Engaging Youth Voices To Create Supportive School Environments For Healthy Eating And Physical Activity

Background: The Students As LifeStyle Activists (SALSA) Program is an effective Australian peer-led leadership program offered to high schools. SALSA Youth Voices (SYV) is a novel extension of the SALSA program, providing SALSA Peer Leaders with an opportunity to further develop leadership skills, and to design and implement an intervention to promote healthy eating and physical activity within their school. The objectives of this study were to 1) measure the acceptability of the SYV program, 2) determine skills gained by peer leaders from participating in SYV, and 3) determine whether peer leaders successfully implemented a student-designed healthy eating/physical activity intervention. Methods: Schools which participated in the SALSA program in 2019 were invited to a Leadership Day workshop (Term 3) where SALSA Peer Leaders identified and planned an activity to promote healthy eating and/or physical activity at their school, and an Action Day (Term 4) where peer leaders presented their interventions to 100 health and education professionals. Peer leaders completed two brief online surveys at the end of the Leadership Day and upon registration at the Action Day. Results: Eighty-four peer leaders (aged 14–15 years) from seven high schools in western Sydney (mean Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) = 951) participated in SYV. Peer leaders reported their involvement with the SYV program as positive, with 68% rating it as “very valuable”. Skills gained by the peer leaders included teamwork (90%), communication (85%), leadership (77%) and confidence (65%). Peer leaders planned and devised interventions included installing water refill stations, improving school gyms, redesigning girls’ sports shorts, and other strategies to engage girls in physical activity. Most peer leaders reported their intervention was successfully implemented and sustainable in their school. Conclusions: SYV provides a unique leadership opportunity for students from socio-economically disadvantaged areas to be effective agents of change to create opportunities for students to participate in physical activity and improve healthy food options at school.

Peer Leader Essays from the Desert Southwest: The Practice of Leading Learning

At semester’s end at the University of Texas at El Paso and at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, faculty members directing the PLTL Programs invite Peer Leaders to reflect on their experience, to describe their challenges, and to offer their personal advice. For the benefit of future Peer Leaders, here are their stories, reflections, observations, and advice about leadership and the practice of leading.

Peer Leading Small Group Discussion During COVID-19

Peer-led workshops in General Chemistry at the University of Texas Permian Basin (UTPB) were affected by COVID-19 restrictions during the 2020-2021 academic year. Most Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) workshops were conducted in person, but with the difference that protocols of distancing had to be observed, and a few were conducted online, so adjustments were necessary to prepare Peer Leaders to conduct their workshops in both types of settings. The facets of the modified PLTL program were supported by the online preparation for facilitation and chemistry content The results of an examination of critical incidents (Brookfield, 1995) are shared here. This qualitative examination of Peer Leaders’ experiences was undertaken because of its exploration of formative events. Through the responses to several rounds of questions about their experiences, Peer Leaders acknowledged the reality of dealing with Covid-19 restrictions as well as their preparation via a weekly online seminar. This paper, co-authored with Peer Leaders, examines the process of online training and facilitating workshops during the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 semesters at UTPB.

San Jose City College Peer Leaders Share Peer-to-Peer Observation and Feedback Processes

San Jose City College offers a comprehensive Certificate of Specialization in Peer Leader Training for students who are gainfully employed in Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) and/or Supplemental Instruction (SI) programs. Led by veteran Peer Leaders (PLs), faculty and support staff, newly hired PLs begin their intensive training at two biannual orientations scheduled during summer and winter intersessions. PLTL & SI PLs are also expected to concurrently enroll in one of three 0.5 unit training courses over three semesters and attend monthly one-hour meetings with faculty coordinators and staff, while facilitating weekly PLTL and/or SI workshops. Additionally, PLTL PLs enroll in a 0.5-unit directed studies course and meet weekly with their Lead Faculty PLTL Practitioner to ensure course material and workshop activities are aligned. Among their employment responsibilities, PLs are expected to also engage in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) observations, both as observees and observers. Their active participation in P2P duty plays an important role in maintaining the quality of student participants’ experiences in workshops while simultaneously furthering their professional development and is the focus of this paper.

DIY PLTL: Funding the Program for the Leaders by the Leaders

We present and describe a Do-It-Yourself strategy to develop and utilize trained Peer Leaders in your PLTL program to fund that very program. We discuss how you can develop a self-funding PLTL program by employing existing talent, creativity, and need for customized PLTL learning materials to financially support a future or current PLTL intervention. A local non-profit publisher, organized specifically for the purpose, is essential in this endeavor. The non-profit organization handles finances and provides Conflict of Interest distancing for faculty and student PLTL practitioners. To date, the non-profit and DIY-PLTL strategy described here has donated a total of more than $700,000 to two university campus PLTL programs in support of peer-facilitated learning.

More Than Content: Training Peer Leaders in Mentoring Leadership

Training peer leaders to mentor students is an essential component of any peer-led team learning training program. This training method article begins by establishing a definition of mentoring and describing its theoretical underpinnings. Piagetian disequilibrium is one component of why mentoring is effective because interpersonal interaction efficiently assists students in learning how to deal with mental discomfort and grow intellectually from it. A four-part theoretical definition of the components of mentoring serves as the theory base for our training curriculum: (1) psychological and emotional support, (2) goal setting and career paths, (3) academic subject knowledge support, and (4) existence of a role model. In translating theory into practice, we train leaders to follow five key tenets as mentors: (1) be a learning coach, not a tutor, (2) create a trusting environment among your team members, (3) assist students in learning how to learn from feedback, (4) assist students in learning time management skills, and (5) meet with students one-on-one periodically to provide personalized academic and social support. The time commitment to training by a peer leader is 35 hours per semester via a combination of pre-semester training, in-semester group training, and in-semester one-on-one training. Practical suggestions on how to train leaders are provided.

Exploring New PLTL Modalities, Forging New Alliances

This essay focuses on rethinking and reimagining elements of a PLTL program, and on the new modalities to meet challenges of online undergraduate mathematics courses and rising demands for flexible student support. It examines advantages and challenges as found in the Integrated PLTL and Virtual Peer-Led Mathematics Study Groups, including issues such as meeting protocols, and the selection and training of peer leaders. Finally, it discusses an alliance with the college’s mathematics education program, which allows the PLTL program to draw on senior prospective teachers to co-organize and facilitate virtual study groups supporting undergraduate mathematics courses.

Peer Leader Alumni Reflections: Advancing Visibility and Reach of Peer-Led Team Learning. Panel from the 2021 PLTLIS Conference

Calculating roughly, starting in 1992 with Peer Leaders from “Workshop Chemistry” at the City College of New York, Peer-led Team Learning programs may have an aggregate of perhaps 30,000 students who became Peer Leaders and are now alumni. How are Peer Leaders affected by their experiences? This paper is an edited transcription of Peer Leader Alumni panelists from the discussion at the 2021 PLTLIS Annual Conference, held online on Saturday, June 5, 2021.

Peer-Led Team Learning and Student Success

Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL), a nationally recognized teaching and learning model, was introduced into the General Chemistry course at Pace University in 2014. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of the introduction of PLTL on the students’ final exam scores, and through surveys, determine how students viewed both the PLTL program and their Peer Leaders. In addition, this study sought to monitor the progress of Peer Leaders as they entered an upper-level Inorganic Chemistry class to determine whether the experience of being a Peer Leader helped their success in this course. The biggest difference, when comparing exam scores from two separate years before and after PLTL implementation, was found to be 10%. However, upon averaging exam scores over several years before and after the introduction of the PLTL program, a more modest average increase of 4% was determined. It was found that students with Peer Leader experience performed better in an upper-level Inorganic Chemistry class compared to those with no Peer Leader experience. Results from surveys administered to both students and Peer Leaders regarding their experiences, as well as the results from students evaluating their Peer Leaders, are reported here. Overall, the implementation of PLTL has led to greater interactions between the Instructor, Peer Leaders, and undergraduate students, thereby furthering a greater interest in chemistry and increasing the students’ sense of community.