This week i covered my colleagues classes as she was off sick, I also gave my lecture in a module which is team taught. I really enjoyed giving my lecture on the team taught module, the module is called bullying interventions and talks about how schools and organisations deal with bullying, I teach the lecture on cyberbullying as it is something I have a particular interest in and have in the past attended a conference around and have written a paper about rape in online role playing games.
It is lectures like this one that makes me realise that I simply get paid to have interesting conversations with intelligent people about things I am passionate about, most of the students were unfamiliar with me and my teaching style and seemed to enjoy that I was asking their opinions and bringing relevant examples into the lecture. I went slightly off topic at points and facilitated discussions about the Internet in general, how social networking is used and some examples of the Internet being used in controversial ways, for example a case of a women being sacked via facebook after posting a negative comment about her boss. These incidents, although not directly cases of cyberbullying, served to help the students consider the negatives to social networking or how easy it is for people to view information or interact with you, even if you do not ask them to or give them express permission to do so. I found these conversations really interesting, there were some quite different opinions in the group and this meant the students were challenged and had the opportunity to learn from others, I enjoyed this, I was able to contribute and give them new ideas and suggestions to include and facilitate the discussion learning on to more relevant topics. During the class I also spoke about the legislation which could be used to prosecute for cyberbullying, although no specific UK laws are in place there are a number which could be used together. I had expected the students to already be aware of this information but they weren't and they seemed very interested to learn. This lecture really increases my confidence with teaching, I have learnt that I am much, much better and much more comfortable when teaching something I have prepared and am genuinely interested in. I am able to teach other modules and I think do them well, but given the number of problems I have faced in my teaching this year and that for the majority of my modules, I was only given the teaching load the week I started teaching I really enjoyed having time and energy to prepare for this one lecture.
The other subjects I taught this week were the subjects I normally teach in Burnley but due to my colleague being off sick I took over her classes in Preston while another colleague who lives in Burnley taught mine. The lectures went pretty well, the groups in Preston are known to be much more difficult to engage and tend to dislike interacting during lectures, instead preferring to be talked at. I found this to be the case but it wasn't as bad as I expected, the students took a while to respond but then participated in a really good debate about gun laws in the UK. I much prefer teaching my Burnley group but after successfully engaging a group of students who are notoriously difficult to engage I feel much more confident about my teaching ability and am looking forward to going in next week.
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