Reflection #3 Summary

Written by Jessica McInchak | February 2013

6th week of winter quarter is half-way through the year and presented a good chance to think about what we've accomplished in our programs so far and also what challenges we're still up against, I know this is something on my mind as a CES often, personally.  To do this kind of thinking in a structured way, we had 11 cards with categories ranging from communication to measuring impact to having fun to doing "critical" service-learning and three categories to rank them, including got it right/working well, current  challenges, and spring/long-term goals.  CES's were grouped as similar programs to collaborate and share thoughts/advice about how each index card category is effecting their program this year.  I think this reflection was effective because it allotted time for CES's to think about their programs in a less-stressed, not task-orientated way that we can often get caught up in through the week when we have to-do lists to accomplish for our programs.  Conversation was productive and brought up important (and sometimes sensitive, over-due) issues within groups.  To conclude as a group, each group wrote one stand-out card for each of the three categories and shared a bit about how/why they ranked it there.  And Shwarma was delicious, too, thanks for picking it up!

Written by Sashae Mitchell | February 2013

Since Jessica already did a fine job laying out what we did at the Reflection, I will share my thoughts about the reflection. This reflection was done at a good time as it gave us an opportunity to evaluate ourselves and our programs in order to continue to work towards creating impacts in our communities. I see the CES Reflections as a place for us to learn from each other and talking about our strengths in terms of what has been going well, was certainly a way to do so. In addition, it is essential for us to highlight areas that have not been going well so that we can actively discuss potential ways to improve. It was also good to set goals for the future, in order to have clear things that we need to work towards. Most people indicated that they would like to work towards creating sustainable programs which can sometimes be a challenge but nonetheless, something we can aspire to. Overall, this reflection gave us the opportunity to reflect on the year so far and the way forward.