January General Meeting 2024
2023-24
Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Our January General Meeting was held in the Wendel Center at the museum. Tony opened the meeting by welcoming our 2024 training class. Tony also acknowledged our outgoing board members: Ivonne Calzadilla Gomez, our wonderful Hospitality Chair will be moving to Florida, Natalia Sobachevskaya will be taking over as Hospitality Chair, and Lotte has stepped down as our Vice President but will remain on the Continuing Ed committee and the Marketing and Recruiting committee. Louise Persson has kindly accepted the position of Vice-President and will be our President in September.
Since this was also the first day of training for our training class, it was a good opportunity for us to have a refresher training for all of us. The topic for our meeting was Classroom Management. We broke into three groups and were given some issues that may come up when giving presentations in the classroom. The discussion was moderated by some of our exprienced docents. A hearty thank you to all who helped make our January meeting a success.
The following are some of the issues we discussed:
Refresher Training 2024 — Classroom Management:
Focus on the following issues:
- Responding to surprising comments and unexpected circumstances or behavior:
How do you handle disruptive talking (or disrespectful students) during your presentation?
What if a student brings up a sensitive topic?
Have you dealt with inappropriate comments/behavior in the past? What was yourreaction? How would you manage this situation in the future? - Engaging, encouraging, and including every student:
Which techniques do you use to encourage both shy and confident students toparticipate in the discussion?
What can you do when a student is reluctant to answer your question?
How do you include students who don’t speak English?
How do you encourage active listening in the classroom? - Inattentive teachers:
What if the teacher is absent and there is a substitute?
What if the teacher is inattentive or leaves the classroom during your presentation?
We gathered together after our panel discussion to get a summary of the topics covered by each group.
To listen to some of the panels' remarks, click on the links below:
