Author: RACHEL COUGHLIN

As a student we go through life encountering a wide variety of “teachers”. Some may be unforgettable while others seem to put you in a constant nightmare. As I have matured into my college education the big question I have during class registration week is “what is the teacher like”. Although some adults think differently, we are here to get the most out of the large amount of money we are spending, not just to party. Like any other investment or purchase we would like our product (the classroom/teacher) to be a worthwhile experience and not a complete waste of 600 plus dollars. Having this mind frame going into my TA experience allowed me to take what I hope to get out of my classes and try to incorporate it with the teachers side of learning.
When taking all my past and current class experiences and comparing them to the Introductory Psychology course it opened my eyes to what successful teaching really is. Most of us have a predetermined theory to what makes a good teacher but usually it depends on your learning style. One of the biggest things I learned over this semester is that although it seems like an easy concept to incorporate and make available different learning styles for students. I remember learning in my psychology class in high school about how the brain works differently for each person and ways one can incorporate that into studying. The problem is not the studying it is the in-class learning environment.
During this semester every class I was enrolled in was a pure lecture course with exams and papers. Nothing else! As a TA I learned how teachers can these learning styles scattered around everyday lectures to tend to all students needs. I have only had a couple professors in college who chose to add a little more to lectures and class activities. From a students perspective it makes a huge difference because I for one need hands on or visual activity to help me understand or remember concepts, while textbooks and notes are very unsuccessful for me. It was a bittersweet moment when I realized the potential lectures could have if done correctly. Although it was interesting to see how Dr. Gurung used the variety of styles it was disappointing when I did not experience these during my own classroom encounters.
Learning styles are not the only things I learned. I was able to see how much truly goes into teaching behind the scenes. As a student I thought a teacher came to class taught us the material and then went home and graded papers/tests. While being a TA you get to see how one must prepare information and be extremely organized with time. I have also learned that planning is very important and very hard. There are so many variables that can affect the actual lecture come class time. This includes picking out a text book, writing goals, writing a syllabus,, and planning  each lesson. Picking out a text book is actually harder than it seems. One thing that I was really surprised about was the amount of students that contact the teachers for nonacademic subjects or issues. I don’t know if one sees it as often in other fields of study or maybe due to the professor being a psychologist they think it’s a way to get help. Overall the amount that professors have to deal with students on a day-to-day basis was shocking. I hope that all teachers are as open to helping students out as Dr. Gurung is.
This past spring was a semester that allowed me to grow as a student, writer, peer, and BLOGGER. I for one never successfully understood the concept and reason to blog until now. It is an extremely convenient way to get ones ideas and thoughts across quickly to a large group of people. From what I noticed it seemed to be a great too but I just could not seem to get myself to write. I always had a decent amount of notes after class and all I had to do was type them but I could just never get motivated to get on this thing. Face-to-face discussion seems so much easier to me than this but I thought it was a very interesting part of being a TA.
Surprisingly my favorite part of being a TA was doing study tables and meeting students outside of class time to go over material. One would think that the time and frustration that goes into that would be more gruesome than fun. It never seemed to feel that way for me. I was always thrilled to be asked and would get a huge boost of confidence when I was able to help them overcome a struggle. Along this line we also were to hold individual review sessions with our pods and  to do a small part of a lecture. If someone would have asked me how I think I would do in those kinds of situations I don’t think I would have had the confidence to say I’d be fine or even see myself accomplishing those tasks. I strongly feel that the small review sessions allowed us to get some respect for the students by showing them we know (for the most part) what we are talking about and we can actually help them.
I can honestly say I have done quite a bit of public speaking outside of school for board meetings, mission trips and athletic events but it is a totally different feeling when your standing in front of 250 judging peers. I never seemed to get that nervous in the past before speaking in front of people but while waiting my turn during class that day it was very eye opening. Although I thought public speaking was not one of my weaknesses it came to be a struggle in this situation.
Sadly this semester flew right by but thankfully I was able to take a lot from the TA experience. One of the biggest things that I noticed is the increase in my academic confidence. I will admit that growing up and still today I was never that A student so my motivation to push myself seemed to simmer over the years. During this semester I was able to realize that I do know the information and if I am able to help others work hard to understand and do well I should allow myself the credit and motivate myself to do the best I can not just what’s necessary.

