Teaching

I'm actually teaching for the next month. Fourth year is quite flexible and we have opportunities to teach, do research, or go abroad. I will spend a total of two months teaching; right now I'm a small group leader for the first year medical student cardiovascular block. It's fun. I feel that attempting to teach something helps me know how well I understand things. Today, I spent the entire day (from 9:30 to 7pm) teaching an EKG lab. We went through the basic science of electrical dipoles, vector math, and Einthoven's law, and then we took EKGs on students. Leading multiple sessions really helped me recognize various ways to effectively teach difficult concepts and work with the range of student learning styles. I also try to get the first year students to teach each other since I think that is a very important skill to learn. I'm a small group leader for physiology, pharmacology, and medicine. Not only is it fun to review stuff I've forgotten (all those channels creating the action potentials) but it is a great opportunity to work on leadership, presentation, and communication skills. We get very good training and preparation sessions from the session coordinators. I'm really looking forward to it.