Teaching Avatars: My Experience with TeachLive

As part of my methods block, I was able to utilize a system called TeachLive. TeachLive is a type of software that Miami uses to help teacher candidates practice their classroom management skills in a risk-free environment.

The students are avatars that appear on a screen before the teacher candidate and they will respond to teacher questions, as well as ask questions of their own.

To prepare for my TeachLive experience, I had to come up with a 10-15 minute introductory lesson that would draw on the student’s prior knowledge. Additionally, I had to come up with a way to effectively open the lesson.

For my quick little lesson, I decided to do an introduction to the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. This play lends itself to a quick introduction lesson as it contains an epigraph (a quote, poem, or saying that appears at the beginning of a work to suggest its theme).

Photo I took of one of my peers, Alex Mains, an AYA Math
Education major, during his TeachLive lesson.

In the case of A Raisin in the Sun, the epigraph is a Langston Hughes poem titled “Harlem.” This poem centers around the idea of “a dream deferred” so I was able to use this as a starting point for drawing on prior knowledge.

Standing in front of a screen of five avatar students was definitely a unique experience that was unlike any of my other classroom experiences. Each of the students has their own personality, and within a minute of standing in front of them, it’s quite apparent how to handle each student from a teacher perspective.

I found that I was more nervous for this experience than I was for teaching during field, and I think that is because this was such a new experience.

While I was teaching my lesson, two of my peers and one of my professors were watching me on a screen in a separate room. When I finished my lesson, I was able to talk to them and receive their feedback, in addition to receiving instant feedback from the avatars.

Now that I’ve gone through this experience once, I know that I can improve if I were to do this again since I have a better idea of what to expect.