Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Fall 2012 Workshop 1: The ABCs of SoTPs


On Tuesday, October 23rd, Jamiella Brooks and Nicholas Hall presented the first of a series of Fall Workshops on writing a Statement of Teaching Philosophy (SoTP). About 20 people from various disciplines across the humanities and sciences attended, bringing a variety of experiences—some having already written their statements, others just getting started. One interesting facet came up when we learned that some attendees were in fact writing a statement for a fellowship application, opening up another reason why a Statement of Teaching Philosophy is such an essential document to have.

Nicholas designed and modified a table called “Organizing a Statement of Teaching Philosophy” that participants found very useful in hammering out ideas for their statement. Throughout the workshop, participants filled this table to the brim with ideas for their statements. Whether you are just getting started on your SoTP or have already written one, this is a good document to fill out to make sure all your bases are covered.

Some of the questions attendees asked:
“How can we talk about our shortcomings as instructors without being too negative?”
“How can we sell ourselves as teachers if we only just started getting interested in teaching?”
“Should we talk about ‘pedagogy’? To what extent?”
“Should we talk about our research in our statement? If so, how?”

If you are interested in these questions, we encourage you to attend our next SoTP workshop in Winter 2013--be on the lookout for advertisements as to when and where. 

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