27 january 2022
so today I had my first experience as a main teacher
to clarify: my company differentiates 'main' teachers from 'auxiliary' teachers, in the sense that the main teacher gives the lecture, talks about the theory and solves exercises with the class and the auxiliary answer some questions, checks attendance, and sometimes solves an exercise or two
anyway, today the topic was functions. I wrote all the material back on monday, and the teacher gave me the green light. so I felt pretty confident in general, and since I have some experience talking in public I wasn't too worried.
and the class itself went pretty well! the students liked the subject and told me they got most of it, so I felt mostly satisfied.
things I noticed:
- functions are MUCH harder to understand than I was anticipating; it's funny how 'automatic' things get to us when we're used to them, but explaining it to someone who has no idea about what functions are and how they work proved to be quite a challenge.
- lecturing for 3 hours is harsh. I didn't feel tired, because it's really dynamic; but my throat did start to 'scratch' a little bit.
- sometimes I get overexcited when explaining a topic, and even tho it wasn't too bad and the students eventually understood the concepts, I feel like I ended up explaining some topics too fast for them to properly comprehend
- I'm really glad I was able to finish explaining the theory behind functions (+ answer their questions) in an hour or so; that gave me time to solve two exercises with them, and that really made a difference in their understanding of the subject, I feel
in the end of the class I told them it was my first time lecturing as a main teacher, and all of them praised me a lot for the class :) I felt really happy, it was just so awesome to hear
but anyway it was a good class. I hope the next ones are as good
see ya soon :)