How I went about conducting my final session!
As students of the English Language and Literature Teaching course, we were required to conduct a teaching session in the presence of another professor. For this particular session I decided to combine a presentation that I was supposed to do for an elective paper that I had chosen for my sixth semester (the paper was Contemporary Literary Theory) and the topic that I had been given was that of Elaine Showalter and her contribution to Gynocriticism as part of the feminist criticism subtopic of the course.
I made use of two teaching methodologies for the purpose of this teaching session. The main one was the lecture method which I used during the presentation in class and I later used the second methodology which was that of flipped learning. I used the lecture methodology because I was expected to explain and present new theoretical topics to the learners and I felt that they would be best understood if taught through this particular method. As I did not complete the required amount of time during the session, I did a follow-up video by creating material for a flipped classroom session which I shared with my learners so that they could have a short revision of my previous session as well as try out a new activity that made practical use of the theories learnt in the previous lecture.
I started off by doing some research on the topic that I had to present in class as it was a topic that I had never encountered earlier. I created a presentation on the topic and I created an activity on ‘Quizzes’ (a website that allows you to make quizzes for your learners) through which I was able to understand how much the learners had grasped through my teaching session. As I was not able to complete the required amount of time during my teaching session, I used ‘Prezi’ (a website that allows you to create videos and presentations for your class) to create material for a session of flipped learning.
I created material for a flipped classroom in which I did a revision of the previous session for the learners and I also suggested an activity that they could try out based on my teaching session. In order to understand what the audience thought of my teaching session, I sent all my students a ‘Padlet’ page on which they could write comments with regards to my teaching, things like what they liked about my class and what they felt I could have done better.
The class in which I did my teaching session had approximately 20 learners and all of them seemed to be highly attentive during my class. My main goal was to be able to reach out to the learners and for them to comprehend at least a little bit about feminist criticism, especially feminist criticism that has to do with Elaine Showalter as well as the concept of ‘Gynocriticism’. The execution of plans was pretty smooth but there were a few issues that I encountered along the way. One of them was caused by the fact that I wasn't prepared to present on that particular day. There were other students who were supposed to present before me, but due to their absence, I was forced to present and because of that I wasn't very confident, but once the class began, I regained my composure and I was able to navigate through the session smoothly. The second problem was that I didn't realise how the lecture method would mean that the students would not have much interaction with me or among themselves, with that being said, it couldn’t have been helped due to the fact that I was expected to do a presentation in class. The third issue I faced was that I was not able to finish the minimum amount of time that I was supposed to, and hence, I had to do a follow-up session. From this observation, I think I can conclude that I miscalculated the time it would take for me to conduct the teaching session and I didn't realise that I would have to prepare some more in order to complete the given amount of time.
As it was my first time teaching in an actual class, there was a lot to learn. The learners were not my classmates from the ELLT course and the teacher from the Contemporary Literary Theory class was also present. I had to remember that although these learners were my classmates whom I had already known for almost three years, I could not think of them as my friends and I had to deliver the lecture in a manner that would be considered more formal than my usual interaction. I had to make sure that my session wouldn’t be boring so as to make sure the learners would continuously pay attention and I had to remember to ask the learners if they needed clarification on any part of my session.
It was a really interesting and helpful experience. Although there were a few unforeseen challenges and hurdles, I was able to overcome them during the process of teaching. Some of the skills I had acquired during the trial teaching sessions of the ELLT class were helpful while conducting and preparing the lesson. I was also able to use certain skills and applications that I picked up from my fellow ELLT course colleagues. On the whole, the experience was not half as daunting as I expected it to be, and I hope to get better at it along the way.