As day 2 lecture is about to start, I recognized a girl that went to Random Lake Middle School at the time when I graduated high school…I sat on the stairs and talked to her for a little bit and asked a few around her how their first days went and if they had any questions about the syllabus. One was confused about the break down of each textbook and the chapters associated with them, and just basically how to read the chart you made on the abbridged syllabus. Although I did talk with students, I ran out of material to sustain me for a full 7 minutes…I should work on that. I get the whole idea of not sitting until lecture starts. It helps make the TA’s look more approachable and could play a role in classroom engagement and connectedness.
It was about 5 mins. in to lecture when I noticed how the students were quiet and very attentive. I didn’t see one person texting or talking with their neighbor, writing notes, etc. Its really cool to see and interesting to watch all of the students from the back of the room. I did not use that perspective in my old TA position. [By the way, I hope I do not offend when I talk about last semester vs. this semester. I understand, respect and appreciate both perspectives. I just think its a natural thought process for me to grow and reflect upon past experiences, as I’m seeing the same course being taught with two different approaches. It kind of reminds me of when I took Cross Cultural Hum Dev and we had to read about a specific topic of our choice, but had to read it from two different disciplines. I LOVED doing that.]
Anyways, it was fun to see the students’ reactions when Gurung started calling on people. They couldn’t believe it…they would turn to their neighbor and whisper things like “is that really his name?” or “holy crap does he know my name?” It’s cool to see that from a professor because it makes lecture more personable, not to mention the accountability factor. Who needs clickers to enforce attendance when you have students who are paranoid that you know who they are and have the impression that the prof will notice if they are not there?! That was such a cool moment!
Gurung volunteered some class members to help him with a few demonstrations…this was very entertaining (especially the face marking thing). It demonstrated 1) how sensations on the forearm are way off, and 2) how hard it is to describe something without using the words that everyone knows. Although it was entertaining, I honestly think that it might make people even more nervous to be called on because they do not know what Gurung will do. Although this adds excitement, it might not be a good experience for the person that is being volunteered. What if the person did not want his face to be drawn on? When Gurung said let’s go to the face, now,” it was very funny, but when he did it 3 times, I felt like it might have lost its effect and the fact that he was drawing on some kids face could have clowded the message he originally wanted to convey. How does a prof get around this dilemma, though? I think the most ideal would be for a prof to ask “who doesn’t care to be drawn on?” Hopefully, some students would raise their hand…but what if they don’t? Then what? I guess a prof wouldn’t have to face that issue if they just chose someone instead. But of course, this allows room for insault or embarassment. But it’s a risk I think I’d be willing to take!
When going through love how Gurung talked about a few of the influential women of Psych…I’ve never been taught about those women and I appreciate the fact that he tries to get students to learn from an even, as unbiased as humanly possible approach.
1st Group work! This was interesting…I was curious to see how Gurung would go about orgnanizing this, but it worked well w/ the 3 sit-3stand method. As I went around, some of the students asked if they were on the right track, and I tried encouraging students to just be open and write about whatever came to mind (for the first question) and to not worry about being politically correct. Students seemed confused on the second part, and I had to think harder than usual (ha) to help them out with those. I think the slides on the different schools and approaches could have been broken up more easily to break it down better for them. In looking over the papers I collected, #2 seemed to have the most wrong answers. I don’t think it would hurt to review that again next Tuesday.
All in all, solid day! 🙂