Prepare a lecture? Sure I can do that…

When I first had the thought that is the title of this blog, there was more sarcasm involved.  At the very beginning of the semester, I knew that this was one of the tasks that I had to complete for this course, and at the beginning of the semester it was far from my mind, and then, it showed up.  From the second we finished our discussion, chose our topics, and were given our instructions, I was nervous, and I felt slightly overwhelmed, not knowing exactly where to start.  This project was unique to my college career, I have had presentations before, but I viewed this as more of a teaching process than just a class presentation.  After reading the chapter in the book, many times, and second guessing every word I placed on the slides, I finally was comfortable with my section of the lecture, yet I was still preparing what I was going to say the morning of the lecture.

Although I was still tweeking my lecture on the day of, I practiced the lecture three times, and no times were in front of people.  As I discussed this theory with the other TA’s, I suddenly panicked that I was under prepared.  Around the time I started talking to other TA’s was the time I began to get very nervous.  And my nerves reached their highest peak when we were standing inside of the classroom, and waiting.  Once we finally started our lectures, I started to calm, until Amanda went, and my nerves began all over again.

I felt confident it my topic, what I was discussing, and the information I had planned to share.  However, by the time it was my turn to present, I knew that we were behind on time, and I hadn’t planned on a slide to delete.  As I began discussing my topic, I felt myself going very fast, and when the student asked me to repeat my last statement, it was more reassurance that I needed to slow down.  After my first slide, I took a deep breath and gave myself a quick pep-talk to get me through the rest of the slides.  I know I went fast due to my nerves, I also knew I had a time limit to adhere to.  Before I started talking to the class, I thought the 6-7 minutes was going to be forever.  Once I started my discussion, and became very comfortable in front of the room, I wished I had more time.  While standing in front of the class, I suddenly felt like I could give an entire lecture no problem (now that I’m sitting away from the class, I’m not so sure of this fact quite yet….).

I felt like my topic had very little class interaction points, or video content to add.  I had another class interaction on helplessness theory, however I knew we were short on time, and I cut it during my lecture ( I did make a point to make sure that the students understood, by encouraging the head nod).  I felt if I had more time I would have been able to encourage more class interaction, and a different topic would also have more information to share.  I also feel like some of the other topics are of more interest to the students, and have more information.  It may be beneficial to have those take more of the lecture time, and the topics that are less interesting/have less information to take less time in the lecture.

I was pleased with the fact that although I brought my notes to the podium, I did not need them.  There were a few times that I looked  up to the screen to ensure that the words showed up, and I was on track, but I did not need to look at my notes.  I was very confident before I walked into the room, and I knew that I had my lecture down, and I was confident in what I was saying.  Once I walked into the room though, my nerves tricked me into thinking I forgot all of my information.  Thankfully, that was not the case 🙂