UCSD Lactation Educator Program
Community Class Observation
- General overview of class setting: Where? When? How long? Instructor?
The Breastfeeding education class was held at Sharp Grossmont Hospital on Thursday, February 7, 2013 at 6:30-9:30pm. Although the class was supposed to be 3 hours long, it ending up only being 2 hours. The instructor’s name was Kristina Walker.
- Analysis of participants: Male – Female – Ages – Demographics
Although there were only 9 people in the class, there was quite a mix! There were 4 couples in attendance and 1 single woman. Two of the couples looked to be in their 20’s and 2 of the couples looked to be in their 30’s (and one of these couples was a lesbian couple). Two of the people in attendance looked to be Asian, 2 from Hispanic decent and 5 looked to be Caucasian. There were also 2 additional students in attendance, not from our class.
- Detailed topical outline of class – remember you will use these suggestions
Objectives – She introduced herself, but did not give an overview of what was going to be talked about. She did have an outline that she handed out, but skipped around a little bit and even skipped a whole topic.
Content – see table 1
Teaching strategies and methods – see table 1
Time Frame – see table 1
Method of evaluation if class learned topics – There was no method of evaluation used and no recapping of topics.
Table 1: Time Frame, Content Outline and Teaching Methods
- Personal evaluation or observations:
If I’m being completely honest, this class did not increase my personal knowledge at all. None of the information in the class was new to me and none of the teaching techniques were, either. In fact, I think some of the information given was not given in a great manner and the teaching was fairly ineffective. I definitely learned a lot about how I want to teach future classes and how not to teach them. For example, I want to do a lot more explaining and less fact spewing. I want to do more hands on practicing and less demonstrations (especially with dolls available to everyone in the class). I want to focus less on breastfeeding products and more in breastfeeding, itself. I want a woman to know, especially for those who may not have a lot of money to start with, how breastfeeding only takes 2 things – you and your baby. I also do not want to skirt around questions asked, but either give direct answers, or be honest and tell them I am not sure, but will find out and email or call them with the correct information.
01/12 CLEC