So far I’ve only presented one of my lesson plans, which went really well, but my second lesson plan wasn’t able to be presented because my professor decided to take the lead on it. I’m not really upset with that since it was the Toulmin method and it was important for the student’s to get a really good grasp on the concept. However, I feel that I could have done a pretty darn good job if given the opportunity. To make up for not presenting this lesson plan, I’ve been taking the lead on different activities and trying to improve my teaching skills. This past class I presented the six parts of a full argument and I felt I did a really good job. I told the students to pull out a notebook and pencil to take notes, since this will be important for the final paper, and to my surprise, they actually paid really close attention, even the students that usually never really do anything. This definitely gave me more confidence in both my teaching and command of the classroom. I definitely feel that my ability to teach and my comfort level while teaching has greatly improved. I feel that my rapport with students is strong and I’ve gained their respect, which was something I was worried about at the beginning of the semester. Also, my professor asked me if I wanted to TA again for her next semester. I was surprised and flattered especially since I was the only current TA she invited back. It was really nice to hear that at least someone has appreciated my ability and work I’ve put into TAing this semester. Though I’m not completely sure I want to TA again next semester (it depends mostly on what my adviser says) but I certainly would like to. I’ve gained so much from being a TA and it has been an incredibly important experience in many ways.
Reflection: To expand on how important and beneficial this experience of being a TA was is that I have become a much better writer. I know longer write blindly. Meaning, I am constantly looking out for what I would critique in a paper a student would bring to me. I have become more objective and more intense in my revising process. Also, I have simply gained more confidence being a TA. By speaking and presenting in front of the class each week, I have learned how to comfortably engage my audience. I know longer feel a sense of judgement from my audience, but instead a real sense of wanting to hear what I have to say. Of course I still get nervous, but my nerves are no longer debilitating. I can comfortably tell jokes to ease the tension while also engaging students in discussion. Also, I do not feel that I must dominate the classroom while I have the floor. If students have something to say I always allow them time to speak and present their ideas. I am happy to say that I will be returning next semester as a TA. I hope to expand on the groundwork that I have already laid for myself.
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When I enter class, I feel excited and invigorated to teach and to interact with my students. I like asking how they are and how their papers are going, and I make sure that I reach out to them so that, if they have any problems or questions, they will feel comfortable coming to me for help. In short, It's a lot of fun. Though, as of now, they haven't reached out, I still make an effort to let them know I'm happy to help. And I am happy to help. I love writing and I love helping people improve their writing; something I didn't really know I enjoyed until I started teaching. I especially enjoyed leading my discussion about sex robots. Originally, the discussion was supposed to only last 20 minutes but it ended up taking 50 minutes, which I hadn't even noticed until the professor finally spoke up saying we only had 25 minutes left and we had more topics to cover. The students seemed to love the discussion, too, which was incredibly gratifying to know that they actually cared and wanted to participate. I led this discussion a week or two after the module on facilitating discussion in 388V, and the discussion board for that week was very insightful as to how to make sure I didn't dominate discussion, while still making sure that I kept the discussion on topic and not diverge to unrelated areas. Overall, I am extremely happy with my class. They are willing to participate and they take the assignments seriously. I am also quite happy with myself. I've gained a lot more confidence in myself and my ability to teach the material and to answer any questions that arise has also increased greatly. I still get slightly nervous before going to class, but it's not the same overwhelming pit in my stomach that could make me double over at any moment. I've chilled out, as the kids say.
Reflection: Once about week five of the semester hit, I really began to love my time being a TA. Like I said in the learning log, I was excited to come to class every week and I believe that showed in my teaching and interactions with my students. The highlight of the semester came when I led a discussion in class about sex robots. The discussion we had in class was, not only fun, but intellectually challenging. All these students with interests in so many different areas were incredibly helpful in making the discussion multifaceted. However, my one regret was that I felt I did not do such a great job in making the discussion focused on how the article was an excellent example of an inquiry paper, which is the paper that the students were currently writing. With that said, I still believe this discussion was wonderful. Both odd and exciting. Going into this semester, I was mildly nervous for my first TA class. No. It was more like VERY nervous. I was terrified that if students asked me any questions I'd be clueless as to the answer, but now that I have four weeks behind me, I am rather confident in my capabilities as a TA. I'm much more confident in my answers and much more excited for class each week. Also, I felt that I would be spending an exorbitant amount of time preparing each week for class, but that has turned out not to be the case. Rather, I spend just as much as any of my other classes, but I do want to be more prepared for each week. I've also found something in myself that I honestly did not know was there. I enjoy teaching. It's exhilarating and exhausting at the same time. It's terrifying and stimulating and after class is over, you want another one. A bit like an addiction, really. But a healthy one. Now that I've found this love for teaching, I actually think of ways in which I can better teach material to my students, which I didn't think I'd do going into the semester because I was worried I wouldn't be able to get through a full class due to my fear of public speaking.
