Workshop #5: Setting Sail on the Mentorship

The 5th workshop of the Collaborative Connections Workshop was on Mentoring. Specifically the MentorSHIP. The goals of our workshop were to;

1. Analyze characteristics of good and bad mentors
2. Discuss some mentor-mentee predicaments
3. Reflect on your current mentor-mentee relationships
4. Develop a mentorship plan

To achieved these goals we had a series of activities, beginning with a Think-Pair-Share to identify what mentorship is, what is it like to not have a mentor, the scales of mentorship, and lastly the characteristics of good and bad mentors. We also discussed the differences between an advisor and a mentor with several people noting that advisors are paperwork positions while mentors have a vested interest in your success.

After we listed the characteristics of mentors we asked the attendees of the workshop to create concept maps using our shared characteristics and characteristics unique to them.

"What keeps a mentoring relationship afloat? If the relationship were a boat, what type of boat would it be and why?"

The participants were asked to depict their graduate school mentoring relationship using the above prompt. Mentoring relationships, whether you are the mentor or the mentee, are dynamic. The relationship often serves a purpose and the individuals in the relationship are trying to achieve specific objectives. The participants were asked to consider the direction, obstacles and unique qualities of their relationship(s).

Mentorship :: coal-powered boat. The fuel (coal) is labeled as "interest", "active participation" and "Encouragement to Excel." Interestingly, the participant depicted obstacles as bird