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Lucinda Gonzales

HDF 417

4/29/2017

Final Reflection

My experience as a Peer Leader in HDF 291 was a truly fascinating experience. Returning

to this class as a Peer Leader gave me a different perspective, not only on this this class, but also

on my values and beliefs as leader. The goal of my internship was to give back to the community

that had given so much to me. HDF 291 really helped introduce me to colleagues and mentors

that have really helped me self-reflect and grow. I wanted other women of color to be given the

same opportunities that I had in this class, and I wanted to continue to grow and educate the

community I have come to hold so dear. In this goal, I feel like I have accomplished that very

well. My second goal was to learn more about myself as a leader, and to use this experience to

expand my understanding of Servant leadership and to expand my skills and strengths as well. I

also feel like I accomplished that as well, through reflection my strengths, and honestly, to be in

the classroom present for every class. I felt I learned the most from my interactions with my

students, in listening to their discussions, through helping write their inventories. It was truly an

amazing thing to watch each of my students grow throughout the class, and absorb all the

knowledge, and on the last day of class, look so much more mature than they were before.

Though I wasnt officially trained for the role, in the fall semester, my co-instructor,

Melissa Camba-Kelsay, asked that I take HDF 413 and join SOLC, or the Student Organizational

Leadership Consultants. This was for several reasons. The first was, that though I had had

teaching and mentoring experience as a URI 101 Mentor, I hadnt really had in-depth facilitation

experience, both in facilitating activities and facilitating discussion. Because of the in-depth
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nature of the the class, Melissa wanted to make sure that I had enough skill and base of

knowledge in facilitating both those areas that I would feel comfortable leading class

discussions, and that Melissa could also feel comfortable having me facilitate as well. This class

and training took course over the whole semester and I learned a variety of facilitation and

debriefing techniques. I learned this in several ways, first through class and practice, and

secondly through hands-on experience as an SOLC consultant. I found this training very

satisfactory because it not only expanded my knowledge of facilitation, but it also expanded my

confidence and ability to be comfortable in front of groups in a way I had not been comfortable

before. Though there wasnt specific training for HDF 291 itself, Melissa involved both Selena,

my-mentor and I in the syllabus revising process, and we always met weekly to plan for each,

and to speak about what we might want to continue to work on as an instruction team. This

meetings were very helpful as mini-training sessions on what we needed to be prepared in the

week to come.

On the instruction team, I felt that Melissa, Selena, and I worked very well together. We

each had different perspectives and different personalities, and that allowed us to come to each

planning meeting with a different perspective. I felt this rounded out the team very well, and also

I allowed us to connect with each student in different ways. I also worked well during class

discussions, because if a topic became too heavy, or the discussion needed to be adjusted, one of

us was always comfortable jumping in as needed. In the classroom itself, because it was such a

small class, only eight students, we all got very close very quickly. Such a small class provided

many opportunities to spilt them into groups of two or four, and just let them talk about their

readings or topics we were discussing for that class, and it also allowed us as the instruction team

to sit in in discussions and for myself, they seemed to come up with a lot of our teaching points
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naturally, each student working to guide each other to new ideas and beliefs. We were very lucky

that even though it was a small class, we had students who each came from different walks of

life, and who were very comfortable sharing their stories and experiences. I think that overall,

my integration into the two parts of my internship, because both were diverse and focused on

inclusion and learning, something I value very highly.

Though we didnt have a staff development program, in our weekly meetings, Melissa

always asked if there was anything more she needed to do to help us along each week with any

tasks we may have been assigned, and she also gave us readings and other materials. When I

mentioned in my self-syllabus that I wanted to create a code of inclusion, Melissa gave me

materials and pointers when creating my code, and she also asked for a copy of my self-syllabus,

so that we could always look at our goals and objectives to make sure we were meeting them and

self-reflecting on our experiences as a Peer Leader. As Ive stated before, I thought these weekly

meeting were very successful, and Melissas commitment to ensuring that we were not only

learning from our experiences as leaders, but also that we were accomplishing what we needed to

in this class as an internship, and that we could, at the end, accurately reflect on our experiences

as an effective leadership experience.

In this role as mentor, I wanted to change the role of mentor from previous years, not

because I disliked my peer leaders the year previous, but because I wanted to expand on

discussion in class. I felt like discussion in class was where I learned the most. As first is was

difficult, because in the class as whole, not everyone wanted to speak. But in smaller groups of

four we were really able to focus the conversation, and the students felt much more comfortable

sharing their stories in those group. I also wanted to focus more on community building. My

HDF 291 class the year before was very large. It had eighteen students in total, and because there
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were so many of us, I wasnt able to form strong connections with all of my fellow students, and

I really wanted, especially in such a small class, to really give them the chance to build that

community and support base. I believe, through my encouragement of small discussions in class,

we were able to build that community among the students.

This experience has truly evolved my beliefs as a leader, and helped to expand my

understanding of Servant Leadership as whole. Throughout this semester, I really went into this

internship knowing that I wanted to serve and give back to this community of women of color,

and that I wanted to see it continue to grow and help others learn what I was able to learn in this

class, and while I accomplished that, I also expanded, for me, what it meant to be a servant

leader and a woman of color. I think that a final quote from my inventory best sums how this

experience has continued to evolve my beliefs and ideals as leader, and a woman of color:

.....I cannot be simply a Servant Leader, because in order to honor those who have fought

so hard for the privileges I now have, I must also accept that my drive for service and my

responsibilities to the community I serve will always be intertwined..