i think i did ok. i felt like i was comfortable with the topic and that i covered everything that was relevant. meeting with dr. g beforehand and hashing through content with a figurative machete was extremely helpful since it is easy to forget that this is an intro class and even though there is a wealth of information at our fingertips, the most important question to ask is “what do they NEED to know at the intro level?” i kept thinking that i could have found more current research to present, but time is a factor.
using steve to demonstrate a little paranoia was not as effective as i’d hoped. i thought of it the morning of and didn’t have a lot of time to develop the storyline and it might have been more effective had i used him more throughout the presentation. steve told me he had fun in class even though he felt robbed of face time.
i gelt like my Rosenhan reference was a little weak and that i didn’t explain it well enough. i have have been able to tie that in with steve had i planned it better.
i did feel like the comparison piece between A Beautiful Mind and Meet Etta was pretty good. as i had hoped, most of the students had seen the movie, therefore showing it in class would have been redundant. had there been more time, i might have shown in immediately before Etta to give a more direct comparison between the dramatization of schiz and real life schiz.
time flew. at first i didn’t feel like i was taking long enough but when i was done, i couldn’t believe how much time had passed. i was nervous and shaky at the beginning, but calmed down as student responded. i felt more at ease as it progressed. i kept trying to keep the “conversation” going, as dr. g put it.
i don’t feel like i walked around enough, but not sure that was very important either. students participated nicely and i certainly did not feel like they gave me (or any of the other TA’s) any less respect than they give to dr. g. that was nice. they answered questions and wrote when they were “supposed to.”
i tend to evaluate myself more harshly and expect more every time i do something. all in all, i’m very satisfied with how i did and it was definitely all in the preparation. i spent a lot more time on it than i anticipated, but i wanted to know the subject thoroughly because for me, i can wing it better when i feel like i know a subject intimately and then i can even adapt mid-stride if i need to. i didn’t need to do that this time, but questions could have come from students and i wanted to be prepared.
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i thought the other TA’s did a phenomenal job and i was nervous to follow them. there were some “staging” things that i caught such as turning toward the slideshow and talking with back turned to the students. those are things that are learned over time though. everyone seemed well prepared and very intelligent. it seemed we all started out a bit nervous and ended up relaxing as time went on. i was surprised to hear that some of the other TA’s spent so much time preparing. i thought i did a lot, but i think a couple did twice as much as i did. throughout everyone’s presentations, i thought the students were respectful and considerate. the day everyone else did theirs, i found it helpful to pass out cards to students and move around a litte. i had no idea if i was going that day or the following tuesday, so getting the jitters out by humanizing the audience helped take away the scariness of an anonymous crowd. i think they may have even empathized with us a little.