From the observation, the course topic was all about food. This lesson had a slight change, the teacher became more of a facilitator and/or a support colleague for Neda. The situation was such due to the fact that Neda was more of the instructor for this lesson, so the teacher was to support her when needed. The class seems to have a few new people compared to last week. On similar note, certain students were not present in this observation. Perhaps, students are taken down for outside class participation. Thinking of what went on in the experience, the students were primarily talking about cultural foods. As an example, the majority of class time was dedicated to discussing the national foods that we know. From this, students from various nationalities participated. There were many materials and technology assistance used to help out with the delivery of the lesson. Examples such as interactive whiteboard and polls, these were tools that the TA used as activities throughout the lesson. I found that certain students were more interested than last day. To me, it made me ponder whether the topic’s interest can attract attention from our learners. Although, not all student had talking time, the lesson was good.

As the lesson progressed to certain slides, especially those that called for student participation, TA sort of struggled to keep track who shared and who didn’t. This was addressed by the teacher after our observation, which was a crucial takeaway, critical reflection (what went wrong/well, how can we improve together). The TA did have some troubles, like correcting or clarity. There were times when students would use a word like “snake” to describe a food. However, he/she intended to use snack to describe how a food was looked in their culture. The teacher had to step-in and correct them for clarity purposes. The lesson and the TA was fairly culturally inclusive. Within the lesson and from the TA, both wanted to implement the importance of cultural recognition. Without it, what we see actually has no meaning. Simple food can mean and bring long rich history for why it exist.

Every activity had instances of teamwork and its effectiveness in lesson delivery. When the teacher would feel a few students needed to share, she would take charge and ask those students to share their thoughts. Also, when certain technical issues arose, Hilda would provide assistance and aid the TA. Here, this made me criticize my own planning to teach a future lesson with my fellow colleague (team-teach). Although, the lesson seemingly need one instructor teaching, there are benefits of team-teaching. As I primarily focused on the teacher’s and their TA’s ability to lead as a pair, there was one final takeaway that the teacher used only one sentence to describe the importance:

“Pacing is important, because we should have the students talking, and it’s not about whether we complete lecturing on all the content”.

As a teacher, efficiency might be convenient but efficacy is a necessity