Notes From Teaching Observations
Fall 2017
"Gokce lead an amazing discussion during which every student raised their hand at least once. Also shared relevant podcast, summarized end-of-semester responsibilities, and just generally took care of business. The engagement of her students with the text and the issues it raised (Roxane Gay, Hunger) was correspondingly contagious. Yes, I admit it: I raised my hand too, just to join in. Summary of primary strengths observed: Facility leading discussion, clear expectations and schedule for end-of-term assignments; highly contagious enjoyment of teaching. It felt like people's lives were being changed in there."
Fall 2016
"On November 21, 2016, I observed Gokce Tekeli's WRD 110 class...The class included 15 students. the class for the day was divided into two parts: peer review of a major project; and the textual analysis of a model video documentary. I thought that the lesson was very well organized. Before the peer review, Gokce introduced the students to a list of peer review questions and clarified the kinds of information that would be useful. After each student video, Gokce allowed the students time to answer the questions and picked them up at the end of class. During the discussion, Gokce encouraged students to draw on their written responses as a straight point, which facilitated meaningful discussion. Moreover, the textual analysis of the short documentary at the end of class was clearly linked to the students' own work. Gokce aked many of the same questions of the documentary (about appeals, music selection, videography) that arose during peer reviews. The part of the lesson also allowed her to do a review of the major rhetorical concepts, approopriate for the end of the semester...I enjoyed sitting in on Gokce's class. She was highly prepared and appeared comfortable in the classroom."
Spring 2016
"Gokce's rapport with the WRD 203 students was apparent. The entire class felt compelled to participate in discussion, and Gokce did a fantastic job negotiating balance from students -- including some eager students who attempted to dominate discussion. I noted how Gokce respectively addressed these students while encouraging quieter students to actively participate in the discussion. I also enjoyed seeing Gokce's interactions with students in smaller groups where she had an ease addressing individual concerns and questions about group projects. Overhearing students' work on these projects, I'm impressed with how they discussed rhetorical choices for designing their research and presentations."
Spring 2015
"Both in my observation and in our later conversation, Gokce proved herself to be thoughtful and deliberate in the choices she was making for the session I saw and for the course as a whole. Her 75-minute class period was a mix of individual responses, small group work (two differently constituted groups for 10-15 minutes each), and full-class discussion in response to first cuts of two student videos on the subject of community life at UK or in Lexington . She saw to it that a student from the groups who made the videos visited the discussion groups both to answer any questions and to receive peer review on their work. The groups of student filmmakers visibly responded to their videos, recognizing organization & editorial changes they'll need to make for the final version as well as errors they didn't realize they'd made. Gokce seized opportunities to link the filmmakers' decisions and opportunities both to the detailed rubric by which the final project will be graded as well as to the class' readings in visual rhetoric, and I could overhear students judging what they'd seen in terms of the effectiveness of the films' appeal.
This session offered what seemed to me a highly successful application of the day's lesson to the overall commitments of the course. The class began with a brief review of immediate past assignments, and ended with a reminder of what was coming next. Students were engaged and were given opportunities to think about their assignments' scaffolding."
"This semester, I observed Gokce on March 24, 2015 and on April 21, 2015. As with my observations last semester, I noticed several patterns in Gokce’s classroom management style, her organizational capabilities, and in her rapport with students. During both sessions, she introduced me and set her students at ease, and she asked questions about their spring break and their weekends in order to engage them personally before asking them to engage in classroom discussion – a very effective technique. She also began both class sessions by providing them with an update on her grading progress and with an assignment overview, which helps to center students on the work at hand and to align their expectations. Her teaching style is highly effective – she provides contextual framing for the day’s work through brief lecture and occasional handouts, asks strong and effective open-ended questions to engage her students, provides guidance and encouragement when students struggle with material without giving them answers, and when they are tired or fail to engage, she adapts and attempts another approach. She also manages to keep a calm, collected demeanor when students are engaging in disruptive behavior, and it is clear that her students respect her authority. Two moments in each of these classes stood out to me in particular. In the March class, which occurred right after spring break, students were very sluggish and didn’t want to engage, but Gokce was consistently patient, asking new questions, reframing questions, and breaking into small groups until her students began to participate. In the April class, students were suffering from typical end-of-semester malaise, but Gokce, with great patience and persistence, managed to get them engaged in an critique of videos by providing clear direction and an engaging evaluative activity and consistently visiting groups and checking on their progress. Both classes were a pleasure to visit, and Gokce did an excellent job drawing out reticent students. Gokce has done tremendous work as a TA this semester and this year as a whole. She has become increasingly confident in the classroom and clearly has a facility for working with and challenging her students. I still see a small disconnect between her capabilities as a TA and her faith in herself as a TA; when we debriefed about her classes, she still had some anxiety about ways to engage her students, but I told her she does excellently with this and should feel confident in her abilities. For her continued work in the classroom, I’d like to suggest that Gokce find ways to put the impetus on students to turn the classroom around when they are reticent to participate; that may come about in part through modeling, but I think she has a real facility for turning reluctant classes around, and I think she can challenge herself with this. Overall, I am very pleased with her progress this semester, and I think she should strongly consider applying to be a mentor so that future students can benefit from her calm, supportive guidance and excellent pedagogical ideas."
