GEDI / Grad 5114 – Spring 2016
Writing about my “authentic teaching self”is proving difficult, as I’m not sure how much of my previous teaching style was due to implicit nature and how much has been due to external circumstance. When participating in discussions concerning teaching praxis, instructors are clear in defining their styles and objectives, not necessarily with the intent of converting their listener, but most assuredly with utmost conviction. We, as instructors, are often very aware of how we present ourselves and our material in the classroom. Of course, this is likely biased, as those they talk about teaching methodology are often those that enjoy teaching. I’ve not had many conversations with instructors that despise their role.
That said, I have not participated in many conversations revolving around the dynamic nature of teaching and the need for uber-plasticity. I suppose this is one of my premier concerns with teaching: each semester is vastly different than the one prior. Knowing my audience is the first task I undertake–even before the semester begins.
This revelation came during the years before my PhD studies in my international agriculture development work. We often lead classes, workshops and conferences (as well as intern trainings and seminars). I taught many sessions, and the turnover is far greater than the university setting. My fellow instructors and I often talked about how finicky the classes are–one session, the students want all hands-on learning and no classroom time, the next session the opposite. We took feedback to heart, but it really could not inform how we handled the next session because it was comprised of very different students with very different goals and very different experiences. Did I ever truly develop a solution? Maybe. Maybe not. I can only change so much, and often met many students’ needs, while others felt neglected. I’ve come to accept that this is going to be a common theme.
This brings me to my next point: contextualization of material is difficult. Once I feel I know generalizations about my audience, I can then contextualize the material. It is my point to understand whatever I am teaching to such a degree that my examples (often parables) are contexualized as well. This was extremely important, and infinitely difficult, with my previous job, as the students were from all over the tropical and subtropical world. Thus there were huge cultural considerations to boot.
Lastly, I, as many do, rely on passion and transparency to bridge all gaps. The one set of truly bad reviews I received was from a new class that I acquired and was not at all interested in (and the first time I taught it, I was feverishly sick). I tried my darndest to fake some passion and interest in the subject and the students saw right through me. As an introvert, I always have to draw energy and present myself in many ways that are unnatural to me when I teach, but it oddly comes with ease because of my passion for teaching, itself.
As for transparency, I mean it in terms of the material taught and the management of the classroom. In my previous posts, I’ve not shied away from my dislike of hyper-connected (technologically) classrooms. I try to strip away everything unimportant to the material and help my students really connect with the ideas being shared. I don’t want the material muddled or convoluted. I don’t want the students distracted. I don’t want teaching tactics to stand in the way either. Pedagogy has its place, but many of my previous instructors and teachers seemed to hide behind teaching methods in lieu of grassroots learning.
This is me, but I rarely can say anything in the aforementioned conversations with fellow instructors because my innate teaching self is malleable, constantly processing my environment and adapting as much as possible. And so far, it has served me well. Currently, I am focused on how to best get to know my students on individual bases, so if you have any feedback that has worked for you, please let me know. One thing I hope to implement in my career is to require at least one office meeting during the semester to have face-to-face time, but this is heavily dependent on class size. We’ll see how it goes!
I have little teaching experience to date. The extent of it is ~2 years tutoring math at a private company where I was working with kindergarteners to high schoolers (four at a time) and one day doing labs with high school students (~20 students at a time), teaching them about the tools of my research. The little I know about my teaching voice thus far is this:
Judging from these perhaps preliminary teaching personas, I would much rather my future students be exposed to the former, no matter the size of the classroom. However, according to the document by Dr. Shelli Fowler, you should “not be someone you are not in your classroom.”
My question is, if both of these teachers are “my authentic teaching self,” just in different settings, would it be “posing” is I try to be teacher #1? Does anyone have a similar dual-authentic-teaching-self situation, as I seem to have? Does anyone know if these two teaching voices will perhaps reconcile themselves with more experience?
Beyond the teaching voice, one thing I know for sure is that I would like to style my classroom in such a fashion that I do not receive the questions brilliantly compiled by PhD Comics below:
Here’s to hoping!
My approach to teaching has so far been very reminiscent of Sarah Deel’s. I knew last semester that I would be teaching my current class and I started to think about how I would approach it. My initial thought was that it would be fairly lecture-heavy, because that was really all I had known, with a few exceptions here and there. But it was those exceptions that were some of the most engaging and exciting classes I took in undergrad. They were generally discussion-based classes, with readings assigned that were discussed during our face-to-face sessions. This seemed like a pretty reasonable approach, but my selection of literature (for casting design) was quite limited and certainly didn’t make for good reading. Knowing that there was baseline material I wanted the students to know, I started out with lectures, figuring I’d make things up as I went along. I knew that I didn’t want to be locked in to the exact styles I had experienced, so on the first day I asked my students to describe their learning styles and what they’re looking to get from my class. This helped tremendously in guiding my initial approach.
