i can emulate the behavior i know my students will need to succeed
Hi Julie,
Great plan you have set for yourself in terms of growing as a professional educator. If you can accomplish all the things you have mentioned you are going to reach your students and leave a legacy for years to come.
Keep up the good work!
Gary
Over the years I have discovered that I teach best when I can blend personal interaction, lecture, and active learning exercises. When I do this, my sessions are much more effective and productive. I would like to further develop this by establishing an excellent rapport with my students, establish a collaborative learning climate & employ competition and co-operation constructively among them.
Hi Michelle,
Well said. Encourage interaction between yourself and your students as well as their peers. This will help them to be able to analyze the content they are receiving and apply to their knowledge and skill base. This is the focal point of teaching.
Gary
I believe that teachers should spend a portion of class time listening to the students. This will insure that the students understand the content. Feedback is good. There should be time allowed at the end of each topic for questions. There is no such thing as a dumb question and all should be welcomed. As an educator I intend to include class participation into my curriculum, students will be graded on participation. Meaning they will have to stay alert and pay attention.
The techniques that I can employ to further develop, refine and enhance my intructional style is by allowing the learners to asked questions during lectures and encourage class participation that can enhance one's learning needs as a tool to succed in class.
Become a better listner to my student and gain more information about the topics I teach.
This will be my first teaching position, I will be a clinical instructor in the hospital setting. I feel that as an instructor it is important to be a good listener. Students come from many different backgrounds and it is important to treat each student with respect and dignity. I am precepting this weekend with another clinical instructor, so my style of teaching is not yet fully developed. I have attended many clinicals as a student and now that the shoe is on the other foot I will be bringing my many experiences with me.
Hi Tony,
That light bulb moment is why many of us are in teaching. Glad you get to experience it often and have developed your instructional skills to the point you are comfortable and confident of your classroom/lab abilities.
Gary
I find that one of the most important parts of instructing is to constantly assess the students' comprehension of the material. Each class is different in how they learn and I need to know if my delivery method is successful. I pay attention to how my students are behaving in class; when they are bored; when they are excited about the material. It's not always the material but whether or not I am adapting to their learning style.
If I sense that the class is not focused I will create a questionnaire for the students to give feedback at the end of each class. This helps me adapt my lesson plans by focusing on successful delivery and changing techniques that might not work well with this particular group of students.
I am in constant self-assessment mode and I've been able to develop many different instructional delivery methods over the years to adapt to many types of student learning styles. And with each passing year I've found that I can adapt to each new class more quickly than the previous.
I'm comfertable lecturing in front a class and had no problems following our exellent lesson plan. When it comes to teaching concepts or explaining theory of operation of automatic transmissions,that was my challenge. I had to come up with ideas and develope hands on methods and technics that would allow students to visually see movement and interaction of these components. It took a lot time and work, but if I may say so. Im very good at it. Is'nt it great when you see a little smrik on their face and they say, "ooooh I get it!! "
the instructor style is very important because this make student to injoy or to hate there class and if they injoied it they will have the most benifit, instructor style make the class as a movie either a good one you can injoy or a bad one that you hate
I'm in the first stages of learning the process. I'm going to empliment these rules or guides into my daily plans.
I find using humor,with information,as well as letting students share with one another.
Hi Robert,
Good plan for improving your instructional skills. Often instructors are so exhausted and/or happy that the phase is over they forget to reflect on what has happened in terms of the positives and negatives. Through reflection they can see how they can do things better, differently and more efficiently.
Gary
Sharing techniques with other instructors in a comparative manner.
One technique that all instructors should try and use to help themselves continue to develop is reflection. At the end of a phase, semester, course, or year sit down and think about it. What went right, what went wrong, what activities worked beyond your wildest dreams, what activities crashed and burned. There can be no learning without some reflection. Reflect on the last class and plan for the next one. So this way you will continually develop as an instructor.
Hi Truitt,
Avoiding annoying mannerisms is a constant struggle for public speakers. Once you are aware of them you can focus on eliminating them from your speaking flow. As you have said by slowing down you can get a better grasp of how you present your course content. Other things you can do is to video tape a class and them observe yourself. Sometimes painful though always informative. You can have someone you respect as an instructor sit in on one of your classes and then give you feedback. If you have an educational director or coordinator I would use that person.
Keep up the good work.
Gary
One of the problems that I have, is that I costantly use the word okay. Trying to guard against this habit, means that I have to slow down my rate of delivery and plan what I want to communicate to the students.
I am not Jack, but I have the same time issue- trying to keep current with my busy schedule. I do 2 things that help. I keep in touch with friends who are still in the field and ask about updates. I also keep in touch with industry representatives- although they are often sales people they always know about the latest and greatest technologies. Companies in my field often offer free web seminars on new techniques, drugs, etc... You may have to tolerate a slight sales pitch but overall they are usually informative and not too pushy. Barb
