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"I teach so my students can learn; not to prove to them they haven't." Sarah Tranum
"I teach so my students can learn; not to prove to them they haven't." Sarah Tranum
OT is a hands on field, so we do everything we can to make learning fun and engaging. Learning starts with building trust and relationships with students and is enhanced by demonstrating and practicing, encouraging risk taking and creative problem solving, displaying professionalism skills, taking things outside when possible, laughing along the way and celebrating accomplishments! This is how we do it in OTA! (see pictures in more detail with captions at bottom of this page).
Learning was never easy for me; teachers never took the time to understand how I learned. So I had to learn to teach myself, which I did. This lifelong exercise, born out of necessity, helped me understand my learning style and made me keenly aware that there are lots of strategies to meet the learning needs of students. Because of that I believe it's important for the success of students to understand themselves and how they learn. If they know that, and if the teacher knows it too, it's easier to create opportunities for students to learn and demonstrate their knowledge in ways that work for them.
With that said I tend to be very fluid when I teach so I can easily modify how I'm teaching to meet the unique needs of my cohorts. This is both a strength and a weakness. Being able to read the room and modify a lesson on the fly is not an easy feat. It comes with years of practice, a creative mindset and a solid knowledge base. However, some students view this as being disorganized, which is a comment I periodically get on my student evaluations (see below). Organization is definitely something I struggle with: I CRAVE it, yet I have a hard time creating it.
Strategies I've used to improve my organization skills include but are not limited to: taking courses on organization (STEP Mastery, various trainings to improve google drive skills, project management trainings), delegating tasks that need high level of organization, creating and maintaining communication systems (OTA Program Site) to help keep things organized. I don't know if I'll ever got to a point where I am satisfied with my skill in organization or if all of my students will be content with my organization skills, so I will continue to work on it!
Based off my recent student evaluation, students generally feel that I am an effective teacher. Some strengths include enthusiastic, encouraging, knowledgeable, personable, effective communication, and hands on learning experiences. Some areas of improvement include organization, use of power point presentations, explaining the relevance of learning experiences, being more approachable/less intimidating, and reducing the work load for students. As stated earlier, I am on an ongoing journey of growth, so some of these things I am already working on. Other things are a bit more challenging, such as being less intimidating. I plan to address each of these areas, as outlined in my:
Current Professional Development Plan:
Most recent student evaluations from fall 2021, spring 2022 and fall 2022:
Teaching and Learning Strategies: Classroom Examples
The OTA program has five prominent learning threads that weave throughout the program: professionalism, critical reasoning, inquiry, communication and intervention planning. Program outcomes are based, in part, on these threads. Below are examples of either teaching or assignment examples for each thread, along with an assignment related to understanding diverse perspectives.
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