This week's management class lays an important foundation for both good teaching and good living. Being supportive and listening makes everyone's life easier! Here’s a bit of what we covered this week:
Peer Editing
This week everyone brought a rough draft of their first paper of the semester. We went through the important steps of the peer review process: Compliments, suggestions and corrections. I was very pleased to see that people were very eager to share their work with their friends and give and receive valuable feedback.
Peer editing is a valuable skill for all of us to learn and practice. As post graduate students, all YL trainees should be trying to become more independent in developing their English writing skills. In addition, peer editing is a useful skill that we can pass on to our students in the future!
Although not all of your professors provide time in class for peer editing, remember that it is a part of the writing process that you can use with all of your future assignments. If possible, try meeting with classmates outside of class to take a look at each other’s papers. Get lunch or a cup of coffee; it can be fun! Keep your peer review checklist handy for when you get together and remember to follow the important steps.
Active Listening
The second half of this week’s class was like a quick workshop on active listening. It was fun giving everyone a taste of the concept. I’m glad that everyone now has a basic understanding of what active listening is. This is not the last time you will hear about it this semester. We will be revisiting it in future lessons. Now that we all have a basic understanding of it, it will be easier to know what we are talking about when I refer to it later on.
Active listening is an important skill for us all to know when dealing with students and the parents of our students. It’s also an important skill for us to pass on to our students so that they can grow into good and effective people. The first two exercises that we did in class were methods that can be used for helping children understand and use active listening skills.
The first thing that we practiced was blind walking. Through this activity, we learned that listening is important and that not all communication is verbal. In active listening, we need to do our best to listen 100% and only use nonverbal communication to show that you are listening.
In the next activity, we practiced being “bad listeners”. We were very mean to one of our classmates, but they each got a piece of candy when it was over. What we learned from this activity was that being a bad listener can be hurtful to our friends, but can also deprive us of important information. After that, we all got a little bit of practice with a partner.
If anyone wants more information on active listening or wants more practice, feel free to come by my office and visit!
Next week's agenda: The Learning Environment
