Being the performing teacher is an aspect of the job I find the most difficult and challenging.
To give context to this area of difficulty and anecdotal reflection I will briefly summarise the related project associated with the scenario. The project title is Say it loud, students have an anonymous text based conversation using thier phones around a subject we prescribe, this year being “change” During the briefing the tutor asks the students to respond as a whole class group how we can think about change, where they might have experienced change, do they embrace or fear it etc. the purpose is to initiate potential areas of discussion for the students when they begin their conversations.
On my second round of teaching the brief this term I experienced an unresponsive group and a lot of dead air during this section of the delivery. I allowed enough time for them to think and as I wasn’t receiving any responses rephrased the question. Still no responses. Becoming internally frustrated I let us all sit in the silence and visually scanned the room for any respondent’s. Finally a student could bare it no longer and gave an answer. For the rest of the taught day I felt I had to be on my best behaviour, the gentle and forgiving tutor, no amount of thoughtless questions or skewed approaches to using scissors or a scalpel would visibly get me down.
The experience left thinking why was this particular group unresponsive to the question when on all other times teaching the project it was fine. Could have it been the room? Was there a lack of bonding or relationship building in the group? Were the students tired of the course at this point? Were my attempts of being the amiable tutor transparent?
Having to manage my own frustrations and perform as something I’m not or exaggerate qualities in me that are often in limited supply was physically tiring. I think I can be quick to criticise my own approach or delivery but in this instance I feel there is a responsibility was on the students to fulfil their half of the learning in a relatively simple task. Arguably perhaps I could have been more agile and quickly changed the circumstance and asked them to do the task in table groups, but with the limited time available these things are not always possible.
This is just one instance where I often feel my head is above the parapet.