Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Baby Steps

There's something to be said about teaching people how to teach. To me, the task itself seems daunting as I expect that teachers are born teachers. Through these activities, however, I learned that teaching can be in fact taught in baby steps.

Video critiquing was our first activity for the day where we, unsurprisingly, critiqued videos of ourselves teaching patients. I'm not sure that this was the best activity for me since I felt that most of the things I noticed about my manner of teaching were things I've already noticed before. Undoubtedly though, I learned. I learned that I am not my favorite kind of teacher. 

I am also unsure about how much I learned from the yoga session. Admittedly, I was focused more on accomplishing the yoga poses rather than learning from the teacher's manner of teaching. However, with the help of the debriefing after the session, I was able to reflect on some points I should have picked up during the session aside from how fit the teacher was or how un-relaxing yoga is for me. 

The roleplaying activity was perhaps where I most learned about teaching as a PT. At the same time, it was also the most challenging and nerve-wracking. I realized that there is a huge difference between dealing with "patients" who are very cooperative i.e. our own classmates or family members and dealing with patients with various attitudes and impairments that may affect their behavior.

Although I may not have excelled in all the activities, I do know that I at least learned much. I learned that in order to teach others, you first have to know yourself. I learned that you have to be able to adapt your manner to different settings and consider the learning of every learner you have. And I learned that teaching, in a way, is individualized. Everyone is different and so teaching must be adapted for everyone's needs. This can seem daunting, but it can be done through baby steps.

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