Month: October 2017

The topic this week is discovering your authentic teaching self. To be honest, I have never officially taught a class before. My only experience as a teacher was the summer before I started my study at college. Because I did a quite good job at the College Entrance Exam, some friends of my mom sent their kids to me and asked me to help on their study. I was actually more like a TA than a teacher that summer because I didn’t need to teach the kids new contents. Most of time, I was teaching them how to solve problems that they had trouble with. But I saw that a valuable experience, which made me think about how to become a better teacher in a classroom.

 

Putting the lesson I learnt from my role as a student over 20 years and my limited teaching experience together, I think there are couple things a good teacher should be clear before getting into the classroom. First of all, knowing what you want the students to get from the class. Students know very little about a discipline before they get into the classroom. The teachers’ responsibility is to introduce what’s out there in this discipline and maybe stimulate students’ interests in some specific topics. However I’ve seen some professors spend a lot of time one specific field in the class, which means they won’t have enough time to cover the rest of contents as they should. So if I am going to teach a class in the future, I will take some time think about what the students should learn from my class.

 

The other thing that I noticed important and would definitely want to improve is to teach confidently and energetically in classroom. As a student, I always find I learn most efficiently when the teachers are confident and energetic. The passion from the teachers certainly affect students’ attitude in learning. Giving a lecture with exactly same voice and tune just makes students sleepy and easily distracted. As an international student, I sometimes feel not confident in front of native speakers. I don’t want this happen in my class when I am the teacher. With that being said, I wish I could have a clear understanding of what to teach and be confident in classroom when I teach in the future.

It is almost absurd to think that the majority of teachers teaching below the collegiate level typically have years of training, whereas some collegiate teachers merely have a class handed over to them even though they may have zero teaching qualifications. Similar to what was said in Finding My Teaching Voice, I feel that many collegiate professors only know about teaching what they have experienced themselves. This can be both a good thing and bad thing. Some of the practices used by my teachers and professors throughout the years have really stuck with me and are applied into my own teaching. However, I would say with confidence that we have all had what I would consider to be bad teachers, or at least ones that implemented bad teaching practices.

The whole “being a well-liked female professor while still maintaining authority” thing really resonated with me. Especially being fairly close in age to the students, I find it important that they respect me as an authoritative figure, while still feeling comfortable enough to have authentic conversations with me. After all, I feel like I’m there to help them in whatever academic capacity I can. This is what I told my students the other day when I subbed my professor’s class – that I am here to talk with them about internships, graduate school, etc. in addition to the class itself.

For my Graduate Teaching Scholars class, one assignment required students to read Parker J. Palmer’s The Courage to Teach. Although at times a bit monotonous, this book did a great job at discussing one’s authentic self and the importance of this in the scope of teaching and shares a few ideas with Sarah Deel’s article. How cool is it that while our students are trying to figure out who they are, we, as teachers, are also doing the same? The past couple of years I have become more reflective as I read more and more about authenticity in teaching. I think that authenticity requires vulnerability. Lately, I’ve been more ok with being vulnerable in academic life and life in general. Sometimes it is seen as such a bad thing when I’ve beginning to learn that it is actually very powerful.

Although some of these points may seem self-explanatory, The Authentic Teaching Self and Communication Skills document provides concrete examples of how to improve teaching. Through the years I’ve begun to appreciate and become more tuned in to the physical aspects of good teaching. I find myself “hiding” behind the podium sometimes when giving presentations. I’ve worked my way up to walking around a bit. It helps me to relax and typically contributes to a better rapport with students. This is not something I’ve been able to achieve over night. I would both figuratively and literally take baby steps. But I promise that practice helps. Good teaching truly is a process where you’re always re-evaluating yourself. It can be easy to be hard on oneself through this continuous process, but you just have to be ok with the fact that doing something wrong is just fine; you’ll try to do better the next time.

Photos

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My authentic teaching self would have to be a teacher that aims to empower the learners within the classroom, I want them to be teachers as well. My goal is for there to be a transfer of information rather than depositing. I do understand that I will have the formal title of lecturer/teacher/professor, and that there will be a power dynamic that I can’t easily remove, as mentioned in  The Authentic Teaching Self and Communication Skills. However, I still believe that the students and I can both be learners in my classroom.

As well as appreciating the role that students play in the learning process, it would be unwise to ignore my role as the teacher. I need to know what my role is in the classroom, and to do so, I need to be confident in my approach to teaching and myself. No matter how prepared one can be, students in the classroom have a way of turning all your lesson plans upside down in a matter of seconds. This is where confidence plays a key role because you will be able to devise a ‘plan e’, after plans a,b, c, d have all failed. This skill doesn’t come overnight though, it comes with practice and failure. However, failure is a powerful learning tool that we cannot ignore, which is why I also welcome it in the classroom, with myself and my students.

So, then the question becomes: what kind of authentic teacher do I want to be? I want to be a teacher who ignores titles and sees my students as equals in order to empower them to be agents in their own education with my support. My goal will be to teach them how to learn so that even when I am not in the classroom, they can teach each other because I have given them the tools , strategies, and independence to do so. Whenever possible, I will let them teach each other by challenging them in class to be creative and come up with the answers to their own questions, with my guided support. However, I will also ensure that they experience structured failure, where their failures allow them to still learn even if they fail to see it immediately. I believe for this to be my authentic teaching style, and I will continue learning until it becomes my defining characteristic.

At the start of this writing, I do not have an idea what kind of a teacher I am. This is a question that I have never thought of before. Or it is just because I did not know that I can decide what I want to be for a job (teaching). Well, this is […]

For me, teaching is a very powerful job, you are building the next generation, that in itself is a scary situation due to making sure that the students are learning valuable knowledge and skills to make better future.

