Sapped of all energy....

So many things have been happening at one time, Murphy's Law holds true. When shit comes, it comes in waves (yeah I know, lousy visual and maybe olfactory imagery).

Piled up with work, dealing with people who saps your emotional energy, over-analysing inter-group dynamics and wondering why some people do one thing to you and other things to others (kinda like two-faced)... really have taken a toll on me.

But in anycase, shall talk a bit on the micro-teaching sessions...

I can't really comment on SuperLambanana's teaching session since I was the videographer. I was bored though, considering everyone was very well-behaved, thus I did not have the opportunity to do interesting video angles etc. Like what I told SuperLambanana, the main thing I noticed about him is the fact that his Field of Vision is rather limited to maybe, 35 degrees. This means that he might miss what the students at the sides are doing.

I liked the way he handled the 'loan shark' incident, although I really do wonder what he will do if his polite 'threats' were not taken seriously.

Karen's Teaching Session

I think there was a double-whammy here.

One: Topic on Tropical Rainforests alone is rather 'boring' unless accompanied with many pictures or video clips. In my own personal opinion without malice, I wasn't able to fully appreciate the powerpoint slides solely because there were too many words per slide. It would have been better if she had included main sentences and elaborate on them by teaching us. When there are too many words per slide, students may get distracted trying to read everything and thus, might be mentally 'off-task' instead of listening to the teacher. I didn't really feel that the worksheet make me think but instead, I was too busy trying to pick out the keywords from the slide and writing them down.

Two: Karen's lack of projection in her voice means that most of the time, I couldn't hear what she was saying with or without the disruptions in class. I felt that in this aspect, she can learn to be more confident and throw her voice forward by using her diaphragm more. Lack of projection means can't be heard means more off-task behaviour as students become more interested in conversing with each other as they probably do not know what is going on in class anyway. Of course, Karen might have been nervous then that's understandable.

B-I-N-G-O and BINGO was his name oh.... Personally, I really didn't see the point of the game although I applaud her in the sense that it made us 'get-on-task' though not really connected to the topic. To illustrate my point, I didn't pay attention for the entire class, as such, I didn't know the answers to her questions and instead, relied on my other group mates to provide me with the answer. All I did was to cross out the words which they said and voila! BINGO! I won the game without in the end, understanding what Lianas and Epiphytes were. Kenneth has already commented on this aspect so I shan't say more except that games must not be played without a clear objective (and of course, instructions) in mind.

Class Management: Highly related to the lack of control through the lack of projection of voice, which means that her gentleness has become a weak point and it was evident since students were talking amongst themselves and there was somewhat, I consider, a minor chaos in class.
People were throwing paper at each other, smart alecky student questioning teacher, students basically not paying attention. I felt that generally, we weren't managed well although I would like to praise Karen for being so quick to point out that I wasn't paying attention when I 'felt sick'. That was rather fast so kudos to her for that. I think that when you ask too many students to meet you after class, after a while, the students do not take it seriously. Try to utilise the appropriate desist technique with the appropriate transgression.

All in all, Karen mainly has to work with her voice projection first. And although she might have chosen not to respond to every misdemeanour in class, after a while, I guess the students just walked all over her head.