This was a very interesting recitation to teach. I was not always familiar with the economic concepts covered, so it required quick learning on my part. This was also a very interesting collection of students to teach because they had a unique perspective on mathematics. As they are mostly business students, math plays a very practical role. Trying to expand their perspective to see some of the abstract background of familiar concepts proved to be an exciting challenge. The general structure of these 1 hour recitations was going through original worksheets in groups then taking a quiz. I had not really understood how to effectively get large groups of students to work in groups, so figuring out that aspect of my class required a bit of work.
I created a series of original worksheets based on homework assignments to help students prepare for the quizzes that would happen at the end of every recitation. I was also responsible for creating weekly quizzes. My experience as a workshop facilitator during my time at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo prepared me well for these responsibilities. One challenge was that occasionally, unbeknownst to me, the two lectures I was leading recitations for would get out of step with one another and I would have to scramble to decide what to do with the worksheets and quizzes I had prepared. I have since improved my communication with professors to avoid this problem.
For these recitations I had no control over the assignments or grading of exams. In all other categories students seemed relatively pleased. As I touched on above, I was unfamiliar with some of the economic applications involved in the class and as such I occasionally struggled to effectively communicate all of the ideas. As in the case of the previous semester, I think that because I was still relatively new to teaching I was still struggling a bit with figuring out how to explain some of these abstract ideas to students. I received one comment about being “rude sometimes” but I am genuinely unsure what this is referring to since the rest of the comments are very positive. A student also marked that I “rarely conveyed interest and enthusiasm for the subject”, which I would argue was distinctly not the case again looking at the students’ written comments for justification. If the student genuinely felt this way about my teaching, I think the evaluations would show that this was not the case for any other semester.