Teaching for me is like acting as a leader in the classroom, you don’t want your students to be scared of you, or think that you are giving them orders to follow so they can get the grade. It’s more about letting them feel that you are in the class with them to guide them to succeed and that you are there for them when they need help or direction to success. In the end, you want them to feel safe, happy, and successful in the classroom.

As an instructional designer, I deal a lot with the content itself and most of the time I actually don’t teach the content I developed. Most of my work is used in e-learning settings, where the role of the teacher create and maintain a collaborative problem-solving environment, where students are allowed to construct their own knowledge, and the teacher acts as a facilitator and guide. It is more of student-centered approach, and I believe that learning is the method and experiences humans go through to acquire new knowledge or skill, and constructed knowledge is what senses learners make of their environment and their experience. So my role as a teacher is to try my best to craft authentic learning experiences for my students so they can gain the most of their learning experience.

 

I’d like to foster a partnership with the students. I envision this as striking a balance between instructor and student responsibility, where the learning environment is the product of both parties’ efforts and engagement.

A starting point could be to have high expectations both for myself and for my students. I will try my best to be prepared for class, to be respectful and fair, to answer questions and offer extra help, but my students are expected to be equally prepared and respectful, and to take charge of their own learning. Perhaps this baseline seems lofty, but I would like to set a common goal that everyone could strive for.

Democratize the classroom, where all parties could have some say on course direction. This does not mean a free-for-all. The instructor should provide a basic framework with supporting rationales, but also allow room for student input and adjustments. This idea came from my Continuum Mechanics professor, who established a baseline method of evaluation for the class but allowed students to decide among themselves how exactly to allocate grades and how many assignments and tests to have. Though students were bummed about having to do tests, they were at least satisfied with the prospect of being able to decide how much the tests mattered in comparison to everything else. I would like my students to have the same feelings of empowerment and the opportunity for collective decision making.

Perhaps fostering a partnership goes beyond the division of responsibility mentioned previously. One of my strengths is being open to different points of views and circumstances, and I could bring this quality to the classroom by treating students as individuals. It seems like a worthwhile effort in establishing a reciprocity, where students could feel like they mattered.

I have reservations of whether this idea of partnership will work, specifically for undergraduate level courses. Thus far, I have only lectured for graduate level classes where the students consisted of my graduate peers. They were already friends, so mutual respect wasn’t hard to come by. They were also graduate students, so they already have some interest in the subject of study and were easy to engage. Doubtful it would be just as easy for undergraduate classes, but I am still willing to try and adjust, if need be. After all, the point is to meet halfway, so both the instructor and the students have to take part in this dynamic…wrestle, push, pull…to create an environment that is unique and meaningful for those involved.

This week, because of the readings and my experience in the class I am teaching, I have been reminded that my teaching style will evolve and change and I should celebrate that.  I think my teaching style is starting to change, or at least the teaching style I am using currently.  I have 2 years… Continue reading The second album →

At the start of the semester for the course I TA, I get to wrap up the first week with a second semi-syllabus day, and cover some minor details that need covering but aren’t worth the instructor’s course time to cover. The material is mostly procedural, and very dry, things like how to get excused from the course for an interview so you don’t lose credit. One of the things I try to make abundantly clear to the students is that it is my intention to treat them as professionals, co-workers almost, but that I have certain expectations of them that they absolutely need to meet.

Overall I think they respond well to this. Inevitably even in a class of mostly seniors, they are not prepared for the notion that they will have to be proactive, I will not seek them out. I explain to them on this intro day, “tell me about issues when they happen so I can work with you” yet every class has a few students who wind up waiting until the days before grades are due to tell me about some computer issue that kept them from submitting things for the entire third and fourth weeks of the class and they need those points to make whatever grade.

It’s at that point I wind up being the mean guy in their eyes, because they want the grade they feel they’ve earned. (maybe there’s a conditioned behavior in there) But I won’t give in. I tend to stick very strictly to the classroom policies and become the mean guy who won’t budge.

I don’t necessarily enjoy denying the students the grades they want. But I also take the classroom environment very seriously, how is it fair to the students who followed policies I established (and have an attendance record for when I said them) to bend the rules “just this once” and what would that do to my credibility. So I guess that just makes me the professional mean guy, a role I think I am ok with, I just wish I didn’t have to deal with the disappointed students who don’t get the grades they feel they deserve.

At the start of the semester for the course I TA, I get to wrap up the first week with a second semi-syllabus day, and cover some minor details that need covering but aren’t worth the instructor’s course time to cover. The material is mostly procedural, and very dry, things like how to get excused from the course for an interview so you don’t lose credit. One of the things I try to make abundantly clear to the students is that it is my intention to treat them as professionals, co-workers almost, but that I have certain expectations of them that they absolutely need to meet.

Overall I think they respond well to this. Inevitably even in a class of mostly seniors, they are not prepared for the notion that they will have to be proactive, I will not seek them out. I explain to them on this intro day, “tell me about issues when they happen so I can work with you” yet every class has a few students who wind up waiting until the days before grades are due to tell me about some computer issue that kept them from submitting things for the entire third and fourth weeks of the class and they need those points to make whatever grade.

It’s at that point I wind up being the mean guy in their eyes, because they want the grade they feel they’ve earned. (maybe there’s a conditioned behavior in there) But I won’t give in. I tend to stick very strictly to the classroom policies and become the mean guy who won’t budge.

I don’t necessarily enjoy denying the students the grades they want. But I also take the classroom environment very seriously, how is it fair to the students who followed policies I established (and have an attendance record for when I said them) to bend the rules “just this once” and what would that do to my credibility. So I guess that just makes me the professional mean guy, a role I think I am ok with, I just wish I didn’t have to deal with the disappointed students who don’t get the grades they feel they deserve.