HDF 415: FLITE PEER LEADERSHIP

URI MINOR IN LEADERSHIP STUDIES, CENTER FOR STUDENT LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

CORE REQUIREMENT FOR THE LEADERSHIP MINOR

LEARNING CONTRACT

Goal:
To identify and utilize my Strengths in an organizational/interpersonal setting that aligns with the
mission, vision, values and sponsored programs and activities of URI’s Center for Student
Leadership Development.

Activity:
For my Learning Contract, I attended the North Woods Challenge Course Facilitator training on
March 3rd and March 23rd. I co-facilitated the element Islands and facilitated the overview of
the NWCC values along side my friend Lindsay.

Evidence:
A picture of a few of my fellow peer mentors and I inside the NWCC building on our first day of
training.

Annotation:
Through my experience being trained as a facilitator for the NWCC, I was able to see all five of
my strengths come in to action. My top five strengths are context, restorative, developer,
individualization, and responsibility.

Context is defined as understanding the present by researching its history. How I connect this to
my life is through learning from experiences. There’s a saying that “you learn new things
everyday” and as a facilitator, I utilized this strength to help me build upon skills and learn from
both myself and other facilitators to make sure I was working to the best of my abilities. My
restorative strength fits in as well because I find that I am at my best when noticing problems
before they occur and when working with others to see how we as a team can work around them.
I utilized my restorative strength when facilitating Islands by working together with my fellow
facilitator Mischa as well as the participants to recognize and avoid conflict before it occurred.
As a developer, I love to cultivate the potential in others. To see people succeed and grow as an
individual brings me such joy. In training, I constantly found myself encouraging my peers and
helping them to succeed in all categories. As an individualizer, I love getting to know people on
a more personal level because I believe that it not only makes me feel comfortable, but allows for
those around me to feel comfortable as well. I utilized this at training by getting to know each
person more personally to allow for a more welcoming and comforting environment on the
course. Finally, I find that I am an extremely responsible person which I used to my benefit on
the course. At training, I had to be responsible for all tasks that were at hand as well as the safety
of each individual in my group.

The theory I relate my experience to the most to would be Sandford’s theory of Challenge and
Support. At training, I learned the importance of implementing challenge and support for the
participants. As a facilitator, it is important to know the readiness of your group and base the
amount of challenge or support on that readiness factor. Providing too much challenge to a group
that is not ready makes success hard to achieve which would in turn frustrate the participants
when trying to complete the element. On the other hand, providing too much support doesn’t
give participants the chance to work through the element and learn from their mistakes. I saw
this when facilitating Islands. I needed to be aware of the needs of my participants and tailor my
facilitation to the different levels of challenge or support each participant needed. Through my
experience being trained as a Challenge Course facilitator, I have learned the importance of
basing challenge and support off of the needs, skill level, and readiness of the participants/group.

Overall, my experience being trained as facilitator for the North Woods Challenge Course was a
great learning and developmental experience. I was able to build upon my facilitation skills,
utilize all of my strengths, and see first hand how important Challenge and Support is, all while
becoming even closer friends with my fellow facilitators.

Instructor Signature: _____________________________________________

Student Signature: Felicity Smith