I cannot believe that this semester is almost over already! It seems as though we just had our first Introduction to Psychology class last month. Sadly it came to an end last Thursday when the clock struck 12:20pm. It was a bitter-sweet moment for myself due to the excitement of almost being done with the semester but also sad that our TA experience is over. The ride to school was much more exciting than the ride home. This was something that i was definitely not expecting. It was most likely do to how well the last class period went.

This past Thursday was a great way to end the semester. The students were engaged and participating well. We had a somewhat decent turn out of student attendance. From my experience last lecture days are usually a 50/50. If the teacher is a good teacher or makes out the importance of the last day students will attend. Otherwise you see classes with barely half the students there. It would be interesting to ask students about the last day of lecture and what makes them or doesn’t make them go. Thankfully from what I counted we had 211/250 (85%) students attend. For a large class that seems very good and from what we were seeing in attendance the prior weeks is a step up. This increase in attendance could be from the material topic of disorders or maybe just the fact that it was the last day of class before their final exam. Personally I feel it was more the material because it is something that is extremely interesting to learn/talk about and somewhat easy to understand. It was a very good move on Dr. Gurungs part to save it for the end of the semester.

One thing i noticed was the amount of participation that occurred from different students during this lecture topoic. Many students that didn’t usually get involved seemed to be much more vocal and engaged. But the question I was curious about was whether this was due to the material or the chance that they became more comfortable in the classroom. If it was due to the interest in material then would it be more beneficial to put disorders in the beginning of the semester so these students participate early which could in turn possibly increase the likelihood of them participating more in the future?

Another thing I found interesting was the approach chosen for the teacher evaluations. We talked about it for a little bit during our last meeting and came to the conclusion that having the students fill them out in the beginning would be better than at the end. From what I noticed it worked as we were hoping and it seemed as though students took much more time than if it was at the end. I didn’t notice anyone not being able to finish or being upset with doing them before. We gave them an appropriate amount of time and since they knew there wasn’t really anything else for them to do I felt like a lot more students wrote than what I usually see. Again this could be due to the situation we gave them or possibly they all wanted to write more because they had stronger opinions on Dr. Gurung than what students have for other professors.

All-in-all it was a great lecture. It was cute to see the group of students at the end that wanted to get their picture with Dr. Gurung and then it turning into a group picture of all of us. I was really happy to read the positive feedback students have for us in the end. Gong into this experience I told myself I did not want to be that TA who was unmotivating or not an active member of the classroom. It was interesting to be a TA this semester and have a TA in other classes. It made me realize the small things I did had a large impact on the students. My TA did nothing over the semester. Never e-mail us or contacted us in any way. Had one review session and never lectured or participated at all with class lectures. It felt as if she was another student just coming to class everyday taking notes. I honestly don’t know if I would have realized all those weekly study groups I held for my pod and every couple weeks for the class would have been as big of a deal as it does when you see others not making that extra effort. Also I’ve tried e-mailing my TA and she never got back to me. I felt I was obligated to help them in any way and I would.

I wanted to just comment on the point opportunity given in class Tuesday. In a way its sort of a win-lose situation because you obviously want all students to succeed and do well but when they don’t a person is interested in finding out why. In this case we wanted to see whether or not their quiz score correlated with they Exam scores and can it be used to point out who possibly cheated.

While grading them I felt very disappointed in the amount of scores six and below. A person could definitely differentiate between the students whom knew the material well, sort of knew it and those who had know clue. There were about three questions that seemed to be more difficult but if a person thought about the answers they could easily eliminate incorrect answers to lead them to the correct one. Although I feel the quiz will definitely verify what we were hoping to find I am curious on if 5 minutes was enough time to think through some of the more difficult answers.

Although it was disappointing to see a lot of the low scores in the papers that I graded it was also relieving to see that there was a good chunk of students whom knew the material quite well.

