The past week was great. The team has all taught some lessons now and the students are starting to settle in to what it takes to make for a fun and educational case method classroom experience. My first few teaching experiences went really well, and I was less nervous and never ‘stumped on what to say next,’ as I expected I might be – teaching both undergraduate students and seasoned Masters students for the first time can be daunting. We celebrated the success of the week with a weekend trip to the Masai Mara.
The very first class I taught, and the first class of our course, took away nearly all of my remaining fears and made me extremely happy about what we are doing here. After only one class I had two students come up to me and tell me that this was the best and most engaging class they had ever taken in University. I was so worried that the class had actually gone fairly poor compared to our HBA 1 classes, but I have learned this week they are just starting to warm up more and more to the case method class style. Looking back it seems unreal to me, having students tell you that you are able to teach in a more engaging style than their seasoned professors. I really have to thank my Section 3 classmates, my professors, and Nicole Haggerty, for giving me the experiences to help me be able to teach so well!
The Masai Mara Safari. If you come to Kenya all I have to say is make sure this is one of your destinations. We were able to see herds of many different kinds of animals, and even an interesting standoff between a pack of lions and hyenas over a wildebeast breakfast. One of our nights back at our camp we visited a Masai village and we were able to participate in one of their dances, see how they make fire, and learned a lot of neat things about them. There is too much to talk about, so all I will say is it was a fantastic excursion to end a great week of teaching.