AY 375 - Fall 2014: Third Day Lesson Plan

Today's class will be used to discuss people's first sections, various teaching and lecturing styles, and some course logistics.

1. It is easier to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of others than of ourselves, so hopefully evaluating others' teaching will allow us to better evaluate ourselves.
2. No teacher is perfect. There is always room to grow and learn.
3. In planning your sections, put yourself in the shoes of your students and ask whether you would have been engaged in the activities you've developed. Would a demo have been more interesting if it was presented before or after it was explained? Would the group work activities push you to working with other students or would you have been able/tempted to do the work by yourself?

Remind them that this is something we intend to do every week and that everyone should come prepared to share about how their previous sections went.

Open the floor up for general questions and sharing about how sections are going. Some questions include:

• What did you do?
• How did you implement your activities?
• What worked?
• What didn't work?
• What would you do differently?
• How did you assess learning?
• Did you receive any unexpected questions/reactions/etc.?
• Did anything unexpected happen?
• What were you thinking about while you were running section? Any moments of panic?

Write down on wiki when you're teaching section.

• A few slides and pieces of advice from Tina Fey
• Distilling Your Message Exercise
• Zip-Zap-Zop Exercise
• Mirror, Mirror Exercise
• Time Traveler Exercise
• Blank Photograph Exercise

TED Talk on Science Communication: Melissa Marshall's TED TALK

See some notes from the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science here.

Improv is a great practice to consider because it gives you a way to connect with an audience, which is the first essential step in communicating. With what we did today, we focused on paying attention to the other people, anticipating and meeting their needs, reading their reactions and taking responsibility for landing a clear message. Moving forward, look for ways to apply them to your everyday communication (and teaching in particular). A few take-aways:

1. “Who is the audience?” : Communication begins with a relationship with the audience. Understand your audience as best you can before coming into a lecture or class or talk. If you come in with the expectation that they will be welcoming, they are likely to pick up on that signal and reciprocate (“yes, and”).
2. “Make it a conversation” : Many of the activities we did were about staying available, aware, and connected to the others in the class. Think of Zip-Zap-Zop. You need to let in the event of the moment that is in front of you in order to communicate. Communication is a two-way street, and occurs through body language as well. You were communicating “with” your partner in some of our games, rather than talking “at” them. This requires a change in you as a teacher, a willingness to listen, notice and be available to the signs that are in front of you. Out of this availability, something new emerges. You experienced how saying old information in a new language allowed you to move forward to explore new ideas in science and technology. Dominic did an excellent job of this today with his undergraduate research. It was a conversation, not a lecture. Even if you are the only one talking, the body language of your partner(s) should influence how you are presenting science to them. If you are not allowing them in, your speed will drift into lecture mode and the link of moment-to-moment communication will be lost.
3. “Are you bringing the audience with you?” : In the mirror exercise, the leader’s main goal was to move slowly and specifically enough so that your partner could follow you. If your partner wasn’t staying with you, it was your job to make an adjustment so they could follow. In teaching, look at your audience. Are you making your points slowly and clearly enough? You could prepare a brilliant lecture that falls completely flat when delivered. If that’s the case, you might not be paying attention to the signals from the audience and making the necessary adjustments so they could follow.
4. “Are you taking responsibility?” : In the time traveler exercises, you had to find common ground with your listeners. You had to understand their perspective. You had to see the world through their eyes. Are your empathetic to their needs? Use analogies, metaphors and gestures to help them along and bridge gaps. Are you being flexible so that if they get lost, you can adapt?
5. “What is your story?” : Think of the blank picture exercise. We are connected through stories — they are not incidental to the points we are making, but a vehicle that can open the channel of human interaction that is experienced by everyone in the room, including you. Don’t discredit your own connection to the story that has brought you here. Something hooked you into this work, bring us that story! You learned this material for the first time at some point, what happened? Emotion is a powerful force, and a memorable one.

We all have stories, and don’t be afraid to include more narrative in your teaching.

1. Start keeping your short teaching logs.
2. Add your teaching times to the front page of the Wiki.
3. Figure out who's section you'll be visiting between 9/15 and 9/19.