My Teaching Experience

Teaching was one of the more exciting and cool things I had to do all semester. It was particularly great because of the people I got to work with. Sammi and Mack were fantastic to work with, and I feel like the three of us were able to play off of each other really well that the students couldn't help but pay attention to what we were saying and participate. We met the day before for two hours and went over our lesson plan to make it was a success. We decided that it would probably be most effective if we broke it up into three parts: Introduction, Explanation, and Application. That's probably a formula for teaching somewhere, but I did come up with off the top of my head and I was feeling pretty good about it. We decided that within each part of the lesson we would break it up so the students would never get bored with one person talking.

Sammi started things off by introducing the topic of research since that's what their class curriculum called for. She explained it really well and gave a nice introduction to what research is and why it's important. She then handed it off to me and I asked them a whole bunch of questions to get them involved. I asked them what they were interested in and how they learned about that interest. We had a girl that talked about her interest in dance. I asked her where she learned to dance and he mentioned that her mother was a dancer and that she learned from her at an early age, then went on to take dance lessons. She also watched films and tutorials on the internet on sites like youtube to better understand dance. I asked her where else she could learn about dance and she said in class and a few others talked about books, magazines, and websites on the internet as sources for learning. Once we had made the talked about all of these places as possible learning sources we told them that doing all this was research. And that they learned about the things they enjoy doing by doing research on that topic. It was mostly to make the point that research can be fun. After this short introduction we headed into the explanation phase.

There was some crossover between the explanation and application parts of the lesson in the way that we approached it. Both Sammi and I explained why research is important and how we can effectively do research, but we also tied it into our story for change this semester and how research influenced our choices in how to portray our social issue. I told the class about corruption and how I had to research that issue and what I did to apply my research. Sammi did the same thing with feminism. I was quite surprised at how intently the class listened to this part as it could've felt a little boring. We then tossed it over to Mack and he stole the show with his story for change. And a little shout out to him for changing the content of his story for change to fit the maturity level of the people we were teaching. We did talk about it, but the fact that he was willing to change the video from graphic intense deaths to Disney deaths was very respectable. He's a good man.

Once we sucked them in with the video we went into the application phase where we had them apply what they learned. We asked them to remake or change the ending to a story whose ending they didn't like, and to do so in a creative manner. It could be a drawing, a short written change, origami, or whatever they decided to do. We had some interesting changes for sure, but overall they were great. I was impressed at some of the changes that were made as well. One girl had Rapunzel become friends with her fake Mother instead of having her fall out the window to her death. I thought that was respectable and realistic.

Now as a whole I thought the teaching experience was wonderful. We had great participation throughout the entire lesson, and the kids were more than happy to share their thoughts. I felt like they actually learned something as well and we were able to help them see the importance of research and how great it can be. The second we said that watching films can be an effective way to research they were sold. A few kids came up to me after the class and said how much fun they had learning about research and what we had taught. I also feel like we were successful in our activity. It was a little tricky coming up with something we could do in 15 minutes with everyone, but it worked out just fine and I think they got the point.

This is something that I would love to do again, and I have to give another shout out to my partners Mack and Sammi. They had some fantastic ideas that worked seamlessly in the lesson and between the three of us I feel like we came up with an effective way to teach and get our message across.