What was the most challenging aspect of teaching "Othello"? What was the aspect of teaching you liked the best?
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Working with a partner seemed to be my biggest challenge. When it comes to teaching a class, I feel that it is much easier to work alone because you don't have to worry about who will teach what, or who will cover this aspect of the play, etc? Another challenge for my specific act, was trying to find good videos to show, and also trying to think of good teaching ideas.
There were also aspects of teaching the class that I enjoyed. Doing more work to make sure other people understood the act made me able to understand the play more than if I were to be taught the act that I covered. This project also helped me think of different creative ways to teach the class. Most of those ideas didn't work out, but it was still helpful to understand the play.
Throughout this project I've had a hard time deciding whether or not I liked or disliked the idea of teaching the class. Over all there are many things I've liked and disliked. I benefits I see with teaching the class is the full knowledge and understanding you get for the section of the play you were assigned. When you are preparing to teach your peers, you need to make sure you go line my line to understand the play. You may even re-read or find resources to help with understanding of the play, like watching movie versions or checking your translations with an outside source. All the effort put into preparing for this project is all very helpful in understanding the play.
I also noticed many aspects of the project that were challenging. When teaching your peers new material I found it difficult to get a good discussion going. It seemed like no one was willing to contribute or start a discussion on the material. When asking discussion topics each group had to ask students to respond to each question and almost force their peers to contribute to the topics that they as teachers for the class where trying to make. I also found it to be awkward to tell your fellow peers if what they had answered was correct or not. It was not a position I wanted to be in, telling a student that I felt their opinions was incorrect or correcting them on what they said. Being in front of the class teaching your peers is an awkward experience in my opinion.
This teaching the class project is not something I'd choose to do again if I had the choice. The only benefit I found to this project was the preparation. Preparing for this project allowed for me to have a full understanding for the language of play and the events in the act I was responsible for. Other then preparing for the project, I did not get much out of the teaching part. I would not choose to do this project again, I really did not find the benefits in teaching the class.
I did not love teaching Othello to the class very much. I am more used to a teacher teaching the books instead of the students. A major challenge for me was that I have to trust myself and my own judgement of the book and when I could be completely wrong. Personally, reassurance from a teacher always helps me, because then I know I that i understand what is going on. I sometimes misinterpret readings, especially Shakespeare, and not having anyone telling me that I interpret it correctly is hard for me. I am also very unsure of my work and I do not always trust it, so that made this assignment hard as well. Shakespeare is super difficult as is, and having to interpret it all completely on my own without anyone telling me I am on the right page is difficult. Also, the teaching of the play is not the most fun because you have to try and find a fun and effective way of teaching it. A teacher is in charge and has control over the class, but when a student teaches the information the other students do not take it as seriously. Since they do not take it as seriously and are not as engaging, it makes the teaching harder on a student because you are not sure if they completely understand what the student who is teaching is saying. However, Anne and I did come up with an effective way to make sure that they knew what we were saying by giving them a crossword puzzle with simple answers.
Although I did not love teaching to the class, I did like that I did not have to read all of the acts and that they were summarized. Most of the time when reading Shakespeare, I do not always understand what is going on. Having it summarized was a lot easier and understandable for me. Also, being able to analyze and dissect one whole act of the play makes it much more possible for me to understand the play than for me having to just read each act and talk about it in class. By being able to teach the act to the class proves to me that I really know what's going on. I did not specifically like the teaching aspect of the project, but I did not mind being able to dissect the whole act so that I knew exactly what was going on. I like to have more of a discussion instead of just feeding the information to them.
The most difficult part of teaching Othello was finding an understandable and helpful way to present the information to the class. I was really nervous to explain Othello to our class because I did not want my classmates to think I interpreted the play wrong. It was hard having people rely on you to learn and understand something that they devote forty-five minutes of their time to everyday. As a student, you trust your teacher to be informing you the correct facts about Othello, because your teacher is a real adult, who has gone thru college and real life. How easy is it, then, to trust one of your seventeen year old classmates, who hardly knows anything about Shakespeare? That is what I imagined a lot of my classmates were thinking during this project. One problem I seemed to experience often with this project was time. It was extremely difficult for me to get am actual grasp on how long something would take; I over-guessed everything. Another problem I experienced was finding actual good teaching aids. I had trouble understanding what would be a helpful video or not. Throughouht my teaching, I learned to appreciate what I learn more because I now understand how much it takes to truly teach somebody.
One thing I did enjoy about this project was being placed in the teacher's shoes. Although trying to understand many aspects of teaching is difficult, this project showed me how much work it really takes to be a good teacher. Teachers have to have a serious desire and passion for what they do; they strive to help others learn. Throughout this Othello project, I found it difficult to possess that passion. When somebody has a passion it makes them that much better at what they do, and this project helped me understand how much our teachers go through trying to teach us.
The most challenging aspect of teaching is to get the students to actually be interested in what you're teaching. Not only does the teacher have to present the information, but the teacher has to present it in a manner that is easily digestible. In addition to this you, the teacher, have to make the information interesting so that the information sticks with them. It's also hard to get the materials ready for class and to come up with a lesson plan so that you, the teacher, can teach the subject matter thoroughly.
Despite the difficulties i came across while teaching my scenes of Othello, i found teaching my classmates very enjoyable. the main reason why i found it enjoyable is because i was able to show my classmates how awesome and how confusing Shakespeare's Othello was. I was able to lay out my knowledge for my classmates to see and use so that they would come to understand Othello better and enjoy it more so that they might better remember the information for the future. I also liked that teaching my fellow classmates allowed me to better understand and allowed me to better remember what was going on in the story thus teaching myself while teaching them. Lastly, I liked teaching because it forced me out of my comfort zone and allowed me to try something new that i ended up liking.
All said and done, I liked teaching despite the fact that it was difficult to do. I am glad that I had this opportunity to try my hand at teaching.
English Blog
Topic:What was the most challenging aspect of teaching "Othello"? What was the aspect of teaching you liked the best?
The most challenging part of teaching Act 3 to the class was making sure that I understood the information be for I tried to actually teach it to them.
Act three wasnt too long of an act, but for what it was worth it had some very confusing parts to it. There were words. Of used in modern day English and situations that seemed very odd when put together. So when we tried teaching this act to the other students, it was sort of difficult. If it would have been a different issue it would have been easier to teach because we ourselves were learning Act three as we taught it to people who didn't know it either. Though there were many toils we had to face to get our project done, there were some fun parts.
For example filming Act Three Scene Two. The entire scene was about 40 seconds long but while we filmed it was fun. We also tried to film parts of Act Three Scene 3, but the scene was too long and we decided that we should just work on building other things in our project stronger.
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