A number of things stood out to me in the micro teaching session. Firstly, differing levels of knowledge within a classroom setting and how this can effect a student’s experience. I found that it is fine for there to be varied levels of knowledge for a specific topic, but when working in a group it’s a good idea to have at least one student who is confident in that particular area to help other students.
Secondly, I felt the tendency to help students get to the answers and offered bread crumbs of information to guide them. I think this can be helpful, but it might also be worth taking a step back and let students figure things out and make mistakes–it might be a good learning experience for them.
I think the teaching session I devised was a bit of a risk and I knew this going into the class. I saw the micro teaching session as an opportunity to see what would happen if I gave this degree of agency to the class, I don’t think that it paid off completely and I felt a bit uncomfortable seeing that some of my colleagues were uncomfortable. At the same time, I got the sense that there was an appreciation for my honesty of not knowing what all the answers were for the given task, as well as an appreciation for providing a handout that helped to structure the class.
Tim said something at the end of class which stuck with me. Something along the lines of: teaching is finding out what you’re good at and doing that thing better.
Houman’s micro-teaching session was fantastic! Through OBL we engaged in a group activity which was fascinating. I believe the power of the session which he planned + delivered compelled us to explore physical products with such freedom. The conclusion is where I about open + closed tasks. His confidence in knowing some of the questions he had asked as well as not knowing all, opened my thinking to the sheer enjoyment of ‘exploring’. Thank you for my learning, Joshua Masih.
Hi Houman, it was great you tried something new in microteaching. The sense of adventure was tangible; just wished we had a little more time to ‘cotton on’ what good investigative strategies might be in a discipline none of my group knew much about.
Really enjoyed handling the catalogue and the different papers – the visceral sense of touch very much kept me in the investigation.
You telling us that you didn’t know the answers to some of our questions set up a very interesting dynamic; by refusing to assume the role of an expert you gave us permission / empowered us to follow our own path in our groups. The timing of your interventions for our group was perfect, just moving us along a bit when we hit a dead end.
Thank you for a very valuable experience! Best wishes, Ulli