I do need to write more, I think I’m missing some good stories. Yesterday was a great day.
On week twelve, PSY teacher has found markers that work or has finally decided to bring his own.
I should have written last week as he did step up his game a bit. He had reviewed his slides previous to class, stood in front of his classroom and addressed them as he spoke to them about the information behind him on the slides.
He did his best to reduce the occurrences of “any questions, moving on” and interrogated his class on information he was presenting. I had told him when we had last spoken, him unfamiliar with this age group, that they were the Zoomers. They can stare directly at you and completely ignore you at the same time. Several students couldn’t respond to questions like “what did I just say”. Then he moved on and began to personalize himself a bit more as he had in our one on one conversation with the students that were responding.
However, as he had for the previous ten weeks (I partially assume, someone please inform me about the weeks I was absent,) at some moments in his lecture when the students were all zoomed out with their eyeballs zoomed in while also unanimously not responding to one or more of his occasion questions that he would throw out directed at no one in particular, he would turn around in his position between the laptop on the desk and grab a marker from the tray of the white board. Sometimes, I should mention as I think it was this week (yet see, not writing lately, it could have have been the week before,) he simply asks questions that we either don’t know or are unanswerable as may be interpreted.
In that case in point, he had asked what sounded like “Does anyone know what sudo means?” Which of course I do. Sudo is a Linux command to execute the following command as the root user. However, I was also sure that wasn’t what he meant and after a long pause of nothingness- and him now in front of the desk looking at the students instead of his laptop trying perhaps to avoid saying “okay, moving on it means”- I finally raised my hand and asked if he could spell it, after which I proceeded with a definition of psuedo as in pseudonym I had clarified.
Communication is difficult, how many times can I say the same thing? Well, until the people I’m speaking to are understanding what I’m saying I guess. In any case he picked up on the que after that and began to put a little more effort into his enunciation which lead to a dramatic increase in clarity and then student responses in turn. Throughout the class this week- and starting before I got there the whiteboard was labeled across its width with labels of several major categories of disorders included in todays class, each underlined but otherwise alone on the board- with bright new markers. As he walked side to side in front of the desk, been lecturing freehand on the material, introducing, explaining and doing questions and answers with individual students by name. Each topic was discussed and categorized then placed on the board, both showing and emphasizing the overlaps in the various symptoms very effectively. Later we broke down into small groups as gave us various case studies to discuss. Class ended with a demonstration of a Rorschach test and a fun discussion that circled back to various earlier topics as we went back through the interpretations of our answers for each image. Throughout the class (perhaps other than he worked on his enunciation,) he was smiling more and smiling with people, at people, and making them smile too. Often he would delegate Googling tasks to a few students come up with precise definitions or other details to keep himself on track and from circling around the back of his desk. The class was a two hour enjoyable educational experience.
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Publish?