This session offered what seemed to me a highly successful application of the day's lesson to the overall commitments of the course. The class began with a brief review of immediate past assignments, and ended with a reminder of what was coming next. Students were engaged and were given opportunities to think about their assignments' scaffolding."
"This semester, I observed Gokce on March 24, 2015 and on April 21, 2015. As with my observations last semester, I noticed several patterns in Gokce’s classroom management style, her organizational capabilities, and in her rapport with students. During both sessions, she introduced me and set her students at ease, and she asked questions about their spring break and their weekends in order to engage them personally before asking them to engage in classroom discussion – a very effective technique. She also began both class sessions by providing them with an update on her grading progress and with an assignment overview, which helps to center students on the work at hand and to align their expectations. Her teaching style is highly effective – she provides contextual framing for the day’s work through brief lecture and occasional handouts, asks strong and effective open-ended questions to engage her students, provides guidance and encouragement when students struggle with material without giving them answers, and when they are tired or fail to engage, she adapts and attempts another approach. She also manages to keep a calm, collected demeanor when students are engaging in disruptive behavior, and it is clear that her students respect her authority. Two moments in each of these classes stood out to me in particular. In the March class, which occurred right after spring break, students were very sluggish and didn’t want to engage, but Gokce was consistently patient, asking new questions, reframing questions, and breaking into small groups until her students began to participate. In the April class, students were suffering from typical end-of-semester malaise, but Gokce, with great patience and persistence, managed to get them engaged in an critique of videos by providing clear direction and an engaging evaluative activity and consistently visiting groups and checking on their progress. Both classes were a pleasure to visit, and Gokce did an excellent job drawing out reticent students. Gokce has done tremendous work as a TA this semester and this year as a whole. She has become increasingly confident in the classroom and clearly has a facility for working with and challenging her students. I still see a small disconnect between her capabilities as a TA and her faith in herself as a TA; when we debriefed about her classes, she still had some anxiety about ways to engage her students, but I told her she does excellently with this and should feel confident in her abilities. For her continued work in the classroom, I’d like to suggest that Gokce find ways to put the impetus on students to turn the classroom around when they are reticent to participate; that may come about in part through modeling, but I think she has a real facility for turning reluctant classes around, and I think she can challenge herself with this. Overall, I am very pleased with her progress this semester, and I think she should strongly consider applying to be a mentor so that future students can benefit from her calm, supportive guidance and excellent pedagogical ideas."
Fall 2014
"During this class, Gokce lead her students through the viewing and discussion of a documentary that would provide them with a model of how to approach their final projects, and I was able to observe some of her classroom management capabilities and her facility with leading class discussion. At the beginning of class, Gokce adeptly introduced me to students and stressed that I was there to observe her, which I thought was a great touch – it definitely put them at ease and let them know that she was the one being evaluated, not them. Overall, Gokce appears to be very comfortable in front of her class. Her teaching persona is very close to her professional and collegial persona, which I think works well for her – she is very genuine and very approachable. During the documentary she presented to her class for discussion during my visit, she sat down and watched along with her students, which I think aligns well with her persona and also indicates that she, too, still has things to learn and observe from the materials she’s using in class, which is an excellent message to send to her students. Before the documentary began, she broke students down into groups by the categories she wanted them to observe and discuss (i.e. visual frame, camera movements, sound, etc.), which was very effective. This methodology gave her students a clear understanding of her direction for the activity as well as the expectations she had for completing it. The discussion she led afterwards also illustrates her facility in the classroom: she asked excellent follow-up questions to her students’ comments, which encouraged them to push their observations farther, and she also did a great job of encouraging students to discuss content first as a way to ease them into the material and then to tie that discussion directly to the discussion of the technical elements of the documentary that she wanted students to focus on. She also did an excellent job of linking her activities – she waited for discussion to conclude and found a natural segue into the next activity. Gokce is a constant, consistent presence in her classroom – during group discussion, she moved easily from group to group, listening to their interaction and redirecting their approach in a way that was firm and direct without being obtrusive. Although she has an approachable persona and demeanor, she is in no way a pushover: I watched her firmly redirect students who were talking during the class in a manner that made it clear that that behavior was not acceptable without embarrassing them. Overall, she’s doing an excellent job."
