Presenting a group micro-teaching

This was the last day of my health class, and I was part of a group that led a micro-teaching on the short-term effects of alcohol geared toward an eighth grade class. Four of us presented the lesson. We all had strong opinions of what should be taught, which became challenging at times, but it managed to come together as a presentation representative of each of our teaching styles. I think this made for a good variety of information, and the class seemed to enjoy it. My responsibility was to lead a discussion to pre-assess the class and help them to think about what it means to be drunk. I asked them to think about someone they may have observed in person, on TV, or in a movie and describe what they noticed about that person. They came up with descriptive words like “silly,” “vomiting,” “erratic behavior,” and “loud.” We mentioned that being drunk often looks different in real life than it does on TV and defined drunk as being affected by alcohol to the extent of losing control over one’s body and behavior. Our group followed this up by having everyone wear special goggles that simulated being drunk. All had difficulty walking a straight line, and some were noticeably wobbling as well. This helped them to see what being out of control was like and helped the issue to be more real to them.

I enjoyed leading the discussion and felt very comfortable in that role but wondered how much freedom I should allow the students in their discussion. When one student began sharing that she had observed her dad being drunk, I felt that that shouldn’t have been shared with the class but didn’t want to embarrass the student by admonishing her. I felt instead that that was my fault for not having warned the class to not share personal details. Later, when the class gave their feedback on my presentation to this make-believe eighth grade class, one of my classmates brought that up and clarified for me that I should have told them at the beginning to not share personal details with the class. This was very helpful to me, and I will try to remember to do that in the future when we will be discussing issues where students might be tempted to share personal stories. I might also add that if they do want to share a private story that they would need to use pseudonyms when discussing events that others might prefer to keep private.