In all honesty I think it was worth the in class time and it will be interesting to see what is found by comparing everything in the end. Im curious to see what people wrote on their index card and end of the semester survey.

Now that we are over and done with the lecture I feel it was a great experience even if it only lasted a few minutes. Although I would have to admit I was very relieved when Dr. G first decided that we weren’t going to do the in-class lecture but in the end I am glad we did it. Lecturing is one of the biggest jobs of being a professor and how can one miss that experience while being a TA. It was very convenient having the slides mostly finished for us so we could focus on the actual presentation part of it. Although a PowerPoint can make or break a lecture I don’t feel like that is what we were supposed to get out of the experience. Like Gurung mentioned during one of our meetings we have to make powerpoints for class projects so we should know by now what makes a good powerpoint slide and what doesn’t.

Going into the lecture I was not nervous about the actual speaking aspect of it but more on how we were going to organize where we stood, microphones, introductions, and a lot of the smaller things. I think these sort of issues or components frightened me more because they were out of my hands where my lecture area was in my control. All in all I feel like I did pretty good for speaking in front of a group that large for the first time but I did of course notice a lot of small errors on my part. One thing that disappointed me was the last slide with biological preparedness. I knew was I was planning on saying but I noticed some of my notes weren’t on the final powerpoint so I assumed the things I wrote weren’t necessary. I should have double checked with Gurung before class to make sure I was meant to cover that slide. Sadly it was a stupid mistake on my part but thankfully Dr. G stepped right in and picked up where I left off. Other than that I felt like I did not have that many other issues. One thing I was extremely happy with was the student participation. It worked out just as I hope and people were very engaged and outspoken. One thing that took me a little off guard was when I was asking for people to give me examples of some phobias they had and one of the students sitting in the front said he was scared of apples. Shocked at first I curiously asked what about apples does he not like. When he said he did not like how people bite into them the class began laughing. I felt it was on my part to make not only him feel comfortable but also to make the class understand that it is small and different things in our daily lives that can be effected by phobias. I’m not sure if it was a smart choice on my part to ask him about his phobia but even though it was an awkward situation I tried to get the students attention away from it and onto what was important.

At the end of every TA lecture I felt they all did a good job! I definitely felt bad for Martha and the microphone problem. She did a wonderful job overcoming that obstacle and not allowing it to make her nervous or uncomfortable. Now that we are getting almost done with the semester it seems to be bitter-sweet. It’s going to feel great to have summer but I am going to miss the wonderful learning experience I had while being a TA.

I went into class today excited because of the great involvement and attitudes the students had. But I’d be lying if I said it was anywhere near the same. They were extremely quite and I would try to lighten the mood by making small little comments or jokes. They would laugh and be involved one moment and then completely silent the next. Some key issues might have brought on this different experience. It could have been me or my powerpoint, the fact that its almost spring break and their exam isn’t until after, or they just didn’t know/understand the material. Most likely it was a mixture of all factors but personally I felt as though the group I have are not shy, timid students they all were extremely vocal so from my past experience with them I am making the assumption that they just do not know the material well enough in general to feel comfortable being vocal.

Some different things that happened was being a  little short on chairs so two people had to sit right up in front, the classroom is more of a trapezoid shape with the projector screen on the wall with the smallest side. This caused problems because people on the ends were only able to see half of the screen. We tried various way to make the situation better but sadly the only thing we could do was project it onto the wall. Then because it was on a dark background it was hard to see so we shut off the lights which made the environment very dark. Thankfully there were two windows to allow light so people could see their stuff. Surprisingly though when the lights were off people tended to be more active and vocal in discussion. We ended up finishing class at 12:15 pm and a few people stayed after to go over some individual questions/comments.

Overall I thought I had a good turnout and the review went smoothly but they have a lot of studying to do.

A few people emailed me to schedule a time to go over the material or help them. We decided on the time 3:30pm in the Coffee House tomorrow. If anyone had students that the know wanted a little extra help feel free to let them know.