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A Reflection on Teaching

Late last week I had the privilege of taking over Mr. Feldmeth's World Cultures class and teaching a lesson centered around education in Latin America. This topic came as a result of careful consideration of what I was truly interested in regarding a global context. To find this topic I started out by simply thinking of domestic issues that I can relate to. Being at Poly access to quality education or lack thereof does not necessarily apply to me, however, through previous experiences, as well as relatives and close friends who do have experience regarding this issue, it remains one close to my heart. The second criteria I used when determining the topic was "what is something that connects to everything?" this is a category I think education fits perfectly in. During the class itself, I was incredibly proud and surprised by the participation and engagement from the students. The activities and recommendation from Mr. Caragher to use leading questions rather than simply diving straight into my interpretation of the information were incredibly successful. It allowed the students to begin forming their own opinions, make better connections to the information, and overall enjoy what they were doing. However something equally surprising from a teaching perspective is how stressful it is to be leading a group which has placed all of their trust in your knowledge of the information; that, and how dry your mouth gets from talking so long. In terms of improvement, I would have probably included more sources and had a few more road statistics ready in the case the students had any pressing questions. In the end, though, I was very glad I taught a class and got a better sense of how people think, receive information, and ultimately gained a better understanding of education not just in Latin America, but globally, and how its quality is affected by the social hierarchy, as well as how much the system affects the hierarchy overall. 

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