Where better to get advice about teaching at City as a PhD students than from other current PhD students or postdocs who have been teaching for a while? They have experienced  the same issues and concerns as you have, and so you can learn from their experiences. In this first video, Abeer Elbahrawy, Alex Gilder, Lee Jones, Alex Powell, Marianna Rolbina and Deanna Taylor discuss how to prepare for teaching.

The advice includes what the participants wished they’d known before they started teaching, covering aspects such as:

• thinking about how you come across to students
• how to cope with worries about starting teaching and asking for help (including distracting yourself before a class and shadowing others)
• not needing to know everything, but anticipating student questions
• the importance of rehearsing and knowing your material
• and that teaching does get easier with time, and that the students do want to learn from and with you!

In the second video with teaching advice from PhD students, Abeer Elbahrawy, Alex Gilder, Lee Jones, Alex Powell, Marianna Rolbina and Deanna Taylor discuss how to establish authority in the classroom, and how to engage students – key concerns that many people have around teaching.

The advice covers:

• the power of anecdotes, cultural references and asking students questions
• thinking about room dynamics – where are you placed in relation to the students?
• how to balance helping students with valuing your own time – perhaps through the use of office hours
• sharing your passion about a subject with students