Micro Teaching Reflections The following are personal reflections concerned with the three micro teaching sessions

I completed in order to test and improve my teaching abilities. The micro teaching sessions were completed with an audience of peers and a teaching mentor. The micro lessons offered a safe space for practice and conductive criticism as well as collaboration.

Micro Lesson 1: What Is Family? Prior to this experience I would say my level of comfort was high only because I didnt know what to expect but understood that it was a friendly environment to try things out. I felt comfortable experimenting even with the possibility of failing. During the presentation I was more nervous than I had anticipated; I truly respect several of the girls who were in my group and I wanted to impress them with my presentation. While I was going through my slides I kept looking at them to gage the level of interest and understanding of the material I was presenting. Then I worried I wasnt giving enough eye contact to the rest of the audience. I was relieved when the presentation was over, more so than I thought I would be. Ive always been comfortable presenting, but being cognitive of the fact that I was responsible for teaching the information in a meaningful way made me anxious. The girls all offered some valuable feedback. They indicated that my presentation was good, and that they enjoyed the power point but they felt that group discussion would heighten the learning experience. I agreed, as that was my original intention, but when I was presenting I didnt create any cues for myself to involve the audience in that way. It was comforting to know that the material I had shared had come across in the right way and I now have more confidence in presenting the material again to the Gateway 180 group in a more impactful way.

My lessons are all focused on strengthening families. In order to prepare I did some research on typical families (theyre really arent any!) and what barriers families face in connecting to one another. I also did some non-structured research, asking my various friends and family about what they felt made a strong family, and what they thought made their personal families strong. I got so many responses, all varied wildly but they were all valid. It made me realize that I needed to connect with my audience first by explaining to them that there would be no mold, or list of qualifications that I would be checking off in regards to the family dynamic. I needed the learners to have an awareness of who their family was, what strengths they possessed, and what barriers prevented them from bonding further. As I was presenting I made sure to give some personal examples to increase my familiarity with the learners and to help them to think of their families in a broader and less traditional sense. After the lesson, several of the girls mentioned the exercises we did helped them to rethink what their picture of their family was. They told me to further explore different examples that I could highlight for the audience. Some people can create very easily, other learners may need examples to compare and contrast themselves to. Given the feedback that I received Ill be changing my lesson and my teaching style. I want to make sure that my nerves or inattention doesnt prevent me from highlighting key points that I want the audience to understand, or keep me from encouraging group discussion. Ive been brainstorming ways to cue myself either visually or verbally in order to increase these. Using my non-formal research, Ive created a list of the different words and terms that my friends used when discussing their family and Im going to incorporate that into the power point to increase my examples. I also think I would benefit from practicing the presentation. In high school I was highly involved in the drama and music department and never had an issue memorizing large

scripts, or musical pieces. Practicing made me confident in my abilities to execute them well; I can translate that practice to teaching presentations.

Micro Lesson 2: Family Communication

This past micro teaching experience was far more relaxed than the first. I referenced my peer's feedback from the prior lesson and was then able to improve my lesson given their critiques. Even though the material was different, their suggestions from the first lesson were relevant to the second. I felt more comfortable with all of the girls and more confident in presenting the material. Because I had already given my Gateway 180 lesson plan, I experimented a bit with the "communication" portion of my unit and created some different activities than what I had already presented. The Gateway 180 experience was also a good confidence boost. It helped me to feel more comfortable in my own presentation style and at ease with being myself while still behaving as an educator/presenter. I'm certainly not a cape wearing, super hero communicator, but I do feel drastically more capable than I did before my first Micro Lesson.

