Intro Teaching Portfolio

In fulfilment of the requirements for this assessment I taught two 3-hour-seminar sessions which were part of a course on Southeast Asian Theatre convened by a professor of Drama & Theatre at Royal Holloway. The course was designed for a group of ca. 20 second year BA students. I carried out the planning for my two sessions which was then also approved by the course leader who gave feedback on the overall concept. I was not involved in the essay marking but was asked to assist students who wished to write their essays about the topic discussed in my sessions. Therefore, I was approached via email by four students of the course whom I supported in finding relevant materials. I was also able to give further information and feedback on their work. Topics I covered in my two sessions were:

Furthermore, for the last four years I have been working as a German Foreign Language Assistant in a comprehensive school in Whitechapel, London, and I give private German lessons as a tutor for all age groups and levels (Business and General). During my research in Indonesia in 2010/11, I also worked as a Teaching Assistant of German at the State University Jakarta and taught ten single seminar units as well as a phonetic and conversation class over the course of 6 months. All teaching I organized together with my teaching partner Mymy Phan, at that time also a Teaching Assistant at UNJ.

I have not considered student diversity when I was planning my sessions and I discuss this shortcoming in my teaching evaluation paper above. I tried, however, to employ a student-centred approach when structuring my two sessions and I hope this shows in the way how the students were invited to discuss and share their ideas.

I critically evaluate my teaching and...

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...n audience that never heard about the topic before.

I employed a mixture of lecturing, discussing, demonstrating and experimenting. My approach to teaching has not yet changed because I haven’t taught a lot. I think, however, that most students need to be stimulated in different ways. Although there are certainly learning preferences for each individual I think that learners can generally benefit from a mixture of methods. For instance, learning about theatre without ever watching any performances would be very dry indeed.

I have only been teaching two sessions at university (in the UK) so far and there was no pivotal incident that influenced my teaching. In my opinion I still have a lot to learn. I think however, that it is challenging and exciting to be able to teach at this level and to inspire (mostly) young people to think and develop their own concepts.