Finding my authentic teaching voice is I think easier said than done. I have had a number of instructor positions in my life. Each one has in some way contributed to my actions and behaviors in the classroom. And yet I do not believe that I have truly found my voice in the classroom yet.
The questions in the reading forced me to rethink how I am in the classroom. Specifically “how can I be genuine, sincere, and fully present in the classroom”? Today I was in the classroom and I had roughly ten minutes of non-stop lecture. I had the thought that I had been rather robotically talking, and I looked at the students and noticed that they were rather robotically taking notes. Without getting to metaphysical, I felt like I wasn’t present in the classroom.
I immediately started to ask the students questions and try to engage them in discourse. The shift in tactics seemed to refocus the class and reengage them. I think that as much as I admired my professors who would give these great lectures, their voice is not mine. I had a Professor Saladino who would lecture for two hours with no powerpoints and no notes and the students would sit spellbound listening. I think that the longer I am in the classroom the more I realize that my real strength lies in facilitating a discussion.
I am excited to see the evolution of this process. As I gain more confidence and experience, I hope that my voice becomes more natural and authentic in the classroom.
I started teaching informally when I was very young. I taught Mathematics and Physics to my younger cousins when I was in high school. Very soon, I found teaching is not easy and it is not enough to master what you are teaching!
The most important reason is that teaching is not an interaction between human-robot. When you write an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) code, you teach to a machine how to search or solve the problems. We never feel worried about learning capacity of the machine or the ability of the machine to learn what we coded! However, this is very different when we teach students. Students are not machines.
There are two different streams of research in the Information Science (IS): Design and Behavioral science. In design science, researchers develop systems such as database management systems without considering the applicability of the new designs in interaction with people in a real organization’s environment. However, in behavioral science, the focus is on human interactions with systems. For example, they build theories about gender and age rule in technology acceptance and usage behavior in organizations. An organization needs knowledge about both the product and behavioral reactions in order to apply a new information technology system successfully.
I think the teaching has two different parts same as the two different streams of research in the IS. Teachers should have the enough knowledge about the material they are teaching but it is not enough. They also should have enough knowledge about behavioral theories of teaching. For example, the first lesson I learned through teaching was that encouragement will have a positive impact on learning and threating students will hinder learning. As a teacher learn more about behavior theories of teaching, he/she can teach better. I think that is why some teachers will teach very better when they gain more experience.
I should start by saying that I am definitely not a gamer and I cannot understand how games could trigger the human imagination! I believe that gaming connects us to a fake unrealistic world which at some point might separate us from our real life! There are so many other useful practices which could trigger imagination… Some of the ones that I personally relate to have been mentioned in a very interesting blog by the Fast Company and they include:
Thinking in metaphors
Thinking in pictures
Borrowing from other domains
Introducing unrelated ideas
Reversing polarity
Finding the paradox
As researchers I think that we have all used some of these practices for triggering our imagination and coming up with new ideas… I personally found reversing polarity and finding the paradox very interesting! By reversing polarity we can release conceptual energy and that would open our eyes to new solutions… As an example consider that the sink in your workplace is always filled with dishes… and you cannot tell whose dished they are! So trying to solve this problem you will think that it is hard to tell whose dishes are in the sink… Now what if you rephrase the problem as it’s easy to tell whose dishes are in the sink… Then this might open your eyes to an easy solution which is if it’s easy to tell whose dishes are in the sink then maybe they are personalized with the employees initials… The second interesting point for me was finding the paradox. Consider a city where people would dump motor oils into sewers and they would flow into the bay and pollute the fish habitats. Also the warnings posted near the drains are not working… instead of looking at the problem in the way that is was proposed to us we can ask can the sewer grates and signs be the same? yes! How about a grate in the shape of a fish with an unambiguous message of whatever you put down the drain goes right into the fish!
The 20th century made us believe that everything of value can be bought in a store, that the answer to the question lies at the back of the book, and that design is something only designers do. But in the 21st century, we are being nudged forward—by our customers, our employers, our economy, and by the robots nipping at our heels—to be original.
