Teaching, Part Two (and Gilbert & Sullivan)

It probably won’t come as a surprise to regular readers of this blog (all one of you – hello, mum …) that I’ve been keeping myself fairly busy over the past few weeks. In fact, I’m currently writing this during an orchestra rehearsal for Exeter University Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s production of Ruddigore – book your tickets now! – which, funnily enough, is one of the few points where I have a little bit of time to myself. Gilbert and Sullivan’s attitude towards trumpets is somewhat conflicted. At any time, I’m likely to be doing one of the following:

Thankfully for our brains, the former is very much the most common, which has left me plenty of time to think about the other tasks I’ve been giving myself. Over the past few weeks, one of the major time-stealers has been the second ‘stage’ of the University’s Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (LTHE) course. I blogged about the first stage, a one-day course, a few posts ago, but since then, and in a fit of ‘do-all-the-things!’, I’ve completed the second part of the training programme. This was more in-depth than the first course, being designed for postgrads who will have a role in marking and assessment (as opposed to demonstrating), and involved four afternoon seminars. The seminars were all fascinating, covering topics from how to give constructive criticism (the so-called ‘feedback trifle’) to the ‘four lenses’ through which we can improve our practice as teachers.

The highlight for all of us, though, was the ‘microteaching’ session that we had in the third week. We’d all done this once before, as part of the Stage 1 course, but the next ‘level’ of the course saw us graduating to a longer format (10 minutes) and to correspondingly stricter feedback. I personally didn’t feel as if my microteach went particularly well: as usual for me, I poured an enormous amount of energy into it, but this time it seemed like I misjudged it slightly, and ended up stressing myself out in the process and trying to squeeze in a little to much. That’s not to sa  y it was a discouraging experience, though: far from it. In fact, I got to learn from some truly wonderful teachers-in-the-making, and began to appreciate – even after a year of teaching – the value of taking a step back and really focusing on what the students will get out of a given session. If I’m lucky, the coming year should give me some exciting opportunities to get involved with teaching (Old French reading group, anyone?!), and hopefully I’ll be able to channel my signature enthusiasm while also giving myself room to breathe.

Incidentally, the promised blog post on the PGR office (a.k.a. ‘the Bat-cave’) is very much in the pipeline: a temporary absence of anything with which to take photos has been preventing me from adorning the blog post with any visual evidence. It’s coming – and sooner than it’s taken for me to put this post together …

Cover image: an excerpt from Brookfield’s Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher, pp. 14-15.