Volunteer INTO CSU Link Mentor
This volunteer opportunity demonstrates that I acknowledge that all students can learn more readily when cultural factors are recognized, respected, and accommodated. It is also a demonstration of this knowledge in practice.
Overview of the Program
The Link Mentor Program is a pilot program, created by INTO CSU's Academic English Program (AEP) in Fall 2013. It is a response to student and staff feedback that the orientation information provided at the start of the term for new international students is often above the oral proficiency level of basic students. In addition, there is a lot of new information for students to process, and consequently new students are having difficultly adjusting to local campus and community life. Mentors are selected based on their written application and an oral interview. We then had a training workshop in facilitating group discussions, cultural awareness, and basic strategies to help foster comprehensible input with students. The workshop used Halverson's Cultural Context Inventory and Hofstede's 5 Dimensions of Culture to delve into the idea that culture affects views on power, individualism, cooperation, truth, and having fun.
The responsibility of a Link Mentor is two-fold. The primary focus is to be a friendly face that can help orient students in their new community, from classroom etiquette, to health and safety help, to recreational opportunities within their new city. To help bridge the communication and cultural gap between new students and the campus and city community, I held weekly meetings with small groups of students over their first seven week term. I was given lesson plans that helped guide my group discussions, but I also had the freedom to adapt them as needed, and did so according to each groups' language proficiency, cultural background, gender, and age. The topics of the lessons were community involvement, homesickness/cultural shock, classroom etiquette, and relationships.
The secondary focus for Mentors was to provide feedback on the new program. I volunteered as a Link Mentor for two terms, meaning that I worked with two different groups of students. In between groups, I met one-on-one with the program coordinator to talk about the notes I had gathered over Term 1. Because of my TESL/TEFL background, many of my suggestions focused on increasing comprehensible input for the lesson plans. Some of my suggestions included adding pre-teaching vocabulary boxes and making sure that informational emails about the program were clear and concise, using basic sentence structure, vocabulary, and bullet points. I believed that these suggestions would help Mentors communicate more easily with their students, and help students understand more of the content of the information presented.
Below is my reflection on being a Link Mentor.
Overview of the Program
The Link Mentor Program is a pilot program, created by INTO CSU's Academic English Program (AEP) in Fall 2013. It is a response to student and staff feedback that the orientation information provided at the start of the term for new international students is often above the oral proficiency level of basic students. In addition, there is a lot of new information for students to process, and consequently new students are having difficultly adjusting to local campus and community life. Mentors are selected based on their written application and an oral interview. We then had a training workshop in facilitating group discussions, cultural awareness, and basic strategies to help foster comprehensible input with students. The workshop used Halverson's Cultural Context Inventory and Hofstede's 5 Dimensions of Culture to delve into the idea that culture affects views on power, individualism, cooperation, truth, and having fun.
The responsibility of a Link Mentor is two-fold. The primary focus is to be a friendly face that can help orient students in their new community, from classroom etiquette, to health and safety help, to recreational opportunities within their new city. To help bridge the communication and cultural gap between new students and the campus and city community, I held weekly meetings with small groups of students over their first seven week term. I was given lesson plans that helped guide my group discussions, but I also had the freedom to adapt them as needed, and did so according to each groups' language proficiency, cultural background, gender, and age. The topics of the lessons were community involvement, homesickness/cultural shock, classroom etiquette, and relationships.
The secondary focus for Mentors was to provide feedback on the new program. I volunteered as a Link Mentor for two terms, meaning that I worked with two different groups of students. In between groups, I met one-on-one with the program coordinator to talk about the notes I had gathered over Term 1. Because of my TESL/TEFL background, many of my suggestions focused on increasing comprehensible input for the lesson plans. Some of my suggestions included adding pre-teaching vocabulary boxes and making sure that informational emails about the program were clear and concise, using basic sentence structure, vocabulary, and bullet points. I believed that these suggestions would help Mentors communicate more easily with their students, and help students understand more of the content of the information presented.
Below is my reflection on being a Link Mentor.
culture_into_link_mentor_reflection.pdf | |
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