"During this class, I was able to observe a bit more of Gokce’s organizational capabilities, classroom management style, and the effectiveness of her long-term direction and supervision as a TA since the majority of the class was devoted to the students’ final presentations. As she did during the first class, Gokce made the class feel at home by introducing me and the other observer and letting her students know that we were there to observe her and in no way would be judging them. I love that Gokce started off with some treats for the class – it made them feel appreciated and as if this culminating presentation was a celebration of their work, creating an inviting classroom atmosphere. Gokce is clearly well-organized – she had all of the student documentary URLs listed in order on a Word document so that she could easily bring up one after another in a browser and not waste time in between. As during her previous classroom observation, Gokce did an excellent job of leading class discussion by asking wonderful follow-up questions of her students to encourage them to take their observations and comments farther. Rather than having students do presentations on their documentaries before showing their documentaries (as I did in my class), Gokce had students present afterwards, which I think was a smart move because it encouraged more classroom engagement and follow-up – I myself am going to borrow this approach. I also noticed that a diverse cross-section of students asked questions and contributed to discussion, which indicates that the class is well-balanced but also that Gokce is actively encouraging students to participate, and that she’s finding some success with her methods of encouragement. Another testament to her effectiveness as a teacher is that each of the student documentaries I viewed took a unique approach to the assignment that was wholly different from other documentaries but equally effective. This indicates to me that Gokce is giving students some leeway with the assignment guidelines but also that she’s providing sufficient feedback and direction that student are, in their own ways, able to meet the assignment requirements. Finally, I noticed that Gokce made several substantive observations about the difference between the first and final cuts of these documentaries, which indicates to me that she knows her students’ work quite well and is engaged and interested in their improvement and success."
"During this class, I was able to observe a bit more of Gokce’s organizational capabilities, classroom management style, and the effectiveness of her long-term direction and supervision as a TA since the majority of the class was devoted to the students’ final presentations. As she did during the first class, Gokce made the class feel at home by introducing me and the other observer and letting her students know that we were there to observe her and in no way would be judging them. I love that Gokce started off with some treats for the class – it made them feel appreciated and as if this culminating presentation was a celebration of their work, creating an inviting classroom atmosphere. Gokce is clearly well-organized – she had all of the student documentary URLs listed in order on a Word document so that she could easily bring up one after another in a browser and not waste time in between. As during her previous classroom observation, Gokce did an excellent job of leading class discussion by asking wonderful follow-up questions of her students to encourage them to take their observations and comments farther. Rather than having students do presentations on their documentaries before showing their documentaries (as I did in my class), Gokce had students present afterwards, which I think was a smart move because it encouraged more classroom engagement and follow-up – I myself am going to borrow this approach. I also noticed that a diverse cross-section of students asked questions and contributed to discussion, which indicates that the class is well-balanced but also that Gokce is actively encouraging students to participate, and that she’s finding some success with her methods of encouragement. Another testament to her effectiveness as a teacher is that each of the student documentaries I viewed took a unique approach to the assignment that was wholly different from other documentaries but equally effective. This indicates to me that Gokce is giving students some leeway with the assignment guidelines but also that she’s providing sufficient feedback and direction that student are, in their own ways, able to meet the assignment requirements. Finally, I noticed that Gokce made several substantive observations about the difference between the first and final cuts of these documentaries, which indicates to me that she knows her students’ work quite well and is engaged and interested in their improvement and success."