Author: TONYA FILZ

This semester as a TA I learned so much not only about teaching, but also psychology. There is no better way to solidify something I learned a couple years ago now, than to teach it to others. It’s amazing how fast it comes back. I can honestly say before I was a TA that I had no clue how much planning, thought, and effort goes into the successful teaching of a class. Seeing all of the behind the scenes action peaked an interest I never knew I had. I never knew that I would be interested in pursuing teaching in psychology.

Before this semester all I saw was the part of psychology that originally drew me in, which was counseling/clinical psychology. Now I see another area of psychology that holds an interest. This also caused me to re-evaluate the type of graduate program I wanted to look at. I originally thought that I would want to go for my Psy. D. and even researched programs that I was interested in, and now my summer project is looking for Ph. D. programs.

I’ve said on multiple occasions that this semester is the first semester I actually feel like a psychology major. It’s weird, but there’s no way to describe it. The combination of taking more upper level classes, and being helping teach a lower level class just really drove the point home for me that this is where I belong. I also said multiple times during the semester, how lucky am I that I get to wake up everyday and study a subject that I absolutely love. I never really felt that way before this semester.

I will also say that this semester as a TA definitely helped my confidence in my ability in psychology as well as public speaking. I definitely feel more competent in psychology as well, having to come up with alternate explanation when my pod or students in a review session didn’t understand something helped me dig deeper than just repeating a definition. I also had some previous public speaking experience, but nothing compared to this semester. Having to talk about psychology was more nerve wracking than just leading a meeting, I think because I put greater importance on psychology and being accurate.

I would definitely recommend the TA experience to everyone who is able to fit it in their schedule. For me, I had no clue that I might be interested in teaching until I became a TA. I also liked that I was able to develop a relationship with my 50 students, it really helped me feel like I had some allies while I was giving my lecture. And it was nice to be able to have some conversation before/after reviews, before class, and in other classes that I had with them. I think the pod feature really helped students feel like someone notices whether they were there or not, and someone was able to focus on them and their questions without 200 other people there. I know for me it can be difficult to ask a question in front of 250 people.

This was a game changing semester for me in large part because of my TA experience. I am so lucky to have been able to experience being a TA, and will definitely value the experience for grad school and beyond.

Today was the last day of class for Intro to Psych.  A little surreal for me personally.  I feel like I just got the hang of being a TA and the responsibilities, a nice change from not knowing what I was supposed to be doing in the beginning of the year.  More on my development and experience as a TA in my final blog.

I like that we ended things with therapy, and the positive, healing side of psych today as a lecture.  For example the ability for people with OCD to change their brain structure just with thought alone.  An excellent way to inspire and to end on an upbeat note.

Aside from the content, I thought that the last blurb about how students can take what they learned in the class and apply it to whatever they want to go into.  It’s inspiring to think that students may actually be able to use a Gen Ed in their lives.  I’m confident that if more professors understood the purpose of a Gen Ed, and made an effort to tie the class to issues relevant to the lives of the students Gen Eds wouldn’t have the stigma they sometimes do.

I also like that the evals were in the middle of class, even though it took a decent amount of time away from the content of the lecture.  Students were more likely to give us feedback if they didn’t feel they were going to get out early.  Though feedback can be scary, I’ve learned it can also be a confidence boost.  I think it would be really interesting to see how the ratings stacked up, especially since this is a different point of view from what I’m used too.  I know how I would have rated the class – all positive – but I also know that I have a different vantage point.  I’d also be really interested to see feedback on TA’s as well as Learnsmart.

The beginning of the class was also nice because it gave all of us a chance to laugh at Frued… And afterall, is there anything better than starting off the day with a good chuckle with Freud?  I think not.

I definitely have the feeling that I’m going to miss some of the students I’ve grown to know, and spent a semester with.  I can only hope I’ve taught them as much as this experience has taught me.

Until next time.

