Gail: Micro-teaching Methods

This morning I held "office hours" in the Geography Department. I put office hours in quotes because no one really has an office and I just go to a VERY small room with 4-5 computers that are hooked into the network. Phil came along today because the electricity went out in our hostel and he was hoping to find power--which he did!

Four to five students were waiting for me and I started helping them work on their research topics. One of the students is doing her thesis on "New Micro-Teaching Methodology in Vietnam". Hmmmmmmmm. I looked at the list of research articles she had found and saw papers published in the mid-1960's and early 1970's. I didn't know what micro-teaching methods meant and these early dates meant that it probably wasn't something cutting edge or state-of-the-art. So I went to good ol' Wikipedia and looked up the term. Geez....this is what I found:

Microteaching is a teaching method whereby the teacher reviews a videotape of the lesson after each session, in order to conduct a "post-mortem". Teachers find out what has worked, which aspects have fallen short, and what needs to be done to enhance their teaching technique. Invented in the mid-1960's at Stanford University by Dr. Dwight Allen, micro-teaching has been used with success for several decades now, as a way to help teachers acquire and hone new skills.

I turned to the young lecturer (a term used for a graduate student who teaches) and said "Ummmm, this is a pretty old method-perhaps you want to try something a bit newer". She looked at me in surprise and said basically this was very new and the most innovative type of teaching method used in Vietnam! I thought about it and tried to see if I could get her to think really innovative--like using Problem-Based learning or something that is more in line with what teachers are using today in the developed countries. She got a bit flustered and said that Vietnam was very "behind the times" and using video camera was the cutting edge of technology for her. As I looked around the room we were working in.....old clunky computers with small CRT displays....minimal support for anything technological, I sighed (inwardly) and said to her....sure, go ahead and use the older articles. I tried to talk to her about using the implementation of micro-teaching in 2008 in Vietnam as a way to document the serious upgrading the facilities and teaching methodologies needs here. I am not sure that she understood what I was trying to point out.

But with that said.....the students are phenominal. They are very, very serious about their studies. Most graduate students make only $100 per month. To be able to survive they all "moon-light" in other jobs. Most of them teach or tutor English in the evenings to very young children. I have talked to many of the students and they all leave their homes very early so they can be on campus by 7am. In fact today as Phil and I were walking back from Tai Chi at 6:30am he commented about the huge number of students on campus heading into the classroom buildings. Most students are at the university until after 6pm...and then they head to their night jobs. And....classes are taught on Saturday...so they really only have one day free a week. They really value education and work very hard towards getting that valuable university degree!

.....and Phil and I are headed north for the next 5 days. WE are taking the night train to Sapa which is located in the mountains close to the China border. We won't have internet access, so we are hitting the Pause button on the blog for a few days.