Farah Cyprian

The most important thing from this module is how to handle angry students. The best thing is to initially hear them out and listen. Hopefully I won't encounter this, but I will make it a point to really listen to the root of the problem.

I thought the tips on how to become an effective monitor were great. The one that stood out most to me was the tip of ensuring to address and acknowledge every student. I will do this in the start of the classes and throughout my lectures

I thought the tips to engage inattentive students was really helpful, because it is something every instructor deals with. The tips were: 

Move to the area where the inattentive student is
Schedule discussion if needed
Put them in groups
Seating chart
Minute papers at the end of the day to summarize what they learned

I think the groups and minute papers are really helpful to do in general to curb that behavior before it happens. So, I will do that and move to a discussion or altered seating chart if it gets that far. 

I learned the importance of the syllabus and ensuring the students have a clear understanding of the time commitments, due dates, and overall objectives to be covered. I will ensure to go over all my syllabi and ensure it is comprehensive enough to be used as a reference. 

The importance of respectful relationships within the course is what stood out to me the most. I believe that without this, a class can be very hard to facilitate, the messages don't stick, and students become less interested in what their learning. I will ensure to set these democratic and open-minded standards in the start of the course.

Groups are extremely helpful for active learning vs just being "forced fed" information from the instructors. Groups allow the students to pull knowledge from each other. I will incorporate those best practices of 4-5 group sizes, guidelines for group topics, tasks along the way, etc. 

I learned that having a beginning period (like week 1) where students don't have to worry about graded assignments does help create a tone of ease before things kick off officially in the next week. This is also helpful for students that may start in the course a few days later. Since the courses are more accelerated where I will teach, I might incorporate this within the first few days and use that time to get to know everyone. 

I learned that it is important to have an understanding of the understanding of the limitations of the technologies for the courses that I am going to teach. Not even just in tech. but also involving my resources in class. I will do my best to be realistic in my creation of assignments, etc. 

What stood out to me most was the part about interdependence in the learning process and how important it is in the process. I will incorporate this into my courses by assigning different rotating tasks to students that deal with classroom management. I want the students to get in the habit of seeing each other as resources. 

What stuck out most to me about this section was that it is best to be versatile and be willing to make changes with new information. This is why I will constantly strive to improve each course every time I have to reteach it.