These four weeks haven't been transformational, but they've been transitional. A transition away from fear into curiosity. For the most part, I'm no longer worried to simply get through the material, but to get through to the students. To make sure I'm teaching well rather than just looking comfortable in front of the class. I like to equate teaching to running. After a really great run where I feel that I gave every last ounce of effort I drift into a bit of a euphoric state, in which I'm much more confident in my abilities. In the same way, after teaching I feel this same kind of euphoria, partly because I felt that I did everything I could to engage my students, but also because I took another step towards taming my fear of public speaking. I was never a naturally good runner, nor a good public presenter, but I'm working on it. Reflection: I remember in the minutes leading up to the first class, I could feel my stomach giving way. I felt nauseous and cold. All the blood had run my hands which were now purple. My nerves were getting to me so I decided to write them down in my journal: “In an hour and 20 minutes I’ll be TAing for the first time. I’m definitely nervous. My knees are weak and my stomach is slightly queasy, but with that said, I am still very excited. It’s something I’ve never done before but I’m confident that I will be successful.” Underlying this anxiety was excitement. Excitement to do something I was so unfamiliar with and unprepared for. Sure I had taught before, but to little kids. To teach my peers is something completely different. I felt I needed to show them that I was not someone to dismiss as irrelevant. I wanted to be helpful and have the students be comfortable in asking me and coming to me with any questions or advice. As a student, it often feels that the classroom is only a place for the student to gain knowledge rather than a mutual quest for understanding between students and teachers. In bell hooks’ essay entitled "Engaged Pedagogy," she describes what teachers must be willing to do in the classroom, arguing, "teachers must be actively committed to a process of self-actualization that promotes their own well-being," (hooks). Now this may seem a bit exaggerated when demanding that teachers must be trying to achieve self-actualization, but I see it more as an argument for teachers to also be willing to act as a student in the classroom, in the sense that they are also seeking knowledge along with their students. Teaching is not a one way street, in which the master is shoving knowledge in the brains of submissive students. Both the student and the teacher must be actively engaged in the learning process.
But sometimes it can be hard to engage students. Some just don't care, or they don't have the tools in which to be actively engaged in the classroom. In Mike Rose's essay entitled, "I Just Wanna Be Average," he recalls his time in Vocational education in high school and how one of his fellow classmates said exactly what the title of the essay says. That he just wants to be average. Rose goes on to say that his classmate wasn't simply making a statement, but rather he was, "gasping for air," (Rose). This student wanted to learn but he didn't have the the resources, mainly qualified teachers, to help him do so. Rose seems to be arguing that all students, even the ones that seem recluse and bored in class, want to learn. But the teacher must be willing to put in the time to make these students actively engaged in education. A teacher isn't merely a safe filled with information, but a human and a permanent student wanting to help their own students become lifelong learners. Just as hooks said there must a mutual goal of self-actualization in the classroom, so too must their be a shared goal of learning between teacher and student. Reflection: 12/11/2017 Especially as a TA with only slightly more knowledge than my students, I have to remind myself I do not know everything and that I too make mistakes. I have even noticed that reading the writing of my students has actually improved my own. By seeing the techniques and styles of my students it informs and improves my own writing. Just as they are learning to write, so am I. Learning is a continual process and sometimes we need to be reminded of that fact. bell hooks made some excellent points of emphasizing mutual learning and how we can often learn the most by teaching. Teaching does two things simultaneously: one, is that we transmit information to students, and two, is that we teach ourselves. By teaching, we have a need to understand concepts on a higher level thus making us more engaged with the material and thus enabling ourselves to learn more. Also, as teachers, we must always be open to criticism and to continually try to improve our own methods so as to play to the strengths of our students. As a student, many times my drafts never begin with an outline, nor a brainstorming session but by just writing. My brainstorming is my writing. In Donald M. Murray's "Teaching Writing as a Process Not Product," he briefly states how long each stage of the writing process is, stating that the prewriting stage usually takes the longest and where most of the thought and research takes place. I believe this aspect of writing, the pre-writing is where students learn the "universal truth" that they hate writing. Before they can even write, they must take long and necessary steps (yes, even though I often neglect this stage it is necessary) to even begin writing. My fear that when I teach my students the writing process, I'll neglect the prewriting stage as to hopefully make them more enthusiastic and willing to write. However, I want my students to learn writing as a process with steps they can take to move towards the ultimate product, instead of haphazardly writing like I am prone to due.
