Lessons on Teaching—and Learning from—Students

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.

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.

Students providing us feedback!

The reason I know what went well and what didn’t is that we directly ask students in our weekly surveys. I thought one way to get the students to think critically about survey design would be to ask them to critique the surveys they had been taking for the program. The suggestions they developed in class were so thoughtful that we implemented every single one! Giving students a say in their own learning experience has been a motivating factor for them. And thanks to their feedback, we were able to collect better data.

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.