EXS 197 Mentor

Throughout this semester I have spent some of my time mentoring a group of 6 new incoming PE majors, 5 freshmen, and one transfer. My job was to help them get acquainted to the major by coaching them through the lab portion of the class. EXS 197 has been a MWF lecture class in the past, but with change going on in our program we have exchanged one of those class days with an activity lab with the focus trying to have future majors refine any basic skills that may need refining. Also in this lab students are given a background of a few styles of how PE used to be, and we found out the those ways were not as fun as what we have planned here at SUNY Cortland!

As stated before, the students I T.A. for are new to the major so it was my job to really transition them into it, and give them a background of the classes we take, and that we are in a serious major, and just also a few tips on professionalism: appropriate dress, being on time, and communication skills, as well as some other important characteristics. This truly is a good class because I feel it helps kids to see what PE is about their freshmen year in stead of waiting longer in your stay here at Cortland. Throughout this year a few students were turned away from the major because of this class, and it is good that they realized that before they got into any real block class's.

The last few weeks of class were focused towards skill testing of the critical elements. There was a sequence of 11 skills that were to be completed one after another and each student was then accessed based on there ability to preform the critical elements. The goal was to have every student be at a level of about a 3, this would provide an adequate class room demonstration and that is something that could be easily achieved with a little bit of practice each week throughout the semester. After it was all done all of my students obtained an average of a 3 on all the skills. I was real proud of them because they put in work throughout the year and then in the end it paid off. Great job!!!

I will be looking into helping out with this class again next semester if my schedule allows it to, but if not this was a great learning experience for me and I am glad I was chosen to be a part of it.