Authenticity and Balancing Actsin Honors Peer Education

Amber Zoe Smith

Director of Honors Teaching and Learning

azsmith@vt.edu

Overview

• Assignment series used in honors peer educator training to• Increase student confidence

• Create a common vocabulary

• Encourage collaboration

• Presentation components • Background reading and concepts

• Writing assignment

• Sample student responses

• Outcomes

• Questions and discussion

Context

• Virginia Tech has 33,000 undergraduates

• Honors College has 1,400 students

• Peer education programs• First-year seminars

• Reading seminars

• Honors Peer Advising Center

• Others in future

• Peer educators are the sole instructors of their courses

The Problem

• Teaching is hard—peer education is maybe harder

• Conflicting identities: peer vs. educator

• Who and how to be in the classroom

• When unbalanced, peer educators experience:• Self-doubt

• Inconsistency

• Loss of authority

• Dissatisfaction

The Solution

• Prepare students to expect teaching challenges

• Emphasize individualized teaching identity

• Encourage collaborative learning

Thanks to E. Shelley Reid from George Mason University!

Timeline

• Early spring: Students apply and are selected as peer educators

• Early summer: Teaching identity exploration due

• Late summer: Significant reading and semester planning due

• Pre-semester: Peer educator training

• Fall semester: Peer educators begin teaching and taking weekly 3-credit Peer Education Practicum with me

Background Reading

“From Playing the Role to Being Yourself: Becoming the Teacher in the Writing Classroom” by Dawn Skorczewski

• How teachers adapt to challenging classroom situations

• Being a Good Teacher

• Advocates for• Understanding how our sense of self interacts with how we think we should

teach

• Channeling our honest feelings and identities into effective teaching responses

Balancing Acts and the Teaching Self

Example Balancing Act

Strict [------------------X] Easygoing

The Teaching Self

• Who you are and who you want to be as a teacher

• Communicated through actions and responses

• Feels harmonious and authentic or dissonant and artificial

• Never resolved, only balanced

Cultivating the Balanced Teaching Self

• Articulate a baseline teaching self that feels like it is in harmony with your baseline person self

• Brainstorm balancing acts that you expect to face

• Draw the mixing board sliders with your baseline settings

Peer [------X------------] Educator

Supporter [----------------X--] Motivator

Strict [--------X----------] Easygoing

Impartial [-----------X-------] Honest

Exploratory Writing

• Why is this balance important to you? Why might it be challenging?• How might you rebalance in different circumstances?• How might ghosts of your teaching past be influencing this decision?• How does this balance create harmony between your teaching self and

your person self?

“The best explorations will reveal your thought process as you speculate, imagine, reconsider, complicate, and build understanding, never arriving at a tidy conclusion. Give specific examples. Search for multiple perspectives on these positions, and honestly consider their merits and drawbacks. Seek the limitations of your answers, and describe how you plan to work toward answers that feel right for you.”

Most Common Balance Challenges

Peer vs. Educator 18

Lenient vs. Strict 15

Flexible vs. Structured 14

Talking vs. Listening 11

Friendly vs. Just Business 9

Individual vs. Community Representative 7

Over- vs. Underteaching 6

Fun vs. Challenging 6

Bully vs. Pushover 5

Follower vs. Leader 5

Discussion vs. Lecture 5

Easygoing vs. Serious 4

Supporter vs. Motivator 4

Learner vs. Instructor 4

My Goals vs. Their Goals 4

Teaching Identity Exploration Excerpt

“My biggest thought going into being a peer educator was that I wouldn’t struggle too much because I had a lot of leadership experience. I never imagined that this writing prompt was going to be hard, but as I started working on it, I realized that I had more questions than answers. As I was trying to sort out where I wanted to be on our ‘mixing board,’ I couldn’t. Like the reading, I had all of these ‘ideals’ of what a peer educator should be that were plaguing my own personal definition of what I wanted to be. …

I had a yearning to go and talk to other peer educators and even to my own peer educator from last year because I really felt lost in trying to figure it out for myself, which is why I look forward to our training day. I really don’t know what is best and I don’t know if there ever will be a ‘best.’ I just know that I will continue to learn and grow throughout this entire process and for that, I am definitely grateful.”

Teaching Identity Exploration Excerpt

“I found this assignment difficult because in many cases I wanted to model both traits in a pair—I wanted to be both a peer and an educator, both understanding and assertive. But at the same time, I was forced to admit that to strive for a perfect balance of each in a classroom would be asking the impossible. My own character is inherently predisposed to favor one side of each pairing over the other. So while the balances recorded above reflect the teaching identity I hope to achieve, my decisions were made with the constraints of my personality in mind.”

Vulnerable vs. Guarded

“I definitely want to make myself more vulnerable because I think that will help encourage conversations. I think this might be challenging for me because sometimes it’s hard for me to admit to others my faults and weaknesses. In my head it gives others an opportunity to use that against me. This also may stem from my interactions with my fatherwhere any weakness was an opportunity for him to lecture me. So then, in addition to not wanting to be invalidated because of my weaknesses, I also don’t want to accidentally lecture or seem like I am superior to my students because they have weaknesses. That sort of interaction will discourage open conversations.”

Tell Them “Do Everything” vs. “Do Nothing”

“The last thing I want to do is dictate what a student has to do for their Virginia Tech career to be meaningful. That of course is not my job. But where is that line between pushing them to do things they wouldn’t normally do and pushing them to do things they don’t want to do? The question is not whether or not to push students out of their comfort zones, but rather how much to push them. My experience so far has been that first-year students often believe in themselves too little and think those experiences sound cool but aren’t attainable ‘for them’ (even though they totally are).”

Next Steps in the Assignment Series

• I respond to essays over the summer in a detailed, personal way

• At pre-semester training, they share their responses with each other

• Throughout semester, we build on these ideas in class

Observed Outcomes

Peer educators who complete this assignment cycle:

• Start with a higher level of confidence in their decision-making

• Gain a common vocabulary that enables them to name and discuss their experiences

• Come to rely on each other’s diverse perspectives while also becoming more comfortable and flexible with their own ideas

• Are more willing to cross over into new peer education settings that share these transferrable skills

End-of-Semester Feedback

• “Ms. Smith gave a lot of constructive feedback aimed at helping us become better teachers and more reflective thinkers.”

• “The instructor did a great job of providing feedback that helped me help my students. She answered any questions that I had and helped me work through difficult situations or questions.”

• “I really enjoyed this course and I think the balance between practical and thoughtful, vision-driven activities is just right!”

• “[This class] really helped me cultivate my own teaching identity, and provided a space where I felt comfortable to voice my concerns.”

Takeaways

• If you have highly independent peer educators, help them cultivate teaching identities in a structured way

• Assign relevant reading and exploratory writing in advance

• Personally engage with students through essay responses

• Think-pair-share—encourage collaboration

• Use this common vocabulary

Questions and Discussion

• What thoughts did this presentation bring up for you?

• What can we clarify or revisit?

• How do you cultivate teaching identity in your students?

Thank You!

Amber Zoe Smith

Director of Honors Teaching and Learning

Virginia Tech Honors College

azsmith@vt.edu