Today I taught my first tutorial class for NM3216 Game Design. It went smoothly, and I’m quite happy. Admittedly, the tutorials for this class aren’t that strenous to conduct – they’re basically just a briefing and introduction at the beginning, and then wandering from group to group giving advice on their various game ideas, followed by some closing administrative matters. But what really strikes me is really the craft of teaching.
As I was told in my TA training course, and as I’ve come to realise after today, teaching really is mostly about people skills. Looking back, I’m grateful for the experiences of last year. If there was one particular lesson above all that I’m glad to have received last year, it was that it taught me to pay closer attention to group dynamics and relationships between people working together. I think I would not have seen the things I saw today, if it hadn’t been for the hard lessons I learned about group dynamics.
Today, I found myself paying close attention to the way the different groups interacted. I found myself seeing and anticipating possible problems, not in the work itself, but in the group members. Over here we have one person dominating the discussion, over there the people are not communicating well, someone over here is unsure of their role, someone over there is being too noisy… all these things, which I would probably never have noticed as a student, I now start to notice as a teacher. And certain things that my lecturers did when I was a student now make sense, even though I chafed at them back then. I suppose it’s all part of life, that we find out as we go along, that our elders and predecessors were wiser than we gave them credit for.
Of course, I’m still unsure about whether and how much to step in to correct the faults I see, or leave it to the students to work it out amongst themselves. For now, I’m just leaving it be, but nevertheless… the very fact that I’m noticing these things now pleases me, because it shows that I’m starting to make progress in my own personal growth.
I still have two more classes to go. Already, I can think of ways to improve my conduct and delivery of the lesson, and try and make it better for the students in the later tutorials. I’m glad for having three tutorials one day after another. It gives me time to improve and refine my lesson structure each day. But now that I’m beginning to encounter the heavy marking workload, I realise again that the teaching job is no sinecure. But it’s definitely an enjoyable one so far. I just hope and pray that at the end of this 2-year contract, I will be as happy and satisfied with my job as I am today.
