• Intergroup Dialogue
• Peer Facilitation
• Framing Your Skills

Framing Your Skills

What is your “next step,” post-Oxy? How can your experience as a peer facilitator help prepare you for this next step and distinguish you from others who are also highly qualified? Aaron Traxler-Ballew, former Program Coordinator at the University of Michigan’s Intergroup Relations Center, has given these questions a great deal of thought. Below we share with you his suggestion that you embed your experience within your own personal story — that you link peer-facilitation with your life goals — and add some of our own ideas.

As you tell your story

• highlight the fact that leading a course as an undergraduate is unique; while most students lead a discussion or deliver a presentation in a course during their college years, few undergraduate students are provided with the opportunity and responsibility of sustained course development and implementation
• underscore the intellectual and emotional growth associated with a semester long course rooted in a scholarly area of research, intergroup relations – graduate schools value these skills
• discuss specific goals and skills associated with Dialogue work including communication, conflict management, teamwork, group dynamics, and interpersonal skills across difference and similarity – employers and educators value these goals and skills
• connect your story to our increasingly diverse and interdependent world
• and finally, reference Occidental’s long-standing record of diversity; if appropriate, connect the College’s ethos to your decision to attend Oxy and to participate in our unique programs — the intersection of our diversity “numbers,” your selection of Occidental College, and your choice to facilitate intergroup dialogues demonstrate a coherent, intentional portrait of goals and authentic experiences with diversity

 

Specific Resume Ideas

Consider listing Peer Dialogue Facilitator under work experience and Practicum Supervision under educational experience. This will allow you to elaborate on specific behaviors and outcomes associated with the position. For example:

Intergroup Dialogue-Occidental College (dates)
Peer Co-facilitator: Psychology Course

• Developed weekly lesson plans that linked readings, experiential exercises, writing assignments
• Promoted communication, conflict negotiation, and understanding among social groups (name the specific social identity theme of your course: race/ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, race and gender)

 

• Gained facilitation and leadership skills by leading and managing challenging conversations about sensitive topics (consider naming issues including immigration, affirmative action, privilege and oppression)

 

• Deepened own awareness of social and cultural diversity and social justice
• Helped students learn the art of dialogue (vs debate), including practice in listening, suspending judgments, working with emotions and actions associated with difference and commonality

 

• Helped students develop and carry out action plans to redress inequality

 

• Learned how to work within and across institutions to enrich dialogue lesson plans (audio visual, library, chapel, food services)
• Increased my own ability to learn from my mistakes and successes

 

Of course, these ideas should serve as examples. Emphasize the skills, qualities, and behaviors most directly pertinent to your growth and to your “next step” goals.

Our world is changing and identity figures prominently in these changes. We hope that your facilitation experience has helped to prepare you to work alongside others who are committed to social justice.