Today was the day that I had been most excited about, and at the same time most anxious about – Lecturing to 250 people.  That being said – today was AMAZING!  Being able to lecture to an intro class (even if it was only for a couple minutes), answering questions, interacting with the class, I loved all of it!  I was quite nervous beforehand… especially when practicing last night.  In fact lecturing to my desk, and thinking about having to lecture in front of 250 people definitely induced an asthma attack last night which resulted in an inhaler break from my practicing.  I think having that practicing and the susequent reaction the night before bruised my confidence going into things, if I had to do it again I would probably be better off just typing up my notes and not rehearsing.  Once I got up to the podium the nerves faded quickly.  I’ve been trying to lay off the over-preparedness, but it was difficult to restrain with the importance I put on today.

After the lecture I walked to have lunch with a friend I don’t think the smile could have been slapped off my face.  I had such an amazing time up there lecturing.  I felt like I fit in the position well.  I’m also really glad I chose not to use the mic; for me, just looking at the mic made me nervous – especially after seeing all the technical difficulties over the whole semester and immediately before I got up there.  Also this afternoon once I got to the commons to meet my friend, I saw a student from class and he said, “Hey, great job today!”  Which only added to the rush I already had from today.  I’m more sure than I have been all semester that I would really enjoy being a professor someday.

I would say today went a million times better than expected, and was a perfect addition to my literature review that I’ve been working on for the semester.  Coincidentally I finished my paper on undergraduate TAs last night as well.  I didn’t know how valuable of an experience being a TA was until I experienced this whole semester.  And now with less two weeks left, and the mini-lecture done, my paper done, it’s a little bitter sweet.  I’ve become so involved with being a TA this semester, learned so much, and grown immensely as a student, and also become so interested in my research – I kind of don’t want it to end…

Last week I held study tables.  I wasn’t expecting anyone to show up, but low and behold one of the students from my pod did indeed show up.  She wanted to go over material because she received a D on the last exam.  I asked about the first exam and she said she got a B on the first exam, but the review session in class helped a lot, and she studied more.  With the last exam she didn’t study as much on her own, and didn’t attend a review session.  I asked about learnsmart, and she said that she hasn’t been using it as much as she should.  This exam she plans on using learnsmart at least 5 minutes a day to help study before the exam gets here.  We then moved on to the personality material we had covered up to that point (everything but psychodynamic).  I first asked if there was anything in particular, and she said just kinda everything sounded the same.  So from there I helped her make a flow chart separating out all the different characteristics of each.  She really seemed to like the idea, and catch on.  I’m hoping helping her with this visual representation will help her to be more successful on the next exam.

What the student that is in my pod said, along with what everyone else that I contacted in class, I’d say learnsmart is being under-utilized, but yet students know they should be using it.  So what’s the hold up?  If so many students say they should use it, that they find it helpful, and that it is fun, why not use it like it’s intended?  Is it because they aren’t used to having that resource available in other classes?  Because there are no strict due dates?  I think it would be interesting to do a survey of this at the end of the semester too.  Just to get some more organized data on this.

Yesterday attendance was low.  It was snowing, and I do know areas around GB did get 6-7 inches of heavy snow.  My friend who drives in from Suamico had trees down in her driveway which caused her to be late to school.  I think the weather was definitely a factor, especially since some commuters do drive a long distance.  I think another possible factor is the fact that spring break came earlier than in the past this year so students might start becoming fatigued.  I know I had two exams this week, and was wiped most of the week.

After all the effort put into a lecture I can see how it would be disheartening for students to no show.  With the group activity attendance was both positively and negatively reinforced.  Positively for the students who came (adding points to increase attendance), negatively (taking away the opportunity of point for the students who did not come to increase attendance).  I think this is the best of both worlds.  We want students to want to come to class, not to come to class for a grade.  There should be some reward for coming to class.  Is doing better on the exam than those who didn’t come a reward?

