Connecting… Using your ‘Mind-Fi’

Today’s lecture was all about Empathy and that active listening is a main tool in this. We spoke about the many ways we could apply this to our practice, as this is essential as a peer mentor. 

What is empathy? 

Carl Rogers describes this term to be ‘the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the “as if” conditions’. (1959 cited in Rogers, 1995, p.140). 

Rogers perceives ‘Empathy’ to be;

– Not making judgement 

– Communicating your sensing of the persons world

– Being guided by the person, “can I do this?… Is this ok?” 

– Never assume your way is the way for others 

– Building connections 

Above is a short video we watched in class that clarified the differentiation between sympathy and empathy. Sometimes we may feel that to sympathise with someone is enough. But as a practising mentor, this video proved that being empathic towards someone is more beneficial. It allows you to be able to place yourself in the other persons shoes and feel what it is they are going through – through active listening. An example of when I applied empathy to my practice as a mentor, was when I was approached by one of the mentee’s who expressed their worries and concerns about the work and reading load. Instead of jumping in with the many suggestions I thought would benefit the mentee, I applied active listening as a tool. Whilst expressing their thoughts and feelings I was able to show my relatable compassion as a second year, then prompt the mentee to think about the ways they could approach the situation. This worked really well as I learnt from this moment, sometimes the best advice you can receive is from yourself, of course with the help, prompt and guidance from others. 

With this in mind, it is also important to remember the boundaries of doing so. Keeping that glass wall between you and the mentee, enabling you to feel what they are going through to be able to give great advice – or not – without the situation becoming personal to you, bringing in your own personal feelings. 

We moved onto our weekly class activity, role play! We were given different scenarios which may occur in mentoring. We then had to reenact them after thinking critically about the different responses we could give, whilst keeping the topic of empathy still in mind. Through our role play scenarios, we were able to pick up on some great ideas. Sandra reminded us that as mentors we may not always have the answer and that is fine. Sometimes certain situations work best when no advice or answer is given. This gives the mentee time to be able to think for themselves, creating solutions they may not have had time to think of before. 

  
After this, we slipped into the mentees lecture to catch the end of their lesson so we could get an idea of where they were at… Memories. This week felt a lot more relaxed. I noticed more of our mentees were getting involved with everyone, asking questions and having general chit chat. I worked closely with a small group of mentees, going over the online resources and how to access them, which they found quite helpful. We were also able to help with some of the content which might be useful to apply to their blogs, what to think about, reflect on and how you might plan ahead for the next lecture. 

Towards the end of the session, one of the mentors said to me “someone must be handing out my blog name because I have loads of requests!”… Guilty! Haha. I thought it was a good idea for the mentees to have a look at our blogs, just to see how we make it our own and that it doesn’t actually have to be written in the best way possible. Add your own touch to it, make your blog personal to you and add your own voice to it. It’s also a good idea to have a browse at the previous blogs from last year to get an idea of what’s to come. Overall, a good and productive session! 

Hola Amigos!

Introduced to our mentee’s! I’m not going to lie, I was confident until they all began to shuffle into the room we were allocated for our mentoring session. Before hand, we had discussed as a group what we thought might be the best way to start the first mentoring session, with a quick introduction of ourselves and get to know the mentee’s and the burning questions they may have. Once we got chatting, some felt more comfortable to ask us questions. As predicted, the questions were based around the first essay and reading. Something I was particularly worried about when starting this time last year.

We spread ourselves around the room talking to as many of the first year students as we could, getting to know them and trying to be as helpful as possible. Trying to give the best advice and assuring them that they have nothing to worry about, as long as they manage their time well and set time aside for core readings. Once we had spoken to everyone individually, we decided to hand out small cuts of paper for the mentee’s to write down any questions they wanted answering. By doing this, we were able to answer a lot of questions… Team work makes the dream work and all of that! 🙂 This is something I felt worked really well, as not everyone was put under pressure to actually converse and speak in front of a group. It gave it that more relaxed, comfortable anonymous feel, which some prefer in an environment you don’t feel fully comfortable in yet. Below are some of the questions from the mentee’s, we answered these questions together as a group, each having our own input and advice. To answer some of the questions I referred to the student study hub which has lots of information, tips and guidance on how to become an achieving student, displaying lots of creative videos for all us visual learners to 🙂

http://learning.londonmet.ac.uk/studyhub/ – Link to the student study hub.

