Farewell university TAing

Oh yeah, an update on where I'm at now.

I moved across the world from Sydney to San Francisco and now I'm working here as a software engineer. But I still haven't given up on being the best teacher in the world, and I want to see what I can achieve with my spare time.

I think I'll pick up a few teaching projects.
- private tutoring
- solo compass v2 in collaboration with high schools
- youtube channel
- educational webapp ideas (I know, it's clichéd. But my webapp will be magical.
- educational mini-lectures at my new company

I still haven't given up. I owe myself that much.

Self-improvement

Today I posted on a Facebook page giving advice for another tutor. Here was part of the response:

"re 1: this is something I make a huge effort towards. I never dismiss anything as a stupid question, I always ask if anyone has questions about anything and spend a lot of time getting class discussions going on whatever people want to talk about. I'm a master at the whole "yes but" rather than "no" thing. I'm supposedly pretty good at all of the above, since I do have a history of a lot of great, balanced class discussions with everyone contributing and nobody being left out, and even my other class is fine with this, so I don't think it's that specifically; or maybe it's something where if I have a majority of students who are something then the class discussions manage to build off that, so maybe having a less something class is causing it to snowball?"

I suppose this is why ordinary people have trouble achieving grandmastery.

When I read things like this, I am reminded of how much I was changed by my losses in Starcraft (http://roadtograndmaster.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/welcome-to-teaching-tree.html).

Most people choose not to look upwards, for it reminds them of how low they are on the mountain. Most prefer to stay where they are.

It is good that they are happy with that, but I can't help feeling like the students deserve better.

Scheduling

Ideally I'd like to get at least 5 hours of planning in for my first tutorial, in order to make the greatest impact. I suppose this is completely infeasible, however. If I add on the three hours of actual tutorial, and the three hours of travel time, I'm left with barely any time to do anything at all.

Semester Plans

I have some commitments I have prepared for the semester. These will be important to actively improve on my teaching abilities, which is an important factor in improvement.

- Write a post on this blog discussing lesson plans, before each teaching session. I am hoping to be able to have a fairly solid discussion on each tutorial, but that will be difficult to do when I am short on time.
- Write a post on this blog reflecting on each tutorial, immediately after I finish it. The 'immediately' is extremely important. Things that happened during the tutorial are easily forgotten, and my memory will be the most fresh directly after I do the tutorial. I'm hoping to be able to do a tutoring reflection at the very least on the same day.
- Consistently reflect on my teaching abilities, things I need to improve on and practice (e.g. body language, volume of voice, clarity of diagrams, resources required, interesting-ness of class)
- Follow academic journals on education and keep up with the latest research on teaching insights
- Always be on the lookout for new ways to improve my teaching abilities, in addition to the above.

Welcome to the Teaching Tree

About half a year ago, I qualified for the Grandmaster League in the multiplayer real-time strategy game Starcraft II. It means you're one of the best players in your region. It was an achievement that I'm still proud of - hours upon hours of practice every day, training every combination of keys imaginable, watching my replays, optimising my keyboard shortcuts, doing the same things over and over again until my wrists were sore...