Communication is essential to all the material I am learning in my program. I don't think I've ever had a class that did not discuss the importance of good and frequent communication. It was interesting to research the subject as it related to family strength and I was not surprised to find that having strong communication skills is a marker for strong families. I wanted to translate the student and professional communication lessons to a family environment so I drew from my own experience and had my group act out a small scene that displayed in one interaction a lot of the ways communication can get lost and go wrong between members of a family. The Gateway 180 crowd is experiencing a great deal of change, and it's not unlikely that they have several

difficult conversations that need to happen within their family to help navigate that change. I wanted to offer some simple tools that they could use to immediately increase the effectiveness of the communication they were having, and give them ideas of how to improve their overall family communication style in the future. After my presentation at Gateway 180 and in the micro lesson I feel that acting out behaviors is incredibly helpful in terms of relating information that people may feel they already have a handle on. People tend to get stuck in patterns, or digress in their habits when communicating with family and not notice till communication has become very disconnected and dysfunctional. "Tin-can communication" and "Seriously Lost in Translation" were very effective tools for me to engage with the audience. After trying both I preferred my short play as it allowed more learners to participate.

I really enjoy the micro lesson environment, and I wish I would have been able to give my full presentation to the group prior to the Gateway 180 workshop. They have such valuable insight, and the small tweaks they suggest make huge content and delivery improvements for my lessons. For my 3rd lesson I want to tweak the material to be more relevant to the girls in my group since I have already completed the lesson with Gateway 180. It gives me an opportunity to again, try something new that I hadnt considered before. I think I'm going to add another group activity where everyone interacts, I feel like that got my point across in a more meaningful way than private reflection, or group discussion was been able to do. Because I'm talking about ritual, I may give the group different family situations, or relationships, and have them create and share a ritual or tradition that would attend to strengthening that specific relationship. I will also have some discussion with them about the ritual or tradition that they already have within their families, it puts people in a safe space to share and in the Gateway 180 learner group - they seemed to really enjoy reflecting and sharing what they already were doing in their families.

Micro Lesson 3: Family Tradition and Ritual

For my last micro teaching presentation I discussed how tradition, ritual, and physical touch between family members affect family strength. Prior to the lesson I felt confident in my knowledge of the material but I was concerned about incorporating a psycho-motor activity that would be appropriate and comfortable for the participants to share in. My worries were warranted! During the presentation I fumbled when talking about hugs, felt odd about having people simulate hugs, and made a flippant comment about safe-touch. It was awkward. I wish I had gone through the motions of being a learner of my lesson so I could adjust the activity to make sure it made neither the learners nor me uncomfortable. Luckily, the girls didn't seem fazed by the activity - but I worry that in a larger, less familiar crowd it could have been a disaster. I still feel confident in teaching, but I need to allot more time to practicing and reformatting my presentation when needed. Reading it on a power point is quite different than experiencing it.

I did do quite a bit of research on the subject and I knew I had knowledge to share that would be meaningful to the learners. However, as mentioned above - I struggled sharing it. What I did keep consistent was using personal experience to illustrate the key points of the lesson. I feel comfortable sharing in that way and I think it disarms my learners to feel open to sharing with me. I really rely on teacher/learner communication, it's the only way I can assess how the audience is receiving the information while in process. If they aren't connecting with me and the message, I don't feel comfortable in continuing to build on the lesson. Connecting with the learner gives me a stronger foundation to teach from. My group has been wonderful, very open and vocal, so my lessons have benefited from having this group to collaborate with.

This was probably my shakiest micro teaching lesson, mostly because I didn't feel confident in applying psycho-motor to the subject material. I think it can be done, but I really need to spend some time researching ways to teach appropriate lessons regarding physical touch. In general I think psycho motor may be something that I struggle with. I am a talker, I love talking, conversing, discussing, not to say that I'm not active but I don't typically associate physical movement with learning. When I work out, my mind shuts off! I do know that memory is all about making connections, and if someone connects more when in the psycho-motor realm I need to be able to accommodate that learning style.

When you consider in a classroom setting, many learners are continually being taught in a seated environment, it's important to expand your teaching methods to get their attention. Using a psycho-motor approach can be a great tool to differentiate your lesson from others, so I want to feel comfortable in that space.