One of the things we didn’t predict as a group was that there may be some changes to the course set up. We assumed that blogs would have been spoken about already but the mentee’s had no idea about them just yet. This made me realise that it might be a better Idea if we consult with some of the lecturers before hand, so we are fully aware of what is of importance for the most recent weeks. We managed to keep the majority but two in the session for a full hour which I think is a result! Hopefully we can be of great help and continue to have our mentee’s attend each week, to receive help and guidance from us as well as the help that they can give us to. I look forward to next week!

Peer mentoring in practice.

Today’s lecture felt like we stepped back in time, back to year one. We engaged in a couple of fun ice breaker activities, which got us out of our seats and fully involved in the class – mainly because deep down I know Sandra wanted to see my amazing dancing skills #talent. These activities were soo embarrassing last year! So mentee’s count yourselves lucky we didn’t make you dance when you introduced yourselves to the class and us lol. To be fair, it’s quite an uncomfortable way to make someone feel comfortable! So maybe we will do this again next week, “what’s your name again? Give us a dance!” Lol. 

Once we had all introduced ourselves again along with our signature move, we ordered ourselves from shortest to tallest. After a couple of tip toes, we were paired with our opposites then discussed what our favourite piece of writing was that we had produced. Love notes, shopping lists and top graded essays were all on the agenda, then shared with the rest of the class, as ya do. This, along with the other activities, are great ice breakers. It forces conversation with two people who have possibly never spoken before, in the most un-awkward way possible #banked. 

Sandra gave us an introduction to the module and its aims, as well as what we would be doing as a group. Together we discussed what a mentor is and the many ways in which a mentor can be helpful, through guidance, support and hands on experience of the different modules. We discussed the ‘Do’s and Don’ts’ in mentoring. The ‘do’s’ – along with loaaddss more – were, blog! Advice for both mentee’s and mentors. Something I do daily as you can see (this blog is blatantly late lol) buy yeah, it’s very good to do! Blogging is a great tool for reflecting on sessions, getting into the habit of writing / typing and if you are anything like me, then memory loss to *queues Blondie AKA Charlotte to make a bad joke*. The ‘Don’ts’, “don’t offer help at inappropriate hours”, this made me chuckle. But don’t do the obvious such as, encourage plagiarism, be rude, lazy, disorganised, make promises you can’t keep and don’t be too personal. Most of all, don’t forget that as much as this mentoring session is for the mentee’s, it is also for us to. As throughout this journey, we will be learning a lot from our mentee’s and this experience as we build on ourselves and our experiences. 

Sandra handed out some post it notes from the first year students, which had questions on for us to attempt to give supportive answers and guidance in small groups. Some related to the reading, being able to keep up with it all and not fall behind. This is something I found difficult in year 1 and quite daunting when looking at the reading list. The advice we thought would be most helpful was to try and manage your time, set time aside each night for a small read whilst taking notes to refer back to in the lectures. After this, we chose a picture from a pile of many which we felt defined our experience of peer mentoring so far, then shared our reasons for this with the person next to us. Before heading off to the tower to meet our mentee’s, we were given an agreement from Sandra to sign. This was to show our commitment to being a peer mentor, offering the most appropriate and helpful support to the mentee’s throughout the 15 week course. 

Open the red curtains… Its show time!

Week 7 – Exhibition

What a day! The classroom was no more, we had transformed this room into a gallery now full of colour and creativity. This exhibition was a fantastic way of meeting the third and second years, also having our mentors able to come down and finally see what we have been speaking about in the previous weeks.

Videos, puzzles, collages and knit work; just a few of the methods that were used. It was great to see how people used different methods for their project which I thought would be really hard to do myself.

 

Getting feedback from our peers and the students from other years was really helpful and uplifting. The creativity shone today in TMG-45 😉 Well done to everyone, team work makes the dream work.

