Throughout term 1, I have found peer support to be an enjoyable learning experience, and unlike other leadership opportunities I have had in the past.
The whole process began last year, planning the activities in smaller groups and writing discussion questions, as well as learning strategies to engage better with the Year 8s and get the messages we were trying to teach across. However, after the first few peers support sessions I found that in theory we were well prepared, but there was still a lot to learn. For me, I found it challenging to have normal conversations and connect with the Year 8s before the sessions and coming up with interesting topics to talk about. It was also difficult for me to call on those who weren’t talking as much and trying to get them to contribute to the discussion. Despite these challenges, overall I feel that peer support was really fun and a great way to get to know students in different year levels, as well as develop teamwork and communication skills with the other peer support leaders as we all got to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses better which helped us work cohesively as a group. Next term in peer support I really want to focus on not only the teaching aspect, but also the general role of being an approachable older student through casually creating conversation both inside and outside of the peer support setting.
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