Early career teaching experience

When I started teaching I was afraid of students’ feedback. I remember that after one of my earliest teaching experiences, one of the comments from students targeted my “thick” accent and mentioned that I was too young to teach. It was quite devastating, but one of my colleagues reassured me that I had to focus on the areas for improvement rather than prejudicial comments. That’s when I realized how important is to carefully analyze student feedback, look and observe trends rather than individual isolated comments. Consequently, I have been able to improve my teaching style and philosophy by adapting to the ever-evolving student population and the discipline growth. I started to transform verbose and complex topics into real-life scenarios, term group-based projects, contextualizing subjects using metaphors, scheduling guest speakers, and sometimes field visits. Students have given me positive feedback after these adaptations, and I keep observing ways to improve by also considering their prior discipline backgrounds, work experience, and individual skills. I have learned to use student rapport during the semester to inquire about the student experience and correct it during the course of the term rather than waiting for the next iteration.