"Becoming a Peer and a Leader" Supplemental Content: Actionable Steps

Actionable Steps:

  1. Practice the rhetoric skills of a peer and leader. Start by writing your opinions on gender. Try to make precise and generalizable statements that you could communicate with others. Then answer the questions on gender presented in this chapter as best you can. Look up anything you don’t understand. Having provided some answers consider whether they support your original position or not. If they do, what can you add to make your response clearer and more precise? If they don’t, how might you amend your original statement to incorporate the new information (recognizing that it’s ok to feel differently than one can argue)? It’s responsible and mature to own when your beliefs and the facts don’t match up. We can’t change beliefs and opinions by will, but we can educate ourselves and know which opinions we can generalize to others and which we can’t.
  2.  Explore perspectives as a global citizen. On your favorite social media platform, follow a politician, political analyst, or pundit with whom you fervently disagree. Listen carefully to their points of view—refrain from posting anything. 
  3. Emphasize Team Building. Many times when teams get together they want to immediately jump in and get the work started. However, spending a little bit of time on team building can create huge dividends throughout the project. Here are a few things you can do to get off on the right foot: 
    • Establish team rules and expectations. When teams crumble it is usually because expectations are not clear.
    • Eat together. There is something magical about eating food together that helps humans bond.
    • Ask some get-to-know-you questions. Spending some time to get to know each other can help you figure out how to utilize the strengths of each team member. However, try to avoid superficial questions—they can just waste time. Some questions you can ask are:
      • What is a time where you have felt proud of yourself?
      • Why are you in this class?
      • Why are you going to college?
      • What is your #1 goal in life?