I want to take the time now to blog my initial reactions to the lecture before I forget any of it.
The questions we’re supposed to answer are: How did you feel it went? What did preparing this teach you about teaching?
How I feel it went (both preparation and day-of):
I was incredibly anxious going into this – a blend of both excitement and nervousness. I was confident I knew the material and had really prepared my section to the best of my ability, so that was not a concern of mine. I was, for the first time, more concerned with the students in the class rather than my own performance. I knew I’d be fine. I knew my stuff – I read both books pretty in-depth in order to really understand the topics well enough to answer any detailed questions. I was happy that I was able to come up with some engaging activities on my own – although they ended up being pretty much what was expected (i.e., I thought of both Copycat and As Good as it Gets on my own, but ironically, the clips were already on tape!).
Before I started talking, I noticed that my first slide had a picture on it I hadn’t seen – so that is why I asked you if it was the right slide show (I was a little concerned at that point). In hindsight, I realize that question could’ve been misinterpreted.
Anyway, I feel it went as well as I could have hoped. I knew I wasn’t going to be very mobile – I used the podium as my comfortable base and kind of went from there. However, it’s very natural for me to speak with my hands, be expressive, and make eye contact with my audience anyway – so I wasn’t necessarily worried about that. My only concern with me standing behind a podium is that could have diminished the perception of my accessibility (as it put me behind something and sort of “cut off” ties to them). I don’t think it had too large an impact, as I got quite a few questions and a good amount of involvement.
After each section, I made sure to ask if anyone had any questions. My rationale behind this was multifaceted. First of all, the repetition drills in that they are welcome to actually ask me questions. While no one had any questions for the first two topics, they were much more comfortable asking questions after the third slide.
Second, I had four different disorders to actually cover (as opposed to being really in-depth with one or two), so I wanted to make sure the material was understood before I moved on to something completely new. I believe it worked, because they really only asked me questions about material on which I expected questioning (i.e., OCD and PTSD).
As for my ability to answer questions – I think that went very well. There were one or two stumpers, and while I could’ve answered the PTSD question if I would’ve taken more than 5 seconds to think about it, it was better that I didn’t take more time to think because we really would’ve been hard-pressed for time otherwise.
On another note, I was very pleasantly surprised when they laughed at my lame little attempt at a joke (when I said that it was ironic I was covering Anxiety Disorders, as I was quite anxious). That really eased my nervousness and allowed me to be really comfortable.
I was SO surprised at how comfortable I felt up there. I’d like to think that it’s because I know this material and truly enjoy it, but I really think it was both my attitude (I went in just thinking – “Whatever Josh, you’ll be totally fine”) and the vibe of the room. My comfort translated into the ability to even go “off script” (I usually have everything I want to say written out) – I was able to come up with a couple additional examples for OCD and PTSD that I did not have before. My explanation of agoraphobia was also sort of on the fly (adding that it displays the evolution of the psychological perspective…totally last minute thought there!).
Random note: I hope it was noticed that I did what I could to stress the severity of Panic Disorders…after watching some people’s reaction to Copycat, I wanted to make sure it was said that these sorts of things are not funny – they’re awful and distressing for the people experiencing them.
Also, there were a surprising amount of people in class today! It seemed like a lot more than in the past couple classes. Maybe it’s because I was paying more attention to that…or maybe people were more centralized due to our “reserved” seating. And speaking of reserved seating – that’s exhibit A of why Mandy is freakin’ fantastic (so funny, that woman!). More on my fellow TAs – everyone. did. GREAT. I’m so proud of our group and very excited to see what Trudi does with the schizophrenia section. Everyone’s energy and seriousness about the topics at hand was great. And kudos to Katie for being able to handle the distraction of me and Trudi running around collecting note cards. (I felt really bad about that!)
What this experience taught me about teaching:
This really gave me the insight into what kind of preparation and daily stress professors experience. It is NOT easy coming up with real life examples, interesting and relevant clips, and different ways of explaining one thing. And you never know what someone is going to ask, so that adds a whole different dimension!
Learning how to identify what is and is not important was a skill I knew I needed to work on – and as a teacher, that is absolutely crucial. You can’t be overwhelming your students with irrelevant information, and I tend to get nervous sometimes and just include a bunch of random info that isn’t needed. This experience allowed me to pinpoint the important things and really prune out the stuff I didn’t need. I really liked that.
I think the most salient lesson is the preparation. I don’t know if I’m being “underreflective” or whatnot, but that’s really the thing I’m taking away from this whole experience. To be engaging, informative, and interesting – you have to be properly prepared to present the material. This is especially important if your aim is to make the material understandable (I have my doubts about some professors and the presence of this goal sometimes). It took me about 2 1/2 hours just to figure out how to get the slides to my liking and then another 20-25 minutes to prune everything out. It’s a time consuming job, preparing a lecture! I’m just grateful I had 5 lovely co-TAs to alleviate the pressure of doing a 75-minute lecture!