personal introductions
An introduction is a wonderful opportunity to establish a personal connection, even if not through direct identification with the audience. Through providing selected information about ourselves, we create a vivid description of our personality. However, this information should be well-chosen for the context; thus, professor’s ‘mastery of six foreign languages’ can sometimes only intimidate me, while mentioning ‘cheese making’ as a hobby at best makes me smile and at worst makes me wonder if I’d be capable of learning anything from this person.
Even though sense of humor is highly appreciated by student audiences, jokes should be always appropriate. A striking example of how things can go wrong: in a small discussion group, the instructor once started a class by telling a following joke “I meet this person and he is genuinely upset after breaking up with his girlfriend. Why did you break up? – I asked, – She did not like me breathing on glass and writing ‘I love you’ over and over again…, – Why? it seems romantic, – I was doing it to her eye-glasses”. After telling the joke, the guy was highly amused with himself (with one other student laughing out laud) only to realize the angry scrutiny of the remaining eight students in the class – all girls in glasses!
A Surprising number of common jokes can personally affect someone in the audience, and one upset person will suffice to ruin the desired effect, is it worth the risk (?), even apart from showing disrespect to student diversity. If anything, the safest object of a joke is you. One of the most hilarious moments of my college life was a somewhat older and old school professor, who had a compulsory habit of repeating phrases for better recording by students and who told the following story once: “when I was little, a gramophone (a kind of phonograph) fell on my head, without any negative effects … without negative effects… without negative effects...”.
Another (often overlooked) resource is the introduction or even possibly, self-introduction of TAs for the class. It serves a purpose of putting a face to a name and gives the TA(s) an opportunity to voice their readiness to help and to establish a beginning of personal contact with students. Even more importantly, in my opinion, personal/professional interactions of the professor and TAs in front of students demonstrate an example and a possibility of teamwork, a valuable social and learning skill surpassing instance of a specific class.
~AS
3 comments:
If you have a foreign accent in English (like I do), a personal introduction (since it does not provide essential information for the class) serves both to let students adjust to comfortable level of understanding and to become assured in sufficient verbal skills of the professor before proceeding to the discussion of important class information.
Be yourself! I think one thing I would add to all this is to remind teachers (foreign and not) is to "be themselves". I noticed that the best teachers were the ones who knew their own strengths and weaknesses and were able to use them in a way that helped students understand the course concepts better.
For example, if you have a goofy personality then I would tell you to use it. If you have a more serious demeanor then I would go with that. It's easy to tell someone to be more like this and less like that, but it's really hard for that person to actually change.
Show enthusiasm for the subject. Your students won't be excited about or interested in what they are learning if you aren't. Also, by being interested in what you are teaching you will be more interested in what your students think about it. This can lead to better class discussions.
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