It’s hard to expend so much effort into making class better, more interesting, more engaging, more educational.  But at the end of the day, as hard as it is.  The goal of education is learning.  If some students learn better from a book than a lecture and can still pull an A or B on an exam, is it really beneficial for them to be in class?  The one loop hole in this is that part of the lecture is gaining information, practice, and experience with the subject material.  Part of the exams are from the lecture as well, so truly motivated students will come even if they may feel that they learn better (or can learn just as much) from the book.  Though I believe truly (not perceiving that one is) learning better from a book, is a rare if not non-existent occurrence.

At the end of the day professors, and TA’s alike want students to want to come to class just as they want students to want to learn the material.  If steps like pedagogical research, keeping up to date on current research in the field, making lectures engaging, incorporating different learning styles into each lecture, varying the pace and content of class time have already been taken it’s hard to say what else could be missing.

Aside from the post-spring break fatigue that seemed to be plaguing not only the class but also the TA’s this week was a pretty good week.  Tuesday Dr. Gurung did a review to kind of get everyones brain back in the swing of things, I think this was equally as helpful for the TA’s.  We also did a group activity on Tuesday working on classical and operant conditioning, which I thought I understood fairly well.  Apparently I didn’t know it as well as I thought I did because in one of the examples when asked about by a student I explained the theory right, but lead the students to the wrong answer.  I didn’t realize this until after class when talking to the other TA’s.  I realized I also most likely made this mistake in my pod on a similar example.  Once I realized the mistake I made I was almost to the point of tears with feeling that I had somehow damaged my pod and their psychology education for life, when I realized that this was one small part of one big class so most likely they are not damaged for life.  During today’s review session I did go over the example with the toilet flushing again, this time with the correct answer, since 2/3 of the students are in my pod.  The students in my pod seemed really forgiving.  I thought that students would discount me as a TA if they realized I had made a mistake.  I realized that TA’s aren’t perfect and don’t know everything which is probably a good realization to have!  Definitely another reality check in the world of being a TA.

Thursday’s class we covered memory.  I sat in back for this class, and noticed that one of the students who seemed to be uninterested at first (i.e. not taking notes, leaving class early, texting, etc.) was taking notes, and though he texted a little bit during class, he for the most part paid attention.  Jared was in a seat not making off the cuff comments, falling asleep, playing with his phone excessively.  This made me wonder, when did this change in at first troubled students take place?  How does student’s attitudes, value of class time change as the students progress through the semester?  This line of thought really intrigued me, and it was really rewarding (even as a mere TA) to recognize this change.

Today I held a review session which 3 people showed up to.  I was a lot less nervous.  Two of the three students I know from my pod, and are probably the students that I know the best in the class.  It was a nice relaxed setting and they actually asked really good questions about the material.  They also, just before the review session started, asked about psychology as a major and about my experience, my classes and things like that.  It was really nice being able to inform them about different options with psych, and what I like about it.  I’m really glad they asked, and that this class means something.  It is one of the best feelings to mentor a student, and to help them learn about psychology.  It’s also pretty cool to be a role-model.

Aside from really good questions, the review session went a little long as discussion got derailed a couple of times, I guess that was expected holding a review session on a Friday afternoon.  I told them 1 hour in they could leave if they wanted otherwise I would stay and we could get through the memory chapter review, they asked how many slides left, at the time we had 12.  We got through the last 12 and ended at 1hr and 15 minutes.  And we all left feeling a little bit better.  The two girls from my pod made kind of a crucial error during the review session, one of them knew conditioning better than the other and slipped, “That’s okay, we can work on it together.”  I looked at them, not knowing what to say, and said, “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”  How do I confront the students I know best out of all the students in class?

In other news this week, I got an e-mail from someone in my pod who missed the day before spring break, she asked how to go about getting notes.  I responded with a brief e-mail, and said the easiest way would be to contact a class mate, however if all else fails we could set up a time and go over what we covered.  This was on Wednesday that she e-mailed me, and I hadn’t heard from her after that.  I sometimes forget that students, especially young students, don’t know that asking class mates is the best way and isn’t that hard.

In other news work on SoTL has begun.  I’m really excited to really dig into the research and start looking at what the data says about the experiences I’ve had over this semester.

Until next time!