I am extremely thankful to be taking this class (Contemporary Pedagogy) in the same semester as my first teaching position, because it’s caused me to rethink many assumptions I had made about the practice of teaching and it has allowed me to incorporate, as best I can, a variety of techniques in the classroom to help students to be more engaged with the class at large. I’ve been able to develop my style in parallel with learning other ones, enabling me to start out with a reasonably effective approach rather than to build bad habits that must later be broken.
The first section of my class is lecture-heavy, to establish that fundamental knowledge base, much like the building a house metaphor used in our meetings. After finishing the lectures, I’ve moved on to a more discussion-heavy approach that is (maybe?) similar to the Socratic method (though not deliberately), where I’ll give a design challenge to the students and we’ll talk through their approach. Very soon we’ll be able to transition to the software phase of the class, which will in turn spawn more discussions, about design both of the castings themselves and of how to create and interpret the simulations and their results.
As far as personal connections/barriers, I think I’m fairly friendly with my students, since I was their TA at the foundry either last semester or last year. If there’s a building and environment at Tech that fosters camaraderie, it’s the foundry. It’s an inherently cooperative environment, because every has to rely on people besides themselves to get major things accomplished. I’m very lucky to have that foundation of camaraderie and friendship with my students. They will often see me in the MSE lounge and ask questions about my class, another class they’re taking, or just hang out. Now because of this, I do need to be careful to maintain a level of professionalism and avoid playing favorites and grade people fairly (note: fairly, not necessarily equally, especially since the students have widely varying levels of intuition for this type of design).
We’ll see how things go.
“They are not growing! I’m going to fail science class!” said the girl staring at the dish looking disappointed.
“They are” said her mother, “you just can’t see it yet.”
Not doubting her parent for one second the girl asked “Well, what do I do then?”
“Make sure you put your dish in the sunlight every morning and make sure it has enough water…not too much not too little…just enough and then,” said her mother “you wait.”
Now that does not sound like something a ten year old can do easily – Wait?! Be patient?! What?! But I remember waking up every morning and putting my little dish on the window sill in the sunlight, making sure it had just enough water and then sprinting to catch my school bus in time. It did take a while and eventually one morning I saw little white stems emerging from within the thin cotton layers that held my precious black grams, the seeds to my science experiment. Once the white stems had found their way out into the open air I started seeing little green leaves forming. As the saplings turned upwards towards the Sun reaching out for light and carbon dioxide, I felt this exhilaration inside me. I had done it! I had successfully planted the seeds and they were turning into little saplings quickly. I didn’t even care about passing science class anymore…this was SO cool!
Over the years I have heard many uses of the phrase “planting the seeds” and I have always appreciated its significance. My entire family loves plants and we have a few green thumbs among us. While reading Professor Fowler’s work the story I mention above came to mind. The questions that she poses in her writing The Authentic Teaching Self and Communication Skills made me realize that “planting the seeds” was not good enough anymore. When we take learning into account, as a teacher I can plant the seeds of basic concepts related to Counseling or Psychology or any other class I end up teaching through lectures, assignments, articles, YouTube videos and Ted Talks but whether those seeds are going to turn into saplings or dry up with too much sunlight or drown in too much water is also my responsibility. I cannot just plant a seed and leave it to fight for light and water! On the other hand, I cannot smother them with too much either – too much sunlight, too much water, too many nutrients…yikes! I have to be able to provide ideal conditions in which the seeds have the opportunity to thrive.
Therefore, I intend my approach to teaching being similar to how I approached growing black grams in a dish. It would involve fascination, exhilaration and patience. Buddhist teachings talk about the “middle path”, a path that runs through between any two polarities. I find myself trying to maintain this balance in my authentic teaching self. Balance between being structured and being fluid, balance between lecturing and discussing, balance between theoretical and experiential learning. Additionally, similar to how Buddhism predicts I anticipate it being a constant struggle, a consistent effort just like trying to be mindful. In my journey to define my authentic teaching self I hope to be able to continue balancing polarities – just the right amount of water and sunlight.
