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Effective Communicator

expresses herself, both verbally and noverbally, in writing and orally, in ways that are appropriate to cultures, situations, ages and stages of development

Facing Hunger Internship Collaboration (Fall 2014)

            The summer after my junior year, I had the privilege of joining with one of the faculty members of the Staley School of Leadership Studies on a project she had begun through the Facing Project. The Facing Project is a national nonprofit whose mission is, “connecting people through stories to strengthen communities.” Essentially, the national nonprofit provides a toolkit to help partner communities engage in a storytelling project to address whichever issue or concern they feel is most essential or strategic for their community to “face”. My faculty supervisor had begun the project the previous fall identifying the issue of hunger in our community. That spring, she mobilized her class to go to a local food pantry to interview and collect the stories of members of the Manhattan community who were experiencing food insecurity. When I joined in on the project, the stories had already been written and the work that was remaining was to edit the stories and format them into a book and to plan a community event to share the stories.

            The first part of the project, editing the stories and formatting them into book required a lot of collaboration with the students who wrote the stories. At the start of the summer I emailed them to let them know that I was joining the project, that I would be editing their stories, and that I was eager for their participation and feedback throughout the process. After I finished editing all of the stories, I emailed each individual student, attaching a revised version of their story, and including in the body what I felt were strengths of the piece, the areas that I made changes to and my reasoning behind it, and again an invitation for their feedback and collaboration. The other big communication piece in putting the book together involved contacting the university’s provost and a community partner to write the foreword and introduction for the book. The provost had no prior exposure to the project, but did have a history of working in and around the issue of food insecurity. In my email to her and follow up meeting, I was intentional about acknowledging and asking questions about her prior work, making connections between her interests and the mission of the Facing Project, and inviting her to partner with us in starting a conversation about hunger in Manhattan. Similarly, when contacting our community partner, I highlighted the ways I had seen him serve and engage in the community and gave specific examples of why I thought his voice and perspective would add value to this specific project. At the conclusion of the community event and book release, my supervisor and I handwrote individualized thank you notes acknowledging and celebrating the unique contribution each of our partners and supporters made to the Facing Project.

H.I.S. Friend (Spring 2012)

            The spring semester of my sophomore year I signed up to be paired as a friend to an international student through the Helping International Students program. I received an email saying that I had been paired with Sara, a thirty two year old student from Ecuador who was at K-State participating in the GO Teacher Program to learn how to be a better English teacher in her home country. I remember being very nervous to meet Sara, being especially concerned about the age difference and unsure what we would have in common to talk about. That first day that I spent with Sara I remember her saying over and over again how glad she was to have an American friend. She taught me so much about how to communicate cross-culturally. Sara was so good about stopping me when she did not understand something and asking me to say it again slower. Sometimes she would say she still did not understand and I would explain using different vocabulary. Once she understood what I was saying, she would ask me to go back to the first thing that I said and teach her the initial vocabulary. I learned a lot about simplifying sentence structure and vocabulary, without sacrificing depth of thought and conversation. For Easter I was able to bring both Sara and her friend Anita home with me for the weekend. It was a fun opportunity to talk about traditions and beliefs here and in Ecuador. Additionally, both of my parents are teachers so it was really fun to sit with Sara, Anita, and my parents and to talk about the differences and similarities in education systems and to be able to help clarify and expand thoughts.

Summer Enrichment Program (Summer 2012)

            The summer after my sophomore year I returned home to work as a summer enrichment program counselor. I led elementary students second through sixth grade in different math, science, and reading enrichment activities. I also helped to supervise weekly field trips and independent reading time, taught small groups, and facilitated large group opening activities. Through this experience I learned and practiced so many different styles of communication. For the opening activities every day, I needed to project so that I could be heard in the gym, engage students, and provide clear direction for games. When I was teaching small groups, I typically would be set up in a classroom at a science, math, or reading station. Each grade of students would then rotate to me for that learning activity. I had to be able to modify my instruction and the requirements for the activity so that each would be appropriate for second graders, and then for sixth graders. During independent reading time and field trips I needed to be able to communicate my expectations about their behavior, while also communicating an interest in my students as individuals and in their learning. For example, when we visited the zoo, I wanted my students to be respectful of our tour guides, but I also wanted them to be able to share an insight with me or ask a question or to talk to me about what science experiment they were going to try when they got home.

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