I found out this afternoon that I am going to teach again on Friday. So, that's cool. It's not like I freak out and obsess over every sentence when I have to give a presentation/lesson, I do totally fine with only a couple days to prepare a lesson for 80 students. No big. So I am going to procrastinate by blogging about my teaching session last week, since that one actually went quite well, and the outcome of the lesson on Friday is yet to be determined, which makes me nauseous.
I had been talking to the professor for the communication skills class for about a week ahead of time as to what I would be teaching in her class (see, a week I can do. A week is a good amount of time). She gave me the notes/outline she had used last year on the topic she wanted me to present, which was communication styles. After looking at the course description and objectives, I received permission to also include a section on therapeutic communication, since it was included in one of the learning objectives for the course but not specifically addressed anywhere in the content. So I researched and created a new version of last year's notes on communication styles, and made a presentation on therapeutic communication from scratch. Because I like to know exactly what I am going to say when I am in front of an audience, this took me forever. I imagine if I am going to have a teaching career I will eventually need to get over this and learn to create a lesson on the fly should the need arise, but that day is not today.
As I mentioned before, the predominant teaching style for the lectures I have observed so far in Tanzania have been lecture-based, which I don't think is inherently bad, but sitting through a 2-hour lecture without any sort of break is pretty brutal. Plus, there is no way that A) my throat would make it through talking for two hours straight, or B) I could stand to listen to myself talk for two hours. Plus, I think my education professor would be very disappointed if I lectured for two hours. So I broke the lecture portion into two more manageable 20 minute chunks and prepared learning activities to reinforce the concepts discussed in the lecture. Great in theory, right? The execution was a little tricky.
First of all, I knew I would have to speak as slowly and clearly as possible, because while English is technically the language of higher education in Tanzania, not all of the students are confident in their English skills, and my accent is very different than theirs, making it difficult for us to understand each other at times. Of the negative feedback I received from students, almost every comment mentioned that they wished I had slowed down and pronounced things clearer. I had actually stopped the lecture many many times to try to gauge understanding and ask if I needed to speak slower or repeat something, but I think they are so unused to asking questions or requesting additional explanation that some students who were unclear on what I was saying just didn't pipe up, unfortunately.
On the other hand, the lecture took longer than I had planned for because some people DID ask for further explanation and asked questions, so that was good! But spending longer on lecture on the front end meant I ended up skipping or shortening the activities in the therapeutic communication section. It worked out though, as I would rather go deeper into one topic than skim over both topics, and I would also much rather have too much material than not enough.
For the learning activities, I had planned a role-play and then small group work. Getting two volunteers out of the 60 some-odd students in the class was like pulling teeth. After a few minutes of staring at each other, one girl eventually volunteered, but I couldn't get a second and ended up volunteering someone else. And then getting the other students to actively participate like I wanted them to took a LOT of prompting and encouragement from me. I felt like it was kind of a flop, but on the feedback I received from students, there were tons of positive comments about the role play, so I have no idea.
The small group work was pretty awesome though. Once they understood what I wanted them to do, they were all talking and participating and on-task, and afterwards, I felt like we had a good class discussion. So that was great, and I think they liked it. I mean, as much as you can like class work, I guess. It was definitely better than listening to me talk the whole time.
At the end we did a one-minute paper where I asked them to answer the questions "what is the most useful thing you learned today?" and "what could the teacher have done better or differently to help you learn the material?" Some of the answers were very insightful, and I received helpful feedback from both. I had quite a few students come up and introduce themselves to me in the couple days since, and several went out of their way to talk to me and tell me they enjoyed the lesson, which made me feel good. Overall, I think the session went very well. Now if only Friday's session can go as smoothly...
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