EXTERNAL TEACHING REFLECTION

HES470: External Teaching Reflection Abby Peskorse Fontbonne University

EXTERNAL TEACHING REFLECTION Reflecting Back, Looking Forward

The goals of my lesson were to help the Gateway 180 residents: recognize who made up their family, evaluate the barriers that were keeping their family from connecting, assess their strengths as a family, and understand the relationship between their shared family history and the importance it has on their future. I believe that those goals were met. My assessment tools used group work and discussion to discover not only the learners prior knowledge, but also to ascertain their level of understanding as we worked through the concepts. I was pleased to see and hear indications that the learners understood, were engaged in, and had a meaningful connection to the material presented. The residents drew portraits of their family and we had a full group discussion about what family is, and how family can be defined. The audience members also acted out a communication scenario in order to recognize good and bad communication behaviors. The activity led to further discussion that was more personal, with the residents sharing different instances in their experience where communication either happened well or did not. In order to tie things together, my lesson ended with a discussion about tradition and ritual and their importance in building strong families. I was thrilled to have the residents participate so fully in this portion of the presentation. They shared wonderful ways in which they were already working to incorporate tradition and ritual into their familys lives and I believe I helped them to recognize some behaviors that they could expand upon to further connect. When we first arrived at Gateway 180 they had set up the room for audience style seating with straight rows all looking directly forward. Both I and the two other presenters felt it wasnt conducive to our intention of an interactive workshop. We didnt want to simply lecture to the residents, we truly needed their participation for our presentations to be successful. We decided to break up the rows and move them into small groups with tables so that worksheets could be

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utilized. Changing the seating allowed the residence to interact with each other as well as ourselves. The seating facilitated discussion and in general created a more relaxed atmosphere. I was fortunate to present last because the former two presenters did an outstanding job of engaging the residents and making them feel comfortable to discuss and share while going through the workshop. Because my presentation was focused on family strengths I used personal experience to illustrate different aspects of the lesson. I believe that my willingness to share humanized me and made me a peer for the residents, rather than explicitly a teacher. That was a more comfortable space for me; I dont necessarily feel comfortable when I think of it as a lecture. Talking with others comes easily for me, so I treated the presentation as an intelligent and exploratory conversation with adults. The residents connected with my message more because I pushed them to share. Speaking about their own families, thinking about and discussing their personal issues made the lesson more valuable to them. Prior to the workshop I was concerned with presenting to the Gateway 180 residents because they are in an incredibly transitional period in their lives, going from homelessness to hopefully long term and permanent housing. They are dealing with hardships I have fortunately never experienced. In order to make the lesson of value I had to reinforce to myself the role that family plays even in challenging times. It was imperative for me that the residents would recognize the value as well. During difficult times family is not only essential but critical to long term success. Strong families create a support structure and an anchor when our lives are otherwise in turmoil. The majority of the residents of Gateway 180 are parents themselves and it is important that they work to further increase the strength of their family for their and their childrens futures. Though they may feel they are unable to give their children everything they need or want, they are fully capable of giving them a family that is strong, supportive, and

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resilient. The presentation talked about all the intangible qualities that produce strong families. Given that the audience resources are scarce I felt it was important to build upon the human resources they have. The best teaching strategy I used was sharing personal experiences with the audience to illustrate the concepts we were discussing. It opened them up to share their own experiences which allowed them to reflect more on the concepts in relation to their own family situation. I also used a tin can telephone system to demonstrate to the residents what good communication looked like, and how easily it can go poorly. The audience laughed quite a lot and I believe they enjoyed it, and it was a nice break from the more serious discussions we were having. Im glad I was able to include it. Least effective, was probably the power point. I truly enjoy using them for visual aspects, but the residents were more engaged with me than the screen which I cant really complain about. My stated outcomes were that learners will have a complete family portrait, built by them, that lists their family members and an attribute that they appreciate about each family member, that learners will know four ways in which to improve the communication they have within their family, and that learners will recognize the benefit of ritual for family strength and will feel confident in reinforcing current and or creating new rituals for their family. Im happy to see that my outcomes were met. To begin the lesson I handed out family portrait worksheets and crayons. I wanted the residents to draw their families, just as a child would. Some were hesitant and insisted their drawing skills werent up to par so I reassured them that stick figures were perfectly fine. It was an exercise of reflection that would allow them to have, literally, a clear picture of their family so that the concepts we were discussing could be applied somewhere. I wanted the residents to understand what family was and recognize who their

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family was and each resident left with a portrait so I was happy with that tool. The majority of my assessments were gained through discussion, I wanted to hear the residents applying the lesson to their personal life or experience and demonstrate through answering exploratory questions that they recognized issues and strengths in their family in its current condition, which the majority of them did. Specifically, we concentrated on communication. The residents demonstrated through recognizing and exclaiming the good attributes of the communication activity and the bad. At the end of the tradition and ritual portion I read a quote concerning family connection and the audience really connected with it, several of them had me put it back on the screen so they could write it down, it was an indication to me that the importance of ritual had transferred to the learners. If I were to do this lesson over again I think I would have used the power point more for imagery and less for content. At times, I relied too heavily on the actual words on the screen and there was no need for me to simply read aloud to the residents what they could easily read themselves. There was also a brief discussion about monetary resources, which I think I was trying to avoid. Honestly, I should have addressed it in the presentation rather then talking about it off the cuff when it was brought up by one of the residents. Its what most parents think about when imagining the future of their family and though not essential to the strength of a family it cant be ignored as a need in our modern society. I feel very comfortable speaking in front of and with an audience, and I have no issues sharing personal experience but I do wish I was able to allow the audience to interact more when they feel comfortable to share. I really have to fight the urge to steer things back in the direction I want to go. The road they want to travel down could be better and more valuable to the entire group of learners so I need to feel more comfort in letting my lesson plans diverge when appropriate.

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Overall, I truly enjoyed this experience. I learned a great deal more about family than I expected to. Working with the Gateway 180 residents also gave me incredible perspective and insight into the family unit and how it operates under duress. Its incredible what the residents have gone through, and their commitment to keeping their family whole is admirable. I truly hope the lesson I presented was of value to them and will help them to build upon the skills and intentions they already have.