Blog 8

So far, I only observed my “boss” (I’m her TA), who is now teaching the class I was taking two semesters ago. At that time, the course was taught by a professor with a lot of expertise in this particular area and many years of teaching experience. My professor is fairly young and joined the kinesiology crew a couple of years ago. Hence, I was curious about her teaching style and whether she might have incorporated anything new into her lecture that we didn’t have. I was pleasantly surprised to see her teach in a very interactive way and use her famous humor to lighten up the lecture. She also provided the students with information and a hands-on experience that was not part of the tedious strictly theory-based book. Interestingly, this part of the lecture provided me with some valuable information for my thesis.

Although I was observed by two peers, I only received feedback from one. Based on her notes, she was quite impressed with what she saw. However, I’m not sure what impressed her more, my teaching or the material I was teaching that day. After giving a quiz, I was instructing the students in how to use electromyography (EMG) to measure muscle activity. For someone who is not familiar with biomechanics, watching this kind of hands-on lecture can be pretty exciting. Anyway, her suggestion to put the quiz questions on a Power Point rather than reading them to the students may be a good idea. Although they can all hear me, not all students seem to comprehend orally presented questions equally well. Being able to see and read the questions may thus be helpful and raise the overall grade of the quizzes a bit.

Blog 7

I’m kind of frustrated! This whole class is geared towards becoming a classroom teacher, but no one has ever asked me if I really want to become one. As I pointed out in my teaching philosophy, I’m dedicated to my students’ learning and enjoy passing on my knowledge to them. But just because I’m a TA doesn’t necessarily mean that I want to spend the rest of my professional career in a classroom. My goal is to become an ACSM certified clinical exercise specialist and combine it with my knowledge as a physical therapist.

I have to admit though, that being a therapist also involves being a teacher. Many tasks that are expected from a classroom teacher are also required from a therapist. For instance, I’ll have to identify short-term and long-term goals, prepare therapy lessons, and come up with a test to assess my patients’ progress. Thus, writing learning objectives and SMART goals as well as the lecture about how to assess student learning were not lost. Furthermore, effective time management and involving the patients in their healing process are as important in the health setting as they are in the classroom. Hence, the strategies for time management (i.e. using a daily time sheet) and organizing a classroom are of great value to me. Finally, as a visual learner, I always assumed that most patients learn the activities from my demonstrations and hands-on help. Well, the learning style activities in this class clearly taught me that some individuals may benefit from additional, written explanations. Other activities such effective grading, improvement of student writing and reading, and peer teaching observations may improve my performance as a TA; however, I don’t see much relevance for my future work as a therapist.