Just as it is very easy to be lazy when pre-writing, it is also very easy to be lazy when commenting on a student's essay. It is very easy to make vague and ambiguous comments on a paragraph here to point on each grammatical error, but what takes effort, and what I believe is the most effective form of critiquing student writing, is forming a paragraph at the end of a student's essay, that addresses all the students missteps in their essay. Instead of a few word comment here and there, a fully formed paragraph or two at the end of a student's essay allows the student to find out from their teacher/TA what exactly is most important for them to fix. Their is no longer any ambiguity in their comments, which as Nancy Sommers points out when she addresses the fact that many teacher comments could be transfixed to any students paper. Many comments are not personalized by to the student. By personalizing the response, a student is much more likely to take agency over their essay and begin revising it. This fits into the "universal truth" that most students want to be better writers, but when writing doesn't come easy to them, and when it seems professors don't care about their success, it can be very easy for students to not try in their essays. Just as most students want to become better writers, there is also the "universal truth" that students hate writing classes. Why wouldn't they hate writing classes when all the criticism they get back on their essays is that they didn't capitalize this or forget to indent that. To many students, writing is about making something pretty. If I can just use a lot of big words and flowery language, I can mask the poor argument my essay presents. Instead of worrying about grammatical errors, we must emphasize critical thinking and making a strong, coherent argument, like what Bean argues, in his essay "How Writing is Related to Critical Thinking" in which he emphasizes that we must teach writing as a way for students to become better arguers and better critical thinkers by writing. Teachers must adopt lessons and strategies that stress rhetoric and critical thinking, rather than being bogged down in grammatical and stylistic errors. Reflection: 12/11/2017 In this post, I discussed the importance of teaching as well as actively acknowledging writing as a process and not as a product. I can now proudly say that I am finally practicing what I preach. My outlines may not be the prettiest or most substantial, but I have certainly made a strong effort in taking the time to prewrite. I, unlike many, love to write and it can almost seem like a waste of time to prewrite and to brainstorm, but if I and my students are to write strong, coherent arguments, we must take the time to plan our essays. Like a battle, an unplanned essay is doomed to fail. In my class, the professor and I have stressed the importance of prewriting as well as revising to be crucial factors in the writing process by having students submit rough drafts before the final draft is due, as well as having in-class peer review. Some students have even suggested we have more time for peer review because they found it so helpful. To address my final paragraph in the original response, I still believe that many students hate writing. Why would they not if professors consistently give poor and insubstantial feedback? I felt that when students came to me asking to revise their papers I did my job well. I would make comments in the margins saying what they did well and what they need to improve, but I did not leave it at that. I made sure that at the end of their draft to write a paragraph or two highlighting what they should focus on most as well as what they did well and should continue to do in the future. The two main concepts that Barr and Tagg and Chickering and Gamson seem to hone in on are the ideas of active learning and communication between students. Both pairs of researchers argue that the general trend in undergraduate education has begun to stray away from these two ideas. When in a big lecture hall, active learning is incredibly difficult. Most students, me included, are either too nervous to answer a question proposed by the lecturer or too disinterested, not in the content so much, but the way in which the content is presented. In these massive lecture halls there is no place for students to actually speak and debate with one another. As Barr and Tagg would say, instruction occurred in that lecture, but not learning. These lecture halls are almost antithetical to the idea of learning because they are completely dilute of conversation and traditional ways of learning. Davidson, like the two previously mentioned duos, would also cite this lack of active learning and student communication as being problems that need to be solved, but where Davidson would find fault in the way they try to solve these problems is, where does technology fit into this? Davidson says that we are going through a new age of technological advancement, and our education systems are trying to play catch-up. She sees technology as being key in our journey to finding the solutions to these problems.
Although universities need to do much better in facilitating a new type of learning--the opposite of instruction--I have certainly seen signs of improvement. Many of my discussion classes have done a great job of encouraging debate among students as well as involving many students. Also, I feel that what we are doing right now, of responding in this forum in which we can read and respond to our classmates is incredibly useful. It encourages active learning and communication among students. Exactly what Barr and Tagg and Chickering and Gamson, as well as Davidson would all like to see. Reflection: 12/11/17 This discussion focused on the shift in classrooms from an instruction paradigm, in which students are talked at, into a more communicative and collaborative type of learning. A type of learning that facilitates active engagement and critical thinking among students. In the final paragraph of my initial response I pointed to the improvements I have seen in the discussion sections of my classes. Though I see how useful they can be, the TAs that lead the discussion tend to neglect the discussion part and instead choose to lecture. This seems like a poor way of enabling students to grasp concepts they may find confusing or for students to debate topics. Discussion sections for a class are supposed to be a respite from lecture. A place to further elaborate or clarify topics covered in lecture rather than simply have the topic re-represented by the TA. Rather than talk at students, the TA must allow for discussion and debate that will allow f students to grasp more firmly difficult concepts. |
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