The last day of term
- 1 minToday marks the tail end of my first year of teaching in an academic context. My first 26 weeks of lectures and workshops will have been delivered at the end of today. It’s been a fun experience that will continue to be a part of my professional mix long into the future.
Teaching is rewarding
When a topic clicks, the spark in someone’s eyes is one of my favourites in the world. I don’t think that will every get old.
There’s more to good teaching than it looks
Even at its most basic, simply keeping the attention of 25 students of different ages, knowledge levels, attention spans, and personal needs is tricky enough. And that’s before you teach them anything useful!
After the first few sessions, I quickly adopted the approach of breaking the timeline of each class up. A team building game here, a retrospective there, drop in the occasional video and a roll around on the carpet. Everyone’s happy.
Kids remember how you make them feel, not what you taught them.
Almost universally, these active activities were enjoyed the most by the group. They helped form a group of seven strangers into a company. They instilled the confidence in others to give a public talk just a few weeks after they’d said they’d never ever do it. They produced the biggest smiles, longest laughs and most profound connections.
It was these things that helped many to enjoy learning again.