Personal Teaching Project

As a teacher, I have many areas of experience I can draw from, starting from my own childhood experiences through to my present professional teaching experience. I started working as a lecturer at ******* College in March 2001 where I teach six subjects, they are personal computer hardware, operating systems, ECDL, NCFE certificate in computer technology, ITSS and key skills IT. Having recently been a student myself in the department, I have a student's perspective of the course in terms of the workload, academic level and the effort necessary to succeed. I feel this has given me an immense advantage over some of my colleagues, as I can relate to the concerns and needs of my students.

As I am able to determine at what level to pitch the session at, I can reflect upon my own concerns that I had at the time. From this, I can try to reduce or alleviate the main areas of concern. This may be anything from the level the course is delivered , the amount of information to be absorbed, to simply attending classes on time. I also have to remember that what may have been a concern to me, which may be a major learning factor to others. From this I try to highlight the key areas of learning for me as a teacher and learner, I say learner because part of human nature is to constantly learn whether it be from education or life itself. Everyday experiences can provide essential knowledge without you actually realising it. This can be as simple as an experience with a group of students or a discussion with management.

One negative experience I can reflect upon happened in November 2001 with a group of national diploma in computer systems students whose age range was 17-18 yrs old. I was teaching a computer based subject when a colleague called me out of the room for approximately five minutes, when I returned to the room, it was locked and in darkness. The students had pushed the blackboard against the door and had sprayed deodorant onto a table and ignited it. Once I settled the group, I had to be very diplomatic in my approach of the situation as I had my own inkling of the culprits and did not want to accuse anyone not involved. My own personal assessment of the situation was to report the incident immediately to my head of department but I could not risk leaving the students again. Fortunately, another member of staff was passing the room at the time. After briefly explaining the situation, I asked him to watch the class while I reported the incident. I first went to my line manager to seek advice and I was given instructions as how to proceed. I then went to my head of department and informed him of the situation. The head of department dealt with the incident in an appropriate and efficient manner, resulting in the student who was the main instigator being dropped back down a year to first diploma. Although I was not involved in this process, I was kept informed by the personal tutor of that particular group.

The main affect this incident had on me as a teacher is that I should never underestimate students' ability and I should never put myself into that kind of situation and leave the class under any circumstances without supervision. I also have learned to give the students ownership of the responsibility for their learning, by explaining the importance of the need to learn. In this way, I have placed the onus is upon them to behave and act in an appropriate manner that will enable them to receive education by the most efficient means possible.

Reflecting on that particular situation has taught me as a learner and teacher is that one student can make a vast influence on the rest of the group, and the whole group should not be judged. After the incident, I carried out a one to one informal chat with the group and soon became aware of the true feelings amongst the group. They felt embarrassed and ashamed of breaking the trust I had built up amongst them and myself. The main outcome I noticed after the informal chat was the bonding between the group peers and understanding of the need to behave and learn.

Just as one bad situation may arise, there is a multitude of positive experiences to experience, although as part of human nature we tend to remember the bad ones more often.

One of my most positive experiences I have ever had during my role as a teacher was in September 2001. I was teaching personal computer maintenance to a group of adult learners, one of whom had little or no confidence in themselves and was forever putting themselves down.

I told him he was worth more than he thought and should be proud of any knowledge he picks up no matter how small or insignificant he may think, he should always remember that he is the main reason for me teaching so in effect he is more important than he thinks.

The student before mentioned had very low in self esteem and required various types of learning to enable him to advance, such methods I felt were appropriate for this student was the behaviourist approach as defined by Gagne (Holt, Rinehart & Winston (1985) ; seeing this I followed some of Gagne's identified types of learning, which were:

o Signal learning : I demonstrated and explained the task then let the student try it for himself

o Chaining: The tasks I set for the student were of a nature that once complete the result led to another task thus chaining from one task to another.

o Rules: In pc maintenance, there are certain rules to be followed. For example, when partitioning a hard disk drive you must follow the correct procedure or it will fail.

o Problem solving: This is a very big part of pc maintenance as the pc's the students work on, are brought to us with faults that have to be identified and rectified. I like to get the student to problem solve in a methodical and eliminatory manner which teaches them to follow rules and use their head (Also Blooms cognitive domain 1956) to work in an organised structure.

As the realisation of the higher aspects of learning for both Gagne (Padma Anand 2002) and Maslow (Dr. C. George Boeree 2002) is very much the same as self-actualization outlined by Maslow (Dr. C. George Boeree 2002) and problem solving is outlined by Gagne (Padma Anand 2002) are both dependent

on the learner being at the highest level to achieve this, one has to realise one's own potential to be able to problem solve and vice versa

I have learned by using these types of learning I was able to teach the student in a method that allowed him to learn at a level that was suitable for him. As I also try to be as humanistic as possible as identified by Maslow (Dr. C. George Boeree 2002). I allow the student to work at his own pace and offer support when