Teacher Observation

Joshua Caramanzana

120714

ED- 33

Teacher Observation

The first thing that came to my mind when I observed Mr. Manny Dy’s class was his calm and relaxed approach with the lecture and the class. His class was scheduled 9:00 am – 10:30 am every Tuesday and the Thursday. His lecture was about the philosophy of Edmund Husserl. He is a well-known philosophy professor in Ateneo and he wrote a book about the phenomenological approach showing how the approach is done.

The class started out with a prayer from a birthday celebrant in class. After the prayer, Mr. Dy asked for a volunteer to read a paragraph from his book about rain. The excerpt simply how rain is and what the “essence” of rain was. After the student read the excerpt, Mr. Dy then started the lecture by reading his PowerPoint while expounding on what was written on the projector. The students had books that matched what was written in the PowerPoint so they could follow. As the class went on, I observed that some students didn’t pay attention. Some would browse the internet while pretending to take notes on their computer, while others would sleep or text. Mr. Dy didn’t seem to care as he continued with his lecture. There were times he would call on a student to give examples of what was explained and he would always ask if there were any questions after every explanation. It continued this way until the bell rang.

After seeing how Mr. Dy handled the class there were some things I saw that could help me in teaching. One thing I noticed was the way Mr. Dy handled the class. He didn’t call the attention of the students who were not listening and he looked to ignore them. This resulted in them not really paying attention to the lecture. I could avoid this by walking around the room or by making the class more interesting through recitation or activities. Another thing I noticed was his style of teaching. He read from the PowerPoint, that students had a copy of, and explained from there. Maybe, he saw that this method produced better grades and understanding from the students since they could follow the flow and review better. But in what I saw, it resulted in a boring lecture where he only expounded on the bullet points found in the PPT. He also asked the class numerous times if they understood and gladly answered any questions the students had. I could always take this in mind to ensure the class gets the lesson and leave no one behind or not getting it.

...