I’m always nervous when lecturing, but what I can say is I thank God for this unit because for the first time I truly understand what I’m doing within the classroom. My contribution, the importance of the two-way communication between myself and the students, hearing from my teaching colleagues which has only aided my own teaching professionalism.
This week I was observed by my tutor Catherine Smith for my online Gender Inequality within the Creative Industry with the primary focus with how motherhood often impedes career progression, by way of ‘childcare’ responsibilities for the MA Media students participating within the module Professional Industry Practice.
This all female class hosted my guest speaking session about my ‘practical and professional’ experiences within the creative industry. It was an online, one hour session which saw me really wanting to try to cultivate the pedagogy of compassion at the start. As noted from my micro teaching session, my slides tended to be extremely dense, so I opted for more colourful and creative layouts and highly visual slides, complimented by quotes, interview snippets, referenced articles and my own personal anecdotal stories to try to convey the information. I set out my clear aims/objectives at the start with a recap at the close of the session. I allowed for group interaction/chat but as observed by my tutor this did not always allow enough time for them to answer/debate the question tasked – in fear of dead noise. This ‘dead noise’ was actually beneficial as pointed out to me, as it allowed for group introspection, reflection and consideration from the students perspective.
My second observee was Lalu, who equally provided me with critical points of consideration. She noted my lack of not expanding on academic terminology when used within session, additional areas of focus to the discussion of gender inequality such as the ‘black mother, trans parents perspective and/or students within the session’. Whilst I welcome these, I cannot be all things to all people and wanted to keep this session as linear as possible bearing in mind my time constraint.
I welcomed my feedback from Catherine as I felt was very balanced, I felt a lot more attacked by my peer which rubbed me the wrong way. But I’m thankful for both levels of feedback because it can only will serve to better craft this career path as an educator within an academic framework.