Grrrr: A Teaching Demo

Totoo yung kasabihan - the more time you spend doing something, the more you learn its quirks and actions that you have to deal with. It may not be a super real saying, pero at least the thought of proportionality between time and the quirks makes sense.

Part of the Alay Ni Ignacio (ANI) Acads ritual is the demo teaching for each volunteer. You choose a department to enlist in, sign up for demo teaching, 'teach' for 15 minutes in front of the Department Chair (DC), and then wait for further instructions.

Two years na ako nagtuturo sa ANI (assuming that I'll make it next summer), and it crossed my mind to cross departments. Last summer, I taught Introductory Physics to the incoming fourth year kids. Ngayon, I wanted to do Chem because of David Peralta, my oh so illustrious/brilliant/stupendous Chem1 teacher. Also, I'm currently teaching General Chemistry to Third Year Marikina Science High School students since it's my NSTP for the entire year (thank you, Pathways!). So I decided to do a demo for two departments: Physics and Chem.

The ChemDept proved earlier; and since I have taught the demo topic before (Periodic Trends), I simply used my lecture notebook for the demo itself.

And so it went. 15 minutes of pure lecturing.

And then, the panel evaluation (mala-American Idol, if you ask me).

The details of the evaluation, I'd rather leave blank because it's for my personal consumption only. But let's just say that some comments from my panel were a bit uncalled for, or better yet, did not make sense.

For one, the comment that the lecture was too technically/too geeky was both sensible and insensible. Sensible, because we need to prepare the students for the academic year. And that requires good understanding/footing of the lessons taught in there. In their own words, 'you have to make the subject come to life by making them involved in it'. And I couldn't agree more. But the only problematic thing is when this preoccupation of making the subject SUPER student-friendly becomes an avenue for turning the subject into a set of "stupid analogies" (as what Ray Aguas would call it) than a body of facts. I am not against stupid analogies, in fact I appreciate it. But I'd like to keep stupid analogies to a minimum because I want my students to remember the heart of the matter, and not just its pericardium.

So I was practically raising my eyebrow when the comments were being delivered. Of course, I wouldn't do it in front of them (lest I get kicked for real). But I really felt weird after the demo, it's as if the only thing I was good at was my voice projection and preparedness.

I have no intentions of showing you that I am the best teacher in the world because I'm not. Nor do I desire to be that uptight teacher who only knows how to talk to his blackboard and overheard projector (a laptop, if you're any modern) during classes. I desire to be a teacher filled with substance but able to convey them to my students. Quoting the 'Chem God' / Assistant Instructor Ian Ken Dimzon, "it is not easy teaching Chem because it is full of abstractions. Hindi mo ma-visualize kung paano mag-turn counter-clockwise ang isang atom kaagad. So you need to illustrate that to your students without sacrificing the substance and the facts associated with it."

When I ran into Sir Ian this afternoon and narrated the story, I felt so relieved that my convictions regarding substance and stupid analogies were practically the same. Just like me, he also believes that the facts are essentially more important than the analogies although they work hand-in-hand for the understanding of the lesson.

Now, I realized: it's easy telling someone 'adjust to your students' and all that; but to adjust to them for real is an entirely different matter. Styles vary from person to person; and while I understand my panel's pure intentions, this thing against geeky lectures was something I found hard to come into terms with. Because for me, the 'geekness' of my lecture was a necessary evil. And I'd rather give it than just blubber about analogies that it becomes a bane than a boon.

That doesn't stop me, however, from pursuing a teaching post in ANI. I love my job and I find it the best way to spend one's summer. Yun lang.