Author: AMANDA Ten Haken

It is hard to believe that an entire semester has passed already! Reflecting on the semester as a whole, I see that not only have I developed, but the students have as well. I have grown primarily in my confidence. Having a group of students rely on you for answers and leadership really helps assure you that you do know what is going on! Leading review sessions, giving a short lecture, and just being a presence in class everyday lets the students know that I am someone that they can count on for information and help when and if needed. My confidence especially sky-rocketed after the lecture we were required to give. After that experience, I had the mentality of “WOW! If I can do that, I can literally do ANYTHING!”

From being “behind the scenes” I have come to a new appreciation of everything my professors do to prepare for class. So much time, thought and effort go into making an entire class period successful, that I have never really thought about all that needs to go into them. I have also learned what a pain grading can be and having been in the postiion to insert grades I have now have found myself to be much more patient with big classes and in awe of teachers who are able to get it all done in a day or two, corrected, posted and passed back.

The TA role gave me insight into many things I had never had cross my mind. When I skip class, what is the real reason I am skipping? Just knowing everything that goes on without many students awareness is probably the biggest thing I have taken away. Things that the professor focuses attention on, that most students won’t give a second thought. This experience was something I would never trade, it was probably one of the most challenging things I have done, but I have learned so many important things, including that I can push myself really hard and jump feet first into something completely intimidating and come out unscathed!

I was never one to get super nervous before getting in front of  a group to speak. I was always pretty confident when it came to those things. I was always involved in forensics, school plays and musicals, choir and even used to giving class presentations. Something was REALLY different about this particular presentation though. I had to TEACH 200 plus students about mental disorders that if some of them had first hand experience with knew more than I did. Group projects provide much more freedom. “This is the information that I found and the conclusions I drew from it.” Teaching is WAY different. The students are tested on the material that you provided to them. If you didn’t teach it right, come test time, it will show.

The actual lecture I felt went really well. I had practiced it days prior in the library (as people walked past laughing at me talking to my computer!) as well as once in front of about 4 people in Rose 250. I was so nervous the entire day leading up to it. The morning of I set 4 alarms to make sure that I woke up, and had my outfit picked out too. When I got to the lecture hall, I felt absolutely sick to my stomach. THIS IS THE END OF THE WORLD! Not to mention, we found errors in the order of the slides and changed them at the last minute, which also made me second guess everything else that went into the work of the slides.

I didn’t feel like I read from my notes either which was really shocking to me. I think that they provided a little security to make me comfortable enough to get through everything. I knew what my notes said, and I had heard myself say it out loud several times before. It was just a matter of getting though it with an interactive audience. I had several questions throughout my lecture, and quite to my surprise and disbelief, I could answer many of them with Dr. G. providing supplemental information.

I noticed several things going on in the class. I only saw maybe 1 or 2 people come late, and I don’t think anybody left early. The students seemed attentive and interested in the topics we were covering. I also noticed that that was all I saw. I was so distracted with the fact that I was giving a lecture, that truthfully, I wasn’t really paying much attention to the class as individuals and their behavior but rather as a group. I think that this is probably a good thing. If I would have paid attention to every last student texting, doodling and talking, I would have gone crazy and been filled with all of the same doubting thoughts I had experienced just minutes before. Overall, I am glad to have had the experience, but equally glad to have it over too!

Wow! The past two weeks have been jam-packed not only with exciting psych stuff, but other really awesome, non-psych stuff (at least for me!). Lately, it seems that attendance has been declining. We’ve been down to about 200 the last two weeks. (Sometimes less depending on the day) The week of Valentine’s Day was filled with relevant examples (the attractiveness studies for example) that were quite entertaining to the class. Thursday had a recap on attractiveness and the biology behind it and the TAs presented a neuron demonstration, using participants from the class. The demonstration went quite well and it seemed like the class understood the parts of the neuron pretty well by that point because it didn’t take too long for them to name them. The following week was drastically different. Tuesday, all of the pods met individually for review sessions for the first exam. It was a different dynamic for everyone. I was leading the room and the students were only with one sixth of the class. At first, it was kind of difficult getting participation (I forgot I had candy until half way through the session!) but after I began to offer up candy there was definitely an increase in participation. I heard a lot of positive feedback from the individuals in the pods, they thought it was beneficial to have sample questions and a big review like that. Lucky for me, I didn’t have the student that tried to argue with me over answers or prove me wrong! After the review session, I still got a lot of questions about the exam. I think it was mostly people worrying about the format, as online testing is something that many people are unfamiliar with, especially at an intro level. I had one particularly interesting student ask me a bunch of questions regarding the honor code. He was curious about how we were going to enforce it and how it can even be fair to the rest of the class. I think it will be nice to fall back into a regular routine for the next couple of weeks leading up to spring break.

I have been noticing a decrease in attendance for this week. On Tuesday there were only about 200 people of the 250 present. The Packers winning the Super Bowl and possibly the fact that every in-class assignment has been on Thursday could be to blame for people brushing class off. On Tuesday, most of the class period was spent tying book knowledge to real life. By making the material important to their own lives, students are more likely to listen. Using the same examples over and over again (as I have witnessed in other classes) gets boring. Thursday was a very interesting change of pace. Dr. Gurung came to class to set up the documentary and announced to the class that he wasn’t going to stay for the whole thing. I was a little shocked by this and spent the rest of class watching the students to see what the impact was. I’m not sure if anyone left before the documentary was over, but there were people coming and going for the bathroom. I didn’t notice a lot of texting. I am curious if the people who were up and moving had already saw the documentary or were just bored and thought they could. For the most part, the class was paying attention, they laughed at the funny parts and were disgusted by the gross parts. While grading the assignment, I noticed a lot of my students are not really getting experiment versus correlation. Maybe a rapid-fire type review at the beginning of class would be helpful. Give very basic information regarding a study of anything and ask correlation or experiment. I remember this material being the second hardest thing to master in Intro Psych, right behind the neuron.

The second day of class, while fundamentally similar, had different elements to show that this will be a class worth your time. Dr. Gurung began class (and continued throughout) by calling out individuals by name to answer questions and make comments. In a lecture of 250 people, this is important. People think that he knows everyone after the first day and this causes them to be more accountable for showing up to class and doing the work. They are less of a face in the crowd. There were also an abundance of activities during the class. A candy exercise to show introspection elaborated the point of Titchner’s ideas. One student was called up to be drawn on, and the entire class participated in an exercise that had them thoroughly working with the material. By then end of class, it was obvious that this wasn’t going to be a typical “lecture” class. In all of my experience thus far at UWGB, I have not had a professor with that large of a class do that much class activity. Even in smaller classes, group work during class is hard to get. Again today, Dr. Gurung used the entire allotted class time to show that everyone’s time is valuable and that this is a class that IS going to go the full time. On the first day, it was made clear what the expectations for coming late/leaving early were. You just don’t do it. I was able to notice that very few individuals came late, and the couple that did, seemed to go unnoticed. Nobody left early or during the middle of class either.