Stephanie Chuang

Carissa Mayer & Claire Grant

Honors 327

8 June 2020

Spring Reflection

There was a lot to enjoy about Honors 327 this quarter, particularly among the stress of

current events. I appreciated the chance to see my peers on a weekly basis to learn about teaching

strategies and bond with each other. I had wanted to become a Peer Educator in the first place

because of the community I had experienced when I took Honors 100, which was something I

hadn’t experienced in quiz sections for my other classes. First and foremost, getting to know my

fellow peer educators was a lot of fun, especially in conjunction with what we were learning. As

we were reading about and trying different ways to build community, I could also sense, at the

same time, the community being built between us. This was great, because I was learning about

how to foster a community and participating in it at the same time.

From a teaching standpoint, this class reinforced a lot of things that I already knew and

taught me some new things. I knew that teachers had to be kind, attentive, compassionate, clear,

and overall, just good human beings with their students’ best interests in mind. However, I also

knew that I would only get six chunks of 50 minutes with my students, which isn’t a lot. So I

noticed, over the course of this seminar, that my lesson plans and preparations were really about

building a relationship with my students and setting them up to succeed. For example, it would

be better to get them to start thinking about their health and wellness at the start of their college

career, instead of them realizing they neglected it deep into winter quarter. It would be better to
get them to start thinking about global challenges and how they might feel about them sooner

than later. Realizing that this “setting up” for my students is one of the most important things I

will do for them was a turning point for me. Once I realized this purpose, everything else fell into

place. Along with various group facilitation techniques, creative ways of participation

encouragement, and the stubborn yet necessary employment of icebreakers, I feel that I have,

overall, a better understanding of what I’m going to be teaching, why I’m teaching it, and how to

do it.