My first experience teaching was about a year and a half ago. I started a new PhD program and started teaching at the same time. I was teaching the first year engineering course at Virginia Tech, and I was terrified. I thought I had to know everything.
I was worried about talking for an hour and 15 minutes. I was worried about knowing the answers to every question. I was worried about being able to manage the classroom.
But looking back on that first semester that I taught, I learned a lot about my teaching style and approach. While teaching that first semester, I also took a Practicum in Engineering Classroom course where we journaled about our teaching experiences. I just went back through those journal entries and came across several that I think describe my teaching style.
Journal Entry for Dec. 5: I noticed something cool in class today. One of the groups was really struggling to get the robot for the experiment connected. I was trying to help them and help other groups as well. So I would have the group that was struggling try something and while they were working on downloading the programs or the right software or whatever we were trying, I would help other groups. I noticed that a member of another group, who is very good at programming, went and was helping this group of students that was struggling to get the robot connected. I thought it was really cool to see the students start to help each other more and work together.
I hope to encourage students to take ownership of their learning, and I hope to encourage students to work together as they learn. As a teacher, I don’t want to be the one telling students how things should be done. I want students to explore and ask questions and be engaged.
Journal Entry for Oct. 3: In the provided lecture notes, the majority of the lesson was a discussion on what makes a good question. I don’t feel like my students learn very well with just a discussion such as this, so I am going to incorporate an activity. I am introducing several levels of questions and then will ask students to write 2 questions relating to the categories. This will get them thinking about their project and what they want to know. So this is initiating the questioning portion of the project. After students write their questions, I will lead the discussion on what makes a good question, having students reflect on the questions that they just wrote. This way, the topics are less abstract and students can take questions and try to figure out how to improve them to gain more information.
Topics should be relevant for students, especially in first year engineering courses. I want to help students connect information in the class to other material in the class or to other things in their life. I try to incorporate activities and discussions so I am not just lecturing the entire time.
Journal Entry for Nov. 21: I had worked with a student some during class. She really was struggling with MATLAB and was trying really hard to understand what was going on. I got an email from her over break stating that she had figured out the first problem of the homework but had a few questions about the second problem. I could tell that she really wanted to understand what was wrong with her code and how to fix it. So I sent a long response back to this student and tried to answer all of her questions without just telling her the “right” way to do things. The next day I got the most exciting email from her: “Wow-the feeling that comes over you when you understand MATLAB! Thank you so much!” I was so excited to hear this from my student because I knew that this was a huge accomplishment for her and she had really made a lot of progress. I was really excited for her and that I could help her reach this point.
I want to help my students and not just give them the right answer. I hope to listen to the challenges my students are facing and guide them to a solution or conclusion in a way that makes sense for them. Everyone sees problems differently. I try to listen to my students and understand their thought processes, ask questions to guide them, and work with them to figure out problems.
Overall, I want to be approachable, engage students in the learning process, incorporate activities and discussions to help students connect information, and work with students as we navigate different topics, ideas, and beliefs.
What is authentic teaching and how can we find our teaching style? I certainly believe that teaching styles is dependent on ones personality and capabilities… I have seen many cases where professors are adapting some good teaching practices in the wrong way! One good teaching practice is to ask questions in order to guide the learner to the solution instead of just presenting the solution. This could be done by posing questions such as what do you think? Why do you think that is? Are you sure? What are we missing here? etc. As much as questioning the learners is a good practice, asking too many questions will confuse the learners! I took a course last semester in which the instructor would answer most of the questions with a question! And whenever someone responded to a question he would say are you sure? I found that too confusing and it seemed like he was not well prepared for the class…
This is when teaching styles should be adapted to ones personality and capabilities! You cannot just try to employ teaching techniques without customizing them to your teaching style… Maybe this professor was trying to guide us to the right solution however he could have better implemented this by accordingly planning his questions rather than questioning everything and confusing the students… Maybe he loses focus whenever he poses a question and has to ask more questions so that he can make time to get his focus back… Yes, questioning is good but the questions should be leading the student to right path!
As teachers we should have the ability to connect the theories with the reality… An interesting article in the Faculty Focus mentioned six paths to a more authentic teaching.
