Team leader, Pipeline Project- Alternative Spring Break (ASB)
During each spring break, forty-five UW students are placed in different schools throughout the rural area of Washington for a week in order to work with elementary, middle or high school students to improve their writing and storytelling skills. I have participated, organized, and led the teams for three years and I have been to Toppenish (2011), Forks (2013), and Curlew (2014). From not knowing what to do when I first started to becoming a team leader, I have gained valuable practical leadership experience and it enhanced my ability to think and react proactively to different situations individually and collectively.
Listening and reasoning:
Problem solving
Self-awareness and development:
Self-Development
Interpersonal interaction:
Collaboration/Empowerment
Group Dynamics:
Group Development
Civil responsibility:
Service
Interpersonal Interaction:
Empathy
Personal behavior:
Excellence
Spring, 2011, as participant Spring 2013, as team leader Spring 2014, as team leader
During each spring break, forty-five UW students are placed in different schools throughout the rural area of Washington for a week in order to work with elementary, middle or high school students to improve their writing and storytelling skills. I have participated, organized, and led the teams for three years and I have been to Toppenish (2011), Forks (2013), and Curlew (2014). From not knowing what to do when I first started to becoming a team leader, I have gained valuable practical leadership experience and it enhanced my ability to think and react proactively to different situations individually and collectively.
Listening and reasoning:
Problem solving
- Be able to identify a problem, find solution, implement and evaluate the problem in an efficient manner.
- For example, when we were teaching at Forks Elementary School, I recognized that there were a few students who needed special care; some of them could not pay attention for a short period of time and were not be able to write down their ideas due to learning disabilities. After two days, I found out that the students would not be able to finish their stories on time, so I talked to my team members and elementary teachers in order to find a solution. We decided to let the students to draw illustrations on the book instead. By doing this, we hoped that they could still finish their books like other students in class and show books to their parents and friends. Being an ASB team leader, I have been constantly faced and challenged by these similar problems. However, I always think about the ASB mission, and being empathetic, which are two ways that have helped me to solve problems.
Self-awareness and development:
Self-Development
- Be able to constantly learn from doing, reflect, evaluate and make improvement for next time.
- Through this program, I have been surprised to see the things I have accomplished and the growth I have experienced. Becoming a team leader has allowed me to work behind the scenes and get an in-depth look of how things work in ASB from the beginning to the end. Then I applied that knowledge, experience, confidence, and reflection to the next trip to make it better than the previous time. Self-development triggers me to actively think, learn, and change, which makes me a better person and leader.
Interpersonal interaction:
Collaboration/Empowerment
- To work in a team setting collaboratively. One main way of achieving this is to assign empowerment to each team members.
- Collaborating with and trusting my team members has become the essential component within the teams, especially during the five days when we left Seattle and went to a totally different place to teach. By collaborating effectively, I assigned the different responsibilities to each team member, so that each of them had a sense of ownership and responsibility to our team. The tasks included: communicating with teachers, maintaining a good relationship with our host family, preparing materials for each day, taking student biography pictures, etc. By assigning duties, we worked both individually and collaboratively to achieve self-advancement and be able to conduct team work efficiently.
Group Dynamics:
Group Development
- To understand the needs of the group, a leader must build understanding of a shared purpose, trust, and commitment in a team.
- Prior to our departure, we held several meetings to set up the expectations, mission, and achieve a mutual understanding of the trip purpose, both from the Pipeline Project perspective and our personal perspective. We also had group training to give out information, let members be aware, and take care of the potential unexpected situation. We also reflected our daily teaching and discussed things for improvement at night in order to remind ourselves the importance of the value behind this project. In this way, we supported each other and achieved a shared goal for the trip.
Civil responsibility:
Service
- Through service learning, we served the needs of others. In this way, we aimed to give, learn, impact and become productive members of the society and to build a reciprocal relationship with the community.
- By serving as a volunteer teacher at different schools throughout the years, I helped students in their community to learn writing and storytelling skills. Participating in ASB three times has given me a strong sense of responsibility and a desire to serve the Pipeline Project and community around the Washington area.
Interpersonal Interaction:
Empathy
- The capacity to understand and share the feeling with others. To place oneself in another’s shoe.
- During this trip, I worked with a variety of people in different roles: students, teachers, host families, and team members. Empathy helps me to understand their viewpoints and perspectives. By showing empathy, I am able to understand why someone said certain words, why that is important to them, and why they may have acted the way they did. As a leader, empathy helps me to develop a comfortable zone to make decisions and achieve agreement.
Personal behavior:
Excellence
- To put the best and hardest heart for the project, to create as much impact as possible, and to achieve one's full potential.
- Even though the preparation process of ASB takes a lot of effort and is time consuming, I was still able to utilize my time and energy effectively in order to organizing the trips and finish the tasks successfully. When I read students’ stories, and heard the positive feedback from people in the UW community, I knew all of my effort was worthwhile and I felt truly rewarded.
Spring, 2011, as participant Spring 2013, as team leader Spring 2014, as team leader