Presentation Day!

 Week 6 – Presenting our findings from the reading: Campfire in cyberspace.

We briefly came together with our groups to discuss and show what we had come up with in our own time (our collages and annotations). We shared our notes and clarified how we were going to present it to the class. It was fantastic to see that everyone in our group #topjob had come up with such good work!

We were the first group to present to the class (nervous much!!) Although i was filled with nerves, i felt like it went quite well. Everyone was able to share their key points and views from their two pages. Once we had finished Tom reflected back and picked up a few good pointers that were made. He then asked if there were any questions from the rest of the class but luckily they let us off lightly and no hands were raised. Each group then presented their piece to the class. This was a really good way for me to gain a slight understanding of some of the texts and what they focussed on, while thinking of ways that i may be able to link this to my research proposal.

Mentors

I was looking forward to meeting with our mentors today as i have been quite worried about the research proposal, which is due in a few weeks. Having not seen any examples of what a research proposal looks like, i was stuck with where to start. The mentors being their wicked selves though, had helped me out good and proper! Going through examples i now have a clear understanding of what i need to do and include. I feel much more confident on making a start now, so now i have made up my mind on what question i want to do, i can go home and get cracking! #wickedmentors 🙂

#becominganeducationalist

#becomingeducational

Pyjama week! 
Week 5 task: Explore the university’s different ‘learning spaces’: Formal and informal. 
Myself, Louise and Charlotte gave up a good lay in on a lavely Wednesday morning to come in and crack on with this project. We decided in the previous lecture to create a collage to present our findings to the class, which will be in week 7. So off we went taking lots of pictures of what we thought was relevant to the task.. Selfies! Just kidding 😉 
“Learning is active and interactive – we learn as we speak, listen, draw, read and write”. – Tom and Sandra. 
Baring this in mind we captured many places in lots of different areas where we thought learning would / was taking place. Not only did we look at the ‘places’ or ‘spaces’ we also looked at what was in and around those places to. We found that: 

• Light 

• Temperature 

• Colour

• Comfort 

• Layout 

• Space  

And many more… Were all key factors in those learning spaces. These are what we thought would make a huge impact on the learning taking place, for example, if the room is boiling hot you are more likely to feel sleepy and not be focussed. 
We met up with Sandra to show her what we had come up with so far, which was super helpful. We got some things clarified and were able to grab some material from her office to make a start on putting our collage together. On the way to her office Sandra told us about this massive banner she and Tom had hung in the stairway. They wasn’t allowed to hang it up but once it was there, 12 years later it still hadn’t been taken down (yes for them!). Very inspiring! 
  

After gathering our notes together and making sense of what we had we began to print off all the pictures we had taken on our devices. Some money and some time later we managed to piece everything together to create our collage, well done gang! 
What a way to bond with your classmates. I didn’t mind losing a lay in after that activity! =) Let’s just hope this makes sense to everybody In week 7 when we present it! I’ll let you know how it went. 

#becomingeducational 

Pyjama’s & books

So this week is study week (was study week, I’m abit late with my blog!). Can not belive we are five weeks in! But it’s not all pyjama’s and books as Tom and Sandra have sent us on a journey around the never ending London Metropolitan. 

Week 5 task: Explore the university’s different ‘learning spaces’: Formal and informal. 
Myself, Louise and Charlotte gave up a good lay in on a lavely Wednesday morning to come in and crack on with this project. We decided in the previous lecture to create a collage to present our findings to the class, which will be in week 7. We met in the rocket to go through the task and what exactly it was we had to present in our collage, and why. Having read and made a small collage for the reading ‘Campfires in cyberspace’ I felt quite prepared and confident. So off we went taking lots of pictures of what we thought was relevant to the task.. Selfies! Just kidding 😉 
“Learning is active and interactive – we learn as we speak, listen, draw, read and write”. – Tom and Sandra. 
Baring this in mind we captured many places in lots of different areas where we thought learning would / was taking place, formal and informal. Not only did we look at the ‘places’ or ‘spaces’ we also looked at what was in and around those places to. We found that: 

