Test Run

It was almost a week into the course, and we were asked to be teachers ourselves. Last Thursday we all taught a classmate a skill, learned a skill, gave feedback on a teacher, and gave feedback to a feedback giver. As for me, I taught how to do plank push-ups, and was taught how to write my name in Arabic. 

For my teaching experience, I had to teach a classmate who had quite week core muscles, which in itself made the activity more challenging than it already was. It was here that I saw how vital the role of a teacher is in ensuring that the activity is executed properly by the learner. It was very important to give clear instructions, provide proper visual, verbal, and tactile feedback, have demonstrations and return demonstrations, etc. But more than all of this, I've also seen that it is of utmost importance to always put your learner first- in terms of objectives of the session, their comfort and feedback during execution, and in the teaching approach and feedback mechanism. 

As for my learning experience, it was here that I saw how patience is definitely key to effective teaching. I had quite a difficult time learning the strokes at first, but my teacher patiently repeated the steps and made it easier for me to execute. This made me realize that this is something we would have to implement as we teach our patients, as they wouldn't be able to master tasks in one explanation. 

I think all of these are very important points that would be the foundation of the teaching we would be doing as we have internship and in our general practice. Hands on activities like these really show us how it is to be out there teaching, and it shows us how we can improve on the our teaching styles. It is also through this activity that we had a test run of our skills as a teacher, being able to note points that made the learning experience easier, points for improvement, and most of all, the feeling of being a teacher.