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.