• Light 

• Temperature 

• Colour

• Comfort 

• Layout 

• Space  

And many more… Were all key factors in those learning spaces. These are what we thought would make a huge impact on the learning taking place, for example, if the room is boiling hot you are more likely to feel sleepy and not be focussed. 
We met up with Sandra to show her what we had come up with so far, which was super helpful. We got some things clarified and were able to grab some material from her office to make a start on putting our collage together. On the way to her office Sandra told us about this massive banner she and Tom had hung in the stairway. They wasn’t allowed to hang it up but once it was there, 12 years later it still hadn’t been taken down (yes for them!). Very inspiring! 
  

After gathering our notes together and making sense of what we had, we began to print off all the pictures we had taken on our devices. Some money and some time later we managed to piece everything together to create our collage, well done gang! 
What a way to bond with your classmates. I didn’t mind losing a lay in after that activity! =) Let’s just hope this makes sense to everybody In week 7 when we present it! Wish us luck! 

#becomingeducational 

As our proposal for the research project lurks around the corner, Tom and Sandra load us up with lots of useful information!

Presentation mode!
Comic book, videos, poems, poster, jigsaw pieces.. With so much creative choice it has been hard to narrow it down to just one.

Sandra threw lots of ideas at us of the different things we could research, which was a big help as my mind is starting to fry!

Creative time!
“Make a collage which represents your first three weeks at university”.
Now the fun begins! We were given scissors, glue, felt tips and magazines. We had around 20mins to put this little project of ours together. Once this was completed we then had time to reflect and free write about what we had put together and why, what it means to us. Below is my collage, this expresses how I feel and felt when first plunging back into education.

Reading – Campfire in cyberspace, primordial metaphors for learning in the 21st century. David D. Thornburg, ph.d.
We looked over this in small groups, allocating 2 pages to each person to cut down the reading load. As homework we will analyse this writing and add annotations maybe even pictures to form a collage for when we present this back to our class.

We ended today with our mentors, they helped with ideas for our research project proposal which was super helpful! As always I was able to clarify things and get my questions answered. Thanks team!

Start of a new world!

Today I came prepared and ready for the reflection on last week. I studied my notes the night before so I was ready for Tom to fire his questions at me. 😎

As we walked into the lecture we noticed our tables were covered in black paper with chalk (that makes me shiver… Yuk!), scissors, glue and magazines. This was a sign of a great, creative lesson!

Our task was continued from last week, instead we were now emerging from our bunkers. We had fixed time frames which were immediately, five years and ten years later. Luckily our group had been given the time frame of ten years (we can change the world! Muahaha). We were given questions to look at whilst planning our new world, we had to think about:

• How will you educate people?
• What world will you build?
• How do you make sure everyone is housed, fed and has good health?
• How will you run your world?
• How will your education system run?

As we were the group emerging ten years on from the bunker, we presumed that in the previous years they had already built the homes in the community and had a farming system already in place. Firstly we decided to change our education system. Instead of having people sit behind a desk in a classroom, we decided to have a more hands on approach and set up a more practice learning environment. Everyone in our community would have a skill, whether it be: growing / planting / farming, building, cooking, health or engineering etc. They would then teach their skill to the children of the community. Knowledge will be expressed through experience and showing ones work, no exams would be necessary. If you can build a hut independently then you have learnt your skill. As Tom quite rightly told us, learning is a procedure of “told, experience and do”.

We then decided to say goodbye to the political system (who needs a bunch of rich folk indoctrinating the minds of our future young generation). We thought our new world would work a lot better if we all worked as one, without a leader. All decisions would be made with a fair vote with everyone included, even children and everyone would have a fair say.

This leads me on to money. I am so pleased we all agreed that money is no good. Money truly is the route to all evil! Greed, jealously, hate… They all stem from money. So without it we would have a much better world, where everyone is equal and there is no segregation of class. We would share the same ownership of all products and materials made. Everyone would have their own role of contributing to the community, this would guarantee that they are well looked after. No one person is better than the other, we all work for our community (ourselves and each other).

