Class Reflections

Recently I attended the first of two day-long classes titled, "Introductions to Counseling Interventions." One of our assignments is to reflect on the material covered in class. Well...my first reflection is I feel like I've been blasted into the tehno world!!! I'm blogging...(I think I am - I'm still not clear how anyone accesses all this and I don't know how to access any of my classmates' blogs, but I'm sure this will all become crystal clear in due time. Famous last words!)

In all seriousness it was some of the technology that was brought to class I found most intriguing. Audacity.com is very exciting to me. I work with one student in particular that I think might really benefit from being able to "see" his voice in comparison to someone else's. He tends to get very loud. As a matter of fact, it is probably the single most defining feature of what makes him "stand out" amongst his peers. I came right back and shared that information with our speech pathologist. She, too, was excited at the prospect.(Monkey email looks like fun, too! I loved hearing about these "new to me" sites on the web. There's just so much out there!)

I found the mentoring discussion fascinating. The idea of having a group of peer mentors at the college level to work with students struggling with the "hidden curriculum" is potentially awesome! It seems it is a win-win situation. Those that mentor certainly have as much to gain as those for whom they are mentoring! I wonder if it couldn't work at the high school level? I'm concerned that some of the developmental differences might be a problem, but I don't know. I definitely would like to explore the idea a bit more.

In listening to the description of the idea and program at Keene State it reminded me of a story my 18 year old son came home with last year. He was participating in the drama club and the piano player was a genius player. As genius with music as Jake was, the social world remained a complete mystery to him. My son, Dan, became quite interested in instruments over the last few years. I think it would be fair to say that Dan has a reputation for being a "social guy" (maybe a bit too social if you ask his teachers)! Apparently both of these boys saw an opportunity - they came up with the agreement that if Jake would teach Dan chords and how they work, Dan would teach Jake how to "be cool." I don't know how cool Jake is now, but I do know that Dan went on to college and passed the necessary tests to allow him to minor in music! I definitely thought it very cool that the two of these guys sought to benefit from each other's strengths on their own!

The mentoring program might also be likened to the idea of a "circle of friends" that is used in elementary school to enhance independence and increase socialization skills. This idea is based on the same notion of having peers help peers, but at this developmental level it is guided by the teacher.

I will returned to Antioch in a couple of weeks for the second part of this two part class. I'm looking forward to it and hoping to be blasted into the techno world a little more!