be something more: an interlocutor that could synthesize the Honors Department's core values and their personal experiences to produce an organic expression of knowledge and emotion that an Honors 100 student could form a connection to.
For me, this has manifested in being thoroughly engaged in the classroom. When I teach, I make a point of physically sitting down at the same level as my students. I have arranged the desks to form a semi-circle, in the middle of which I sit to ensure that the students have both a means of building community and a focal point through which to do so. When they enter, I make eye contact, I smile, I heartily greet them by name, and I make them understand that I - and their peers - care about them. When I speak, I do so with conviction and passion, without the slightest trace of apologetic recognition that "yeah what I'm teaching is kind of dumb".
This last point, I believe, has been my greatest area of growth. When we were preparing for these classes last Spring, a comment that I received several times was "your sarcasm sometimes belittles the message you're trying to send". This hurt, and I wasn't quite sure what to do with the criticism. Was I supposed to just neuter my personality, an aspect of the spirit that has made my Honors 100 sections so much more engaging than when I was an Honors 100 student? As I actually began teaching, I realized that it wasn't my personality that was at fault. It was my conviction. So as I prepared for each lesson, I realized that for every piece of information I was responsible for conveying to these kids, I had to take a moment and deeply consider what each one meant to me. This has been invaluable, not just to the benefit of my students, but for me as well (if not more). When I teach now, I speak with a passion because I know how the information has impacted me. Accordingly, the students sense that gravity. Sure, I make jokes in class; I'm bombastic and sarcastic. But if anyone makes a snide remark along the lines of "this is kind of stupid, why do we have to learn it?", instead of submitting to that sentiment like the old me, today I adamantly explain exactly how and why it is important, taking ample effort to ensure that my tone is one that displays utmost seriousness.
That said, I'm not some kind of perfectly balanced shaman. Spirit, for all its benefits in my class, has proven to bear some ill consequences when expressed in excess. There are times in class when all my jokes are hitting home, but I might be feeling so high on mojo that I end up saying something or saying something in such a way that's out of line. There was one instance in particular when a student, in the most innocent way possible, asked if she could use the restroom. I chortled (and I hate the word "chortle", which goes to show how thoroughly disgusted I was with my behavior upon retrospection), and said something like "You're in college now, you're a grown girl, you don't have to ask me for permission." I meant it to be good-natured, but given the emotional context in which she had asked me, it was severely inappropriate. And it showed, because the look on her face was one of more than just being put-off: it was like I had betrayed her trust. She had looked to me as a jovial role model before, and I had treated her - pardon my colorful colloquialism - like an asshole. That look on her face is permanently burned onto my retinas, and I will carry it as a constant reminder that I can never exceed my bounds, that I must diligently consider each and every word and action that I produce. I later apologized to her, expressed how deeply sorry I was, and she was gracious enough to forgive me. But I'll never forget that look on her face. Neither will she.
Another issue of excess that I've grappled with is being too relatable, if such a state exists. My attempts at making a friendly and welcoming atmosphere may have worked a little too well, in the sense that it has diminished my status of being an educator to that of being a "pal". For example, there's a student in my class with whom I have fantastic rapport. He laughs at all my jokes, has a clear appreciation for the spirit I attempt to bring to my lessons, and we engage in banter almost every class. But I began to feel at a certain point that his banter was starting to sting. There was an edge at times, and I realized that the respect one should have in addressing an educator was diminished. It got to the point where it just wasn't fun talking to him anymore. So I talked to him after class, explained how I was feeling, and he apologized profusely. Honestly, as I was talking to him and describing how much I cared about the class and how he perceived me, I got choked up. I realized then that I actually did care about both of those things very deeply. And that must have gotten through to him, because he later followed up with me in an e-mail where he wrote:
"I just wanted to apologize to you again for not properly displaying respect... I just liked being able to josh with you (who actually uses the word josh), but I realize I need to draw the line and maintain respect the right way. I don't have a lot of friends here at UW yet that I feel like I can bullshit with, so I think I got a little too excited... Again, sorry, I'll definitely work on it. I feel like it's a testament to how much I appreciate your approach that I even felt comfortable enough with you to joke around, but I'll try to do that joking more appropriately in the future. You're the man."
We both did some learning about boundaries that day. I can't speak for him, but I know now what I have to work towards. I can be friendly, I can be warm, I can joke around and have fun, but I must always maintain a firm line which I cannot cross. It's not a matter of distancing myself from them emotionally, which is what I thought the case was before. No, being an educator and emotionally connecting to your students is not mutually exclusive. Rather, what is required is the ability to step back, assess each and every action that you take, and decide what's right and what's wrong. I've gotten better at this, but as my experiences with these two students demonstrate, I still have much to learn. The old-age bottom line: there's a time and place for everything.