Time is up! Each group had to choose a member to go and be apart of the judging panel. We had to stand before them and present our amazing new world and talk about why this would work. Some of the panel were very harsh and didn’t agree with a lot of our changes. No money and no leader were the main two that were criticised (I can’t understand why?). We done a fantastic job but sadly our version of a better world wasn’t chosen as the future ideal.

We had a moment to come together again this time including our member of the judging panel, and discuss the decision that had been made. Not one person from the judging panel thought our idea of a better world was good enough (wipes tear). It was interesting to see what people wanted to cling onto, even if it was obvious it was a problem in today’s world.

It was time to meet with our peer mentors now. We split off into groups again then headed off to an ICT suit. This was really helpful as we were able to speak with the year two’s who are on the same course as us, so they could relate to us well and answer any questions we had to do with the course.

Reflection time!!

As Tom and Sandra likes to put it nicely but really it’s a test =) Thank goodness for my notes!

It can be so easy to go to lectures and take part, take notes and leave. I now realise how necessary it is to reflect back on lectures and continue the work after lesson by creating and writing your own blog. This helps to contain all the creative thoughts, ideas, activities and key words you’ve just learnt! So here goes, my first blog is about to be born!

How creative are you? We started by illustrating our own name plates to reveal something about ourselves. Mine was covered with highlighter pens and hearts, I like to think of myself as a bright, bubbly person with a big heart (cue’s the violins). Quickly after that we started with our ‘reflection time’ aka TEST on what we covered last week and why. This was fun, an activity to warm up our brains. Firing questions at us we were able to show our understanding of the ‘object based learning’ we covered last week. Thinking of as many questions as we could and then having Tom answer them… He was the object. We were able to get answers (which I have found is very rare in university, as divergent thinking is always key, there’s never one answer) about this module.

APOCALYPSE!
The world has ended!!!!!!
Our first group activity and it sure was a good one. In groups of ten we had to decide who was able to go into the nuclear bunker and who had to stay outside and die. We were each given a character; an elderly woman, disabled man, atheist doctor, gay scientist, Eco married couple, pregnant woman who already has a five year old, a soldier with mental instability, a bisexual lawyer, an unemployed man and a Buddhist priest.

Then we had to discuss and fight for who we thought should have a place in the bunker. The only thing was, only three people could go.. Talk about make life hard! So we each gave reason as to why we should have a place in the bunker. We then looked at the different skills and knowledge our characters had and who we thought would be best to live on in the hopes of reproducing our species and living on as the only people left in the world. After lots of dialectic discussion we came to a conclusion. The atheist doctor, Eco married couple and the gay scientist would be saved and put into the bunker. This was for health, reproduction, growth / food and later invention purposes, which caused some uproar as people started to claim their rights. In the real world we all have the right to live, we are all equal. But in this case we were all being judged on what knowledge and how much knowledge we had in order to survive, we were being discriminated against our disability, age and sexual orientation. Who has the right to live? Who offers more to our society? Who ‘fits in’ with our criteria? We were all becoming aliens to the equality of our world, we started to lose all humanity in order to complete a task.

We each finally shared our chosen three with the class, funnily the majority of groups had chosen the same three people, except for one group choosing the pregnant woman. We discussed the reasons for why we had chosen them and Sandra wrote this on the board. Tom went on to ask why we had all chosen the atheist doctor. He then took us back in time to when doctors wasn’t known for ‘fixing’ people, instead they were thought to be the worst people to see. I found an article which shows the journey of a young man named Nicholas Cresswell and his encounter with a doctor back in the 1700’s.
“Getting Sick, 1774” EyeWitness to History, http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2008).
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/gettingsick1774.htm

This activity had me thinking about today’s world, the discrimination people are faced with in their everyday lives, whether it be race, gender, age, sexual orientation or their disability. I think activities like these help you to understand the difficulties and the segregation in today’s society, which links to education, jobs, relationships and everyday living. It leaves you thinking what could you do within your profession or everyday life to make a change?

If you were involved in the same activity would you have done anything different? And why?

First blog completed! (Wipes head) Do leave comments =) Thanks for reading.