I really enjoyed all the readings from this week, particularly Sarah Deel’s “Finding My Teaching Voice” and Shelli Fowler’s “The Authentic Teaching Self and Communication Skills”. Both discuss the idea that though we are all interested in improving the current system, there is no “one way” to teach. I especially liked the reading by Sarah Deel as it reflects the thought processes through which I would assume a lot of people interested in being good teachers go. And the ultimate conclusions were that the best teachers bring their true selves into their teaching. I think this is an interesting point. I myself sort of fell into teaching. It was never something I thought of myself doing. However, during my residency, I was thrown into teaching some didactic lectures and labs. I had no idea what I was doing but decided the best way to deal with the situation was to be completely honest with my students. I was honest about myself (I too am pretty uncool and not interested in making any great sacrifices to change that) and what I knew and didn’t know. I ended up receiving some great accolades from students and even won a teaching award while there. Though I am learning and continue to learn new ways to improve my teaching style, I think my abilities to be honest are a great foundation. Like Deel, the more “myself” I am with the students, the more comfortable I am with teaching. Both readings discuss the idea that there are some common techniques that one might find useful to adopt, but there is no “perfect” or “ideal” teaching style. They are all a little different and can be equally as beneficial.
I believe your personality should be inter-weaved in your teaching style. The reading this week really emphasized that looking at techniques and strategies may not really help your teaching style. Looking at successful teachers and trying to mimic their methods may not entirely work. Different strategies might be as equally or more successful for your classroom. Explaining way you chose your style of teaching to the students or why you chose to do in-class activities will help keep the students engaged. Being approachable and incorporating students into the learning process are strong values of mine. Knowing there is not one way to approach teaching puts me at ease. I like to show my personality and try to connect with students as I teach. What I took from the readings this week is there is no specific recipe for the perfect teacher.
The readings also emphasize teaching should be flexible in nature and not static. Sticking to the material is important but, allowing time for deeper discussion can be important. Adjusting or spending more time on a content area that you see a class is struggling may be necessary. I have had experiences teaching classes of different formats. My approach to teaching each class changes based on the content of the class. I am currently a teaching assistant for a class involving an online lecture and hands on laboratory. Teaching a class with a laboratory section in a sense automatically incorporates student engagement. In order to be successful in the laboratory, students are expected to listen to the online lectures. At most, I spend a half hour providing instruction and then students learn through the hands on activities provided. At the last institution I attended, I worked with a class called Exercise and You. This was a lot more lecture based. Since this was a mass lecture class the lecturing style was much different. So far I have learned teaching involves a lot more trial and error than I originally thought. Regardless of the format of the class, I want my teaching style to be engaging, inspirational, and knowledgeable.
The prompt this week asks us to look at how higher education is using social media. When researching this subject I noticed a discussion about how higher education is using social media as a way to further monitor students and at time faculty. This is slightly a different spin than most of the other post, but I think it is an important topic for students and faculty.
In Nico Perrino’s article “Universities: where you go to learn – and be monitored”, Universities new ability to “snoop” on student’s e-mails, Facebook and other social media pages. In the enhanced security environment we live and work in these actions by administrators are justified as safe guarding students. But in reality, these actions are often just heavy-handed strategies colleges use to control their public image – at students’ expense.
The article cites incidents of potential over reach by college administrators across the country, including a recent e-mail scandal at Harvard University. It is clear that social media offers students and faculty an excellent way to communicate and enhance the learning experience, as well as strengthen security around our often vulnerable college campuses; but, it is also clear that more discussions are needed on how Universities are using social media to ensure that the rights and privacy of students and faculty are protected.
The piece by Sarah Deel, “Finding My Teaching Voice,” and the idea of our authentic teaching selves resonated with a blog post I wrote a couple of weeks ago for my co-teaching independent study (I am co-teaching a sophomore-level hydrology course with my advisor this semester). I also reference a humorous article from The Chronicle of Higher Education called, “Desperate to be Liked,” which I think is relevant for this subject as well. The syllabus we devised for the independent study includes teaching a portion of the classes and, among other components, faculty observation. I shadow my advisor on the days I am not leading the class, but we also thought it would be a good idea to observe other professors as well, particularly those I would not necessarily have as an instructor otherwise. At first, I wondered if I would get anything out of this practice: is there really any use sitting in on more classes at this point in my program? So far, I have shadowed two professors in addition to my advisor and highly recommend this exercise to others interested in teaching. The readings this week made me think of the first professor I observed, who teaches an upper-level course in forestry. When my advisor mentioned him, he said something along the lines of “I don’t really get it, but students absolutely love him.” The professor definitely deviates from the master of pedagogy most of us might imagine. He comes across as fairly “old school” when it comes to teaching, and his examples and problems are real-world scenarios students might encounter in a future job. His PowerPoints are not full of animations, pictures, or YouTube videos. He speaks slowly. I doubt that he listens to Morning Edition on NPR. I also doubt that he blogs about it. Do the bored youth of our university cradling their smart phones actually like this guy? Yes, they certainly do, and within minutes of being in his class I understood why. He is extremely friendly, which makes him approachable. Being near retirement, he is exceptionally knowledgeable about the subject matter. His real-world examples strike a chord with students that realize they might need to use a concept from his class one day. I wrote in my other blog about how his voice caught my attention. I always assumed that in order to show enthusiasm and passion for a class, I must speak excitedly, waving my arms about, and shouting like an aerobics instructor. This professor speaks slowly and even quietly (although audibly), which actually has an extremely calming effect and also makes it easier for the students to follow when he works through problems or equations on the board. And he makes eye contact with everyone in the room, searching for confused looks or questions.
