By Naihobe Gonzalez
One of the more self-interested reasons our team was
interested in creating the Student Consultancy Program was that we wanted to
experience teaching first hand, even if only in a limited form. Our six-week
after-school program seemed like a great way to dip our toes into the teaching
waters.
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| Students discussing their survey design |
Each of us took leadership over one of the workshops described by Angela based on our areas of expertise. I was excited to
lead the students on a “Research and Analysis” workshop in their third week. As
a non-educator, here’s what I learned that week about teaching—and
learning from—students:
Plan, plan, plan!
It took me about six hours of planning time to develop a two-hour workshop on survey design and
data analysis—not including the time I spent while driving or taking a
shower thinking about the sorts of activities that would be most effective with
our students, the hour our team spent collaborating on the lesson plan, or the
time I spent running through it with my boyfriend for practice.
Keep an eye on the
clock.
Despite my best efforts at planning, once in the classroom,
it was very difficult to manage time—and I had the help of my three
team members! Because each activity took longer than I had planned (due to our
students having so many ideas to share!), I was not able to get to the last
item on my lesson plan, an important activity on data analysis. We ended up
asking students to stay an additional 15 minutes past the scheduled end time to
cover announcements.
Cater to students’
different learning styles.
I have experience teaching undergraduate and MBA students,
where lectures are the primary teaching method, but younger students have many
different learning styles and
keeping everyone engaged is not easy. Class discussions, team activities,
lectures, think-pair-shares, physical movement, and hands-on technology are
some of the methods we have tried so far. In my workshop, students responded
best to team time on laptops where they created their own market research
surveys on Google Forms.
Learn from classroom
practice.
It turns out teaching, like almost every other endeavor,
benefits from learning by doing. As
a do-now to start the class, I developed an activity I called “The Worst Survey
Ever.” Students were presented with a series of poorly designed survey
questions and asked to discuss what was wrong with the question and how to
improve it. As I led the activity, it began to feel a little long. Although 72%
of students rated the activity as “very effective,” their written survey
responses suggested they felt the same way as I did. Next time, I would make it
shorter.
Ask students directly
for feedback.
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| Students providing us feedback! |
As a result of this week’s workshop, students learned best
practices of survey design and developed their own market research surveys to
help them answer their capstone question. As team leaders, we also received
something—little nuggets of affirmation from our students. In our
survey’s catch-all comment box, students wrote:
I am really excited for this!
I think everything is actually going great!
Loving this program!
This week we also learned what keeps teachers going: the
students.
