I gave the review for the second part of the AWW course today, in the big lecture hall in front of 200-plus students. And it went OK! More than OK, actually. I said everything I wanted to (I write an outline and then practice what I'm going to say at least once, with the result that I mostly don't have to look down at what I've written when I'm actually speaking), I finished perfectly on the 50-minute mark, and the other TAs said it was a really good comprehensive overview. Go me!
It was also, somewhat surprisingly, less intimidating than I expected. Yes, the four minutes between when I got down to the podium and set up the slideshow and when I actually began class were sort of awkward, because all of the students were looking at me and I just looked around the room and tried not to make eye contact with my own students. I felt a little bad for them because they had definitely heard exactly what I said today in section for the past four weeks; I wasn't offering them anything particularly new. Of course, the question is whether they listen in section and/or take notes (and many of them don't bother to take notes, I've noticed.) Overall, though, it was really no more intimidating than lecturing to 30 students. Oh, and I had a microphone, which was pretty cool.
I'm glad I had the experience, but luckily it won't be one I have to repeat often. Next semester I may not even do the section II review, as one of the new TAs coming in is another Renaissance person, so she'll probably do it to get the same experience. It's divvied up by who is most familiar with the material, so this time around Amy, who studies Roman art, did section I, and Erin, who does 19th century art, will do section III. After that I might move on to Heritage, which would mean no more big lecture classes, just whiny over-privileged art students. Hm. Trade-off?
No comments:
Post a Comment