After observing his class, I began to think more about what makes a great teacher that inspires students. I reflected on my favorite teachers over the years, and while there are common threads (they were accessible, cared about the students, set clear expectations, etc.), for the most part, they are totally different from one another. In some cases, the teacher of the best class you will ever take may refuse to give tests and encourage everyone to play video games. Another teacher of an equally life-changing class may do the exact opposite. I realized that there is no one way to be a good teacher. We should take advantage of the latest pedagogical research to improve student learning by trying out non-traditional techniques and branching out from what has always been done. However, phenomenal teachers do not, by definition, need to follow each and every accepted convention in either direction (old school versus contemporary) but rather figure out what methods make them (and not necessarily someone else) the best and most effective instructor possible. I like the idea of finding our authentic teaching selves, which I would just call being genuine. We must continually work to modify courses and step up the quality of our teaching, but we should always start with being ourselves. And, in honor of being yourself….
To answer the blog prompt, what is my authentic teaching self? To follow the logic of “being yourself,” I guess I will start by describing myself in general. I am Type A, extremely organized, and detail-oriented. I can also be impatient. I have a dry sense of humor but enjoy humor and laughing in general; as a result, I often make fun of and laugh at myself. I enjoy spending time outside and am terrified at the thought of people being disconnected from the natural world (the most common question I was asked as a raft guide by rafting guests, mostly adults, is why the river does not go in a circle: “We can’t get out here, we’re not to where we put in yet!”), which I think is a veritable problem (it’s like, yeah, of course these people don’t believe in climate change). Despite coming across as an insane tree-hugger, I tend to promote moderation in most things. So, you know, lectures are cool, but not every day, all the time, and they should be high-quality (so, not reading off of slides). Class discussions and hands-on activities are also fine, but, depending on the course, maybe not every day, all the time, and some structure or prompts to the activity can help guide students in that regard. Tests should not ruin people’s lives or stand as a metric of their overall intelligence (other personal life story and aside, I was a lift operator at a ski resort, and–stemming from suggestions in class last week–to anyone that scoffs at mechanical/blue collar knowledge, running a chair lift, in terms of the machine itself, requires more intelligence, hands down, than a Bachelor’s degree, not even a point of discussion. Want to see people with problem-solving skills? Watch your car mechanic after providing the helpful diagnosis: “Yeah, it makes a noise sometimes.”). However, we should not totally overlook tests and other assessments as a learning tool and, additionally, as a source of feedback on our teaching. Technology is the key to solving many of the current problems we face, but let’s not stare at screens all day–it’s really bad for you. Go play outside, so you don’t ever get confused about rivers going in circles (or mountains and hills just being “really tall trees,” another common question from adult rafting guests that do not understand the concept of topography). Let’s allow our students to enjoy being nineteen or twenty years old and learning for the pure joy of learning, but we should also realize that jobs can bring people fulfillment (e.g. my friend wanted to be a doctor so that she could help people; Monica on Friends becomes a chef because she loves cooking, etc.), so we can permit them to think about future career paths without lamenting the death grip of capitalism. My authentic teaching self is some reflection of all of the above, for better or worse.
When a teacher feels at ease and comfortable in class, he/she will be able to deliver lectures with more and lectures will be received with more interest.
“The success of your presentation will be judged not by the knowledge you send but by what the listener receives.” – Lilly Walters
But let’s ask ourselves what students expect from their teachers in order to get educated. Educational Leadership asked this question back in 2008 and this is some of the answers they got back:
To take them seriously
To challenge them to think
To nurture their self-respect
To show them how they can make a difference
To encourage them to try things their way
To point them towards their goals
To make them feel appreciated
To tap their creativity and,
To bring out their best self
I get dizzy just by looking at the number of “demands” from students. How in the world am I going to meet their expectations? I barely have a handle on my expectations from them.
