Students are teachers, too

Students are teachers, too

How student-teachers adapt to online classes

By Andy Chia The Daily

Art by Greta Dubois

When the UW announced fall quarter was going to be primarily online, the First-year Interest Group (FIG) leaders in our training class were unusually silent. Our instructors asked us if we had any questions. None of us said anything, but in our Zoom breakout sections, all of us were talking nonstop about doubts we had for teaching this fall.

This fear of the unknown is an emotion that I think instructors all over the nation are experiencing. But for student-teachers, this is a unique fear.

FIGs are organized by First Year Programs (FYP) with schedules specifically curated for first-year students and their potential interests, which typically consist of up to three classes. Alongside these classes, FIG students take GEN ST 199, “The University Community,” which is taught by FIG leaders like me. What makes FIG leaders unique is that we are all undergraduates recruited every year by FYP and trained throughout spring quarter. By fall quarter, we have lesson plans and basic educational training that will hopefully get us ready to go for Husky Kick-Off and the next two and a half months of class. Being a FIG leader can be an overwhelming position during a normal year as it’s usually their first time being in charge of a classroom.

Despite being online, I find that I’m still learning the same lessons from teaching.

I started as a FIG leader in 2018. Unsure about how effective I was as an instructor, I remember feeling overwhelmed: awkward pauses during my lectures, scrambling for lesson plans, and worrying about what I should teach. To say that I felt incompetent would be an understatement.

To compensate for these insecurities, I would spend at least an hour going over what I should do for my class that week. I would look at self-help articles from veteran teachers and professors. I thought that I could never reach the point where I would feel comfortable in teaching.

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Reach writer Andy Chia at pacificwave@uw.edu. Twitter: @ GreatBaconBaron.