A great example of these practices was mentioned in the reading as we need to find ways to draw on the child’s vast experience of oral mathematics not teaching them things that computers can do! If we want to pose questions frequently, we should do this while we consider what the learners will be getting out of responding to these questions… Where are these questions taking them? Instead of just mindlessly posing questions so that we can convince ourselves that we have “employed” this great practice! So let’s take some of the great practices that are adaptable to our major and sincerely employ them in our teaching while we are aware of our circle of knowledge, are staying true to it, and considering what the learners need to be/are getting out of this process. Most importantly the road to success is always under construction (Lily Tomlin) so always ask for feedback from students and try to find places for improvement. One great thing that I liked about one of my Professors last semester was that he would not just rely on the departmental evaluations and would directly ask us for suggestions. I find this a great practice since it shows ones genuine care for improvement…
Becoming literate means thinking differently than one did previously, seeing the world differently, and this suggests that there are many different literacies!
I remembered when I was a bachelor; I always thought how I may teach the courses those I took. I was trying to simulate the class environments for my courses. So, I can say that I taught all courses that I took in my bachelor. I tried to find a better way for teaching courses. But I had not the opportunity to teach any course until after my master.
After my master, my supervisor suggested me to help her by teaching a graduate course. The course was Bio-instrumentation for master students who were in the second semester. At the fist perception, I was happy but I was a concern after a few days because I needed to find an appropriate way to teaching. That was my first experience and I needed to do my best performance. I knew if I could teach reasonably, I might teach next semester as well.
I brought together all my thoughts to create an innovative method of teaching. I summarized it here.
First, I searched for scientific journals and resources to find the most recent knowledge about Bio-instrumentation. Because my advisor used an old book as her reference since 20 years ago and I believed that I need to find an updated version of this knowledge. So, I found another book and introduced to the students as the reference. I also edited the syllabus based on the new reference. I was pretty sure that one reference could not be enough for a graduate course. So, I gathered several scientific papers. I distributed the total credit of the course into some portions. The student needed to gather their grades through the semester. I remember that I removed the final exam and I considered several quizzes (I personally hated the final exams because I had felt so stressful during exams days). I asked students to read 11 papers and write a report related to those papers. I selected review papers for this task, and then they could learn a background of devices for bio-instrumentation. After that, I designed three experiments in the laboratory using the most recent sensors and devices. The students formed their own groups and performed the experiments. This task helped them to learn team-working though some members of groups had some problems with other members. As the last assignment, I asked them to design and perform an applied project regarding biomedical engineering. They needed to collect the data from the patients in the hospitals and clinics. I taught them some topics related to instrumentation and asked them to apply this knowledge to their data collection. In the end, they presented their projects to other students.
I asked the students to fill out the evaluation form beyond official one from the university. They stated that this way could improve their understanding regarding Bio-instrumentation because they used the knowledge practically. This experience helped me to develop my own method of teaching and test it in a real condition. Although the students were satisfied with my method, I think that it had a major problem. I did not use a standard method for grading, so it was a little confusing for the students. Of course, I graded generously because I did not want to hurt the students and I knew that this is my first experience, therefore it might have some problems.
I have never formally taught a class before. I’ve been a TA for two college classes and a third-grade class, I’ve facilitated discussion groups, been a tour guide, a tutor in many subjects, and co-led a creative writing after school program for middle school students (although almost nothing was actually accomplished besides having fun in that last one). Oh, and I definitely taught my little brother how to read and do arithmetic. My point is, I’ve been an educator of one kind of another many times in my life, but I’ve never been responsible for running an entire classroom on my own before. But I will next semester! And then maybe I’ll be a professor some day? It’s an option. But even if I don’t become a professor, educating others is a part of of many jobs, not to mention life. So here is a categorized bullet list of things I want to incorporate into my teaching:
Big-Picture Things
Day to Day Classroom Stuff
Physical / Emotional Aspects of My Teaching
I’m sure I’ll come up with more ideas about how I want to be as a teacher but this is what I have for now!
The readings this week got me thinking about what my authentic teaching self is, what is my teaching voice, and how it should craft it for the course I’m co-teaching next fall. I have done some limited teaching in the past–3 labs a week for an undergrad introduction to statistics course, but at the time, I just showed up and winged it without carefully thinking about my authentic teaching self. I feel that my performance was authentic–I was laid back and moderately funny. I tried to relate statistical concepts to the students in a manner they understood and cared about. I have no idea if it worked.
The class I’m teaching in the fall will be similar, but at the graduate level. I’m teaching an introductory class in statistical modelling in the wildlife sciences. Students will have differing backgrounds in statistics and ecological modelling, but they should be there because they want to be there–this class is not required to graduate. I think I can take the same laid back, moderately funny approach that came naturally before. I plan on incorporating a substantial amount of problem-based learning, which will be easy to do in this type of class. Hopefully it will be better than this incredibly boring blog post.
