So today was a pretty big day for me coz I taught my 1st ever tutorials! I was pretty nervous going into my 1st ever one, but also pretty excited too, and I think it worked to my favour. My grade 10 drama teacher, Mr. N, once told me that if I get nervous about something, that's probably coz I care a lot about that something. He was right.
As I was walking to Buchanan, I spot Dane (a more experienced fellow TA) walking out of BuTo and headed to Buch D. I went up to say hi to him and we managed to remember each other's names, though today was probably the first time we talked properly. Speaking to him helped calm my fears a little, and before I knew it he was going up to the 3rd floor while I left the stairwell and went to find my classroom. While walking around Buchanan with Dane, I bumped into Gina, and I didn't recognize her until she said hi to me, because meeting her last night and meeting her today was a difference of night and day (in both sense of the word). One of my best friends Lui Xia said something along the lines of how hair & make-up does wonders, and I couldn't agree more. Turns out my tutorial room was literally right in front of me past the washrooms, so I went in.
There was a whiteboard on one side of the wall, so I sat in the middle of it while my students started filtering in. 1 minute past the hour, I began by introducing myself (& the two other TAs for the course, though they were not there) and said to them plainly that like many of them, I was a first-year student here. I told them about how I graduated with a degree in International Relations and History*, and how I had no familiarity with 19th century Brazilian history [the topic we were to discuss for today was about the end of slavery in Brazil], but that I am simply an advanced learner (which was an advice given to my fellow new TAs and I during our TA training). I told them and wrote down my office hours and location, and one of them asked me how they should call me, so I just said, "call me Stanley". Then I paired people up and got them to find out their partner's name, where they are from, why they are taking this course, and what is something they like doing during their free time.
I gave them around 3 minutes to do that, and then they told me their partners names as I took attendance. I felt this was a bit more organic compared to what I did in my 2nd tutorial, but I'll come to that later. Some people came late, so I got the latecomers to introduce themselves. Prof Lee assigned 6 discussion questions ahead of time, so I split the class of 19 people into 5 groups, since question 3 and 6 were very similar. At first I split them into groups of 3, but that didn't end well when I got to the last group, so I divided them into groups of 4. Then I gave them 15 minutes to discuss among themselves to formulate a group answer. Many of them came prepared so it was a breeze.
I made use of the white board (tho I lowkey was hoping for a blackboard so I can get my hands dirty with chalk) to write their answers, and I even extended some of the questions further by giving mini-lectures about the end of the slave trade & slavery in the British Empire, and guided them to answer how the Paraguayan War played a role in the abolition of slavery movement (abolitionism). What was funny about my first group was that whenever I made eye contact with a student after I asked a question, that student would look back at me in fear as if they had done something wrong. So that was a lesson learnt for me. Since landowners of coffee plantations made use of slave labour in mid-19th century Brazil, I extended the conversation to talk about trans-Atlantic commodities. I asked them what other commodities were being moved around, and they gave me great answers like cocoa, sugar, tea, tobacco... And I even took it upon myself to introduce them to Sydney Mintz, a well-known Anthropologist who wrote a book about sugar called Sweetness and Empire. My extended understanding of commodities is of course credited to what I learnt in Prof Eric Jennings HIS245 class, European Colonialism from the 1400s to 1965 from UofT.
At the end of my 1st tutorial, I reminded them about my office hours and had a few students ask me questions like, how to select books for the first paper [which is due almost at the very end of this term]. I think I answered them pretty well, but might have given them the wrong suggestions coz I suggested if they wanted to look at Chinese history, to consider the opium wars [which is before the 1880s, and the course's timeline starts in 1880s strictly]. I did also suggest that they could look at the history of Chinese food, like how dumplings went from China to the US, which of course surprised the student because they never thought that food history was a thing [it is a thing].
I left my 1st tutorial pretty happy, and amazed at how smart the students in this university were. I hold office hours in between my two Friday tutorials, so I got to my TA office building, stepped inside for the first time, and tapped open my neighbour's door for her to go in before I went into my own TA room. I am very happy to have such a good room, it has a microwave, fridge, WINDOW, and ample space. No one visited me of course (it was the first week of tutorials) so I just chilled, had a bag of potato chips from my neighbour, and then went back to Buchanan D for my next tutorial.
