Courses Part 1: The American Classroom

During several weeks of studying at UNC we broadened our knowledge and got to know different perspectives and styles of working or solving problems with children and families. All of us chose different classes according to our individual interests, which also overlap in some fields. Generally we noticed that the American classroom is in some ways similar to the German one but in other ways completely different. We appreciate that there is less distance between instructors and students in America, so that instructors seem to be very approachable and supportive to each of their students. In addition we noticed that students ask a lot of questions and openly share their personal opinion and experiences with the whole class. We like this more interactive and active teaching style which involves students a lot and encourages them to participate in class which enriches learning and incorporates more different opinions and points of view.

For getting to know and understand the American culture and classroom better, all of us chose to attend the class, which has been recommended to us by Monica and Susanna (the two Portuguese GEDS students, who visited the UNC in spring 2010). The course Communicating in the American University Classroom aims at preparing international Teaching Assistants for being an instructor at UNC. The focus of the course lies on enhancing cross-cultural communication and understanding, English pronunciation, basic teaching skills (mimic, tone of voice, body-language; cultural differences in those) and topics necessary for effective interaction in the American classroom.  In the course of fulfilling the assignments of this class all of us were able to learn more about our personal teaching abilities and present deficits that we still display and need to work on. Each of us gave a short microteaching presentation in which she defined and explained a discipline-related term to an American undergraduate class. The aim was not only to provide an understanding but also to actively evolve the students and help them comprehend and apply the term. The students gave each of us a feedback and made suggestions for how to improve our teaching. Furthermore, the sessions were videotaped so that we could watch ourselves teaching and could notice mistakes we made. We all considered this experience as being extremely important to us and expect to improve our active and interactive teaching skills a lot by attending this class.