Well, it turns out that when I tune my expectations to their expectations coupled with my understanding and ease of the subject I am teaching, teaching them is not so difficult after all. They want to feel heard, acknowledged and respected. They want me to be their guide on a learning journey but they want to do the discovering on their own. I want to fulfill their needs as best as I can, that’s when the magic happens.
As an instructor, crafting your teaching philosophy that you believe is the most effective for your students is not an easy task. As Sarah Deel mentioned, you probably as a new instructor will try to imitate the way your professors used to teach you when you were in school. However, everyone has his own personality and not all instructors can do the same thing and be effective for students. In addition, students are different from each other and accordingly, one method of instruction is not effective for all students. So, how to figure out a method of instruction that suits your personality and is effective for your students is really a challenging task.
According to me I believe in active learning as a good way of conveying knowledge to students. It was mentioned in several educational research papers that engagement is a key factor in student understanding. Active learning turns the student from a passive receptor of knowledge (less engagement) to an active generator of knowledge (high engagement). So how can this be achieved?
I will take an example from a computer science course named “Data Structures and Algorithms” which is a critical course in any computer science curriculum and contains a lot of abstract concepts with no physical manifestation. This makes it really hard for students to easily grasp these concepts. The old traditional way of teaching this course is to present the idea behind a particular algorithm and show its pseudo code and try to discuss what this code is doing. For example here is the pseudo code for one of the most important sorting algorithms named Insertionsort.
As you see this code describes the dynamic process of sorting a list of numbers. It is really hard to make your students understand this mechanical process using static pseudo code representation. I bet the students will not be engaged to this method of presentation.
Another method of presenting this is to provide a visual animated depiction to this dynamic sorting process. I believe this to be a large leap from the traditional pseudo code approach, but still the students are passive in that they are just viewing what is going on in the animation without being actually active. Look at this animation.
What about making students learn this sorting algorithm with dancing? Believe me we can do that.
If we can make our students learn this hard and abstract concepts by performing a joyful engaging act like dancing, then we have turned our students from passive receivers to active generators of knowledge. The only drawback of this method is that it is embarrassing to most of the students. But I totally agree with Sarah Deel when she mentioned that if you as an instructor described the reason of doing this type of activities to your students as to make them learn better, I believe they will like to participate.
“The audience is always part of the performance, if they think something is funny then you’ll play to them. If they think something is serious you’ll stay on it longer before leaving so you don’t rob them of that experience. That’s what makes it unique.” -K.K Barrett (Director)
Performance and teaching go hand in hand. Effective teachers are always performing and good performers are constantly teaching. In both cases, the example of presenting your “authentic self” is what ultimately connects the stage to the classroom. And why shouldn’t it?
Good actors have the ability to make you forget they are acting. There is a term in theatre called the suspension of disbelief where as an observer, you temporarily pause reality and allow yourself to believe in the imaginary circumstances being presented to you on stage. This is a silent agreement between the actor and the audience. Truly talented actors have the ability to make you forget about this agreement. They have the ability to make you forget that they are acting. This is a skill that takes an enormous amount of training, time, skill, technique, and talent. Nothing destroys the suspension of disbelief more quickly than an actor who is trying to act or trying to force a performance. Performances that lack this sense of authenticity only serve to widen the gulf between the actor and the audience. Suddenly, the audience is fully aware they are sitting in a theatre watching a performer fake their way through an imaginary set of circumstances that no one believes in.
To me, teaching is the same thing. It uses the same set of skills that take an enormous amount of training, time, technique, and talent. In essence, good teachers have the ability to make you forget they are teaching. The suspension of disbelief creates an environment where observers become students, reality is temporarily paused, and we allow ourselves to believe in the set of circumstances being presented to us. Similar to a theatrical context, nothing destroys the suspension of disbelief more quickly than a teacher who is forcing a performance from a place that is unauthentic. We’ve all been there. We’ve all been in the lecture hall and witnessed the complete destruction of the relationship between teacher and students because suddenly the teacher is trying to teach. Trying to force a learning objective through some type of prescriptive method that robs the students of a genuine learning experience.
Authenticity is a difficult thing. Too much and you come off over exuberant, too little and you come off fake. Authenticity essentially means presenting your true self, in the moment, in the context of what you are presenting. On stage, you are creating an imaginary world and reacting to that world as truthfully as possible. In the class room, you are creating a learning environment and responding to that environment as honestly as you can. The audience will always recognize a fake. Be it a fake performance or a fake lecture.