The classroom dynamics in this tutorial was so different. There was already a group of students to the far end of the room chatting, while people started filtering in. So I did my whole opening act again when it was 1 minute past the hour, and got them to introduce each other to me. The difference was, however, that I started on a more serious note as I sat down and took attendance my butchering my way through their names (I had a class list). After they told me things about their partner, I went on to divide them into 5 groups again (each group tackling 1 question), but since the chatty group was still being pretty chatty (they lived in the same residence after all, and were all lifeguards), I employed a tactic I remember from school in Malaysia, i.e. getting them each to count 1-2-3-4-5, 1-2-3-4-5 etc. There were exactly 15 people in this tutorial, so it worked out beautifully. The chatty group was split up, and the students were forced to make new friends. I did not have to do this for my 1st tutorial, because I felt like people didn't know each other (yet).
Like the 1st tutorial, they came back to me with their answers, and members of the chatty group did respond back to me with good answers. Since this 2nd tutorial was later during the day, they were all pretty awake (compared to tutorial 1) and at ease with me. However, I won't say I had total control over this tutorial group, partly because I sat down for longer periods of time compared to my 1st tutorial (and again, Lui Xia reminded me how standing up vs sitting down makes a difference in terms of power dynamics), so that's something I have to work on for the future [to stand up instead of sit down]. I ended this tutorial a few minutes earlier, and one of the students wished me good luck for my academic conference next week, which was really sweet of that student.
So I left Buchanan D and went up BuTo to chill in the grad lounge for a while, and spoke to Nathan Lucky (a fellow TA) about our 1st ever TA experiences. He had more things to deal with since he was TA-ing a 4th year class while I was pretty chilled (relatively) as I TA a first-year history course.
I later spoke to Lui Xia on the phone when I was on my way back to my place, then I vc-ed her for like an hour to catch up about things we had done this past week. For example, last night was the first formal for my building, and the buffet food was simply amazing!
-beat-
I think the reason why I really enjoyed today was because I got a chance to teach again. I was thinking about my teaching qualifications while walking to my 1st tutorial (before I met Dane), and the last time I was teaching was 2013 and 2014, but I was only an assistant teacher for grade 1 and grade 2 Sunday school kids. I liked that I got a chance to say things like, "let's go back a bit to that previous point, what were other factors that led to the abolishment of slavery in 1888?" and "that's good, but what else?" To me, discussing history with a learned group of people was something I felt quite comfortable with, even though it was just about Brazil today. I admit that I was a little stumped and didn't know how to respond to a question posed by a 2nd tutorial goer, "why did the prof choose to start this course in 1888 with Brazil?" I answered that in a general fashion, saying that the historiography that I know of 20th century history does not start with Brazil at all, but that the prof probably wanted to highlight how Latin America was one of the first regions of the world to go through decolonization in the 19th century. While teaching, I critiqued the article by Bethell, saying that the author does not go into enough detail about the role of the Church (apart from mentioning it once in the whole article), and Brazil was by and large a Catholic country.
In conclusion, I had fun today and finally understand why Prof Lisa Mar said that she feels a high after teaching. I felt a similar sensation, being able to get a group of 15 to 19 1st/2nd-years listen to me and more importantly, each other as they engaged in some academic fun, moderated by me. Thus, my model UN training definitely paid off in a way, and the advice that Josh (who is now doing his PhD at Wisconsin) gave me was particularly helpful too. I hope that Monday's lecture and tutorial after lecture will be as enjoyable, and that the students are not as quiet (like tutorial 1) or as chatty (like tutorial 2) but somewhere in the middle. Monday's tutorial will not be in Buchanan but in Swing Space, so I'm hoping that things will work as well as they did today. But first, I'm off to enjoy my much-needed weekend. This past week was brutal: besides today's schedule, I had a lecture on monday, global history on tuesday, historiography on wednesday (EP Thompson yay), directed studies with Nila and John my supervisor (which went surprisingly well tho I barely read the 2 books assigned), formal dinner, then 9-10pm Skype call with my TA supervisor on Thursday. It was a productive first full-length grad school week, and I'm hoping that my enthusiasm for my tutorials, courses and thesis carries on well until I'm done grad school.
Ok maybe I'm a tiny bit overly optimistic, but you need optimistic dreamers like me to make the world a better place right? I guess I should find realists who can help ground me, but that can come later~
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