Jacob Haun: Holmes Cultural Diversity Center Week 2

Activities:

• Continued work on PAWS Orientation
• revised PAWS Schedule
• Contacted presenters
• worked out room assignment
• Worked at Parent Orientation
• Sat in on Diversity conference Meeting

Experience:

This week I had a chance to make continued connections with professionals. I have been contacting different individuals to include them for our PAWs training. I also worked with Mr. Cedric and Ms. Ra'Sheda to revise the schedule to make it flow better for our students. I was able to make a draft of the schedule this week and will hopefully get speakers into place by the end of June. I think it was interesting because today I had a revelation in regards to intentionality. Absolutely everything you do as a professional needs to have a seed of intentionality associated with it. Some times its simple, and it can be something like revising a schedule to best fit the group of students that you are working with. Other times, it is something such as meeting with a student outside of office hours to best meet their experience. I think that I have learned the really value of working intentionally.

This week I was also able to work on orientation. It has been really eye opening to see how parents react to our table. Sometimes parents just shy away from the table, and don't want to talk to us. Other times, parents are more than willing to talk to us, and excited about getting their students involved. It is a really interesting contrast. I think that orientation can be a really important part of understanding the new class. I think that serving with HCDC has really given me a perspective of educating the public about diversity. For the most part, people really still don't understand the ways in which diversity applies to them, or how it can help benefit them. It has been interesting to have conversations with parents, and explain to them the resource that HCDC can be.

Finally this week I was given an awesome opportunity to help the office plan the diversity conference that is coming up this fall. I was given the opportunity to see the type of planning that goes into a conference. The various things such as finding speakers and funding, are all part of the mix. Additionally, it was really cool to be asked my opinion about something that is so important. In many ways it feels like I am an actual professional because my opinion is being considered and taken into account. The conference that the office is planning happens every two years and focuses specifically on diversity. This year they are trying to get more students involved, which I think will be an excellent opportunity for our students to get involved.