Learning Community Coordinator Experience
I was a Learning Community Coordinator (LCC) for a year and a half of my college journey. I started as a LCC my sophomore year during the 2020-2021 school year and then also held the position in the fall of 2021. This was a great opportunity for me to grow in my leadership skills, but looked very different both years. My first year being an LCC was hard. We were working mostly online via Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic and it was difficult for me to get students to attend and engaged in my study sessions and activities I was coordinating. I felt as though I did not make great connections with my students, in part because of being online. A few of my leadership values are leading by example and being available as a resource for those I am leading (Values Level 1). As a sophomore during the 2020-2021 school year I felt as though I was not super visible or available to my students, which was a weakness. The students may have felt as though they could not reach out to me. Now, this does not mean that I was not ever available, or that no one ever contacted me to help them, as a lot of students did, but I think being almost fully online caused there to be a gap in communication and availability which negatively affected my leadership (Values Level 2). As a junior during the 2021-2022 school year, I worked on connecting with students individually and as a group to show them that I care about their success as students and as individuals within society. I was very responsive to students' needs and desires and allowed them to be a part of the planning within the Learning Community. If they had ideas, I worked to include those activities into my plan to show that I do not have to be the only leader within the group. Most importantly, I worked on leading by example for my students by ensuring I am working hard on my own schoolwork, creating time to help them be successful, and helping them to take a break from their academics by incorporating fun activities in throughout the months as well (Values Level 3 and 4).
As stated above, there is the typical leadership style that me being the LCC acts as the leader and then all the students are the followers. Although these are roles that are depicted within the group, there are other roles we hold such as being students and myself acting as a mentor for the first-year students (Teams Level 1). More specifically, during my junior year I worked on leading more in a way where the first-year students are able to have a voice in what the learning community looks like. This helped them succeed due to having more input (Teams Level 3). As a leader, I have been striving to empower students - to empower them to be themselves and speak up for their beliefs. As a group, we completed activities and exercises to create a sense of community and work as a team. In the beginning of the semester in fall 2021 specifically, we worked to create a line of open communication by learning about each other (Teams Level 2). With that being said, I think that my leadership style improved during the fall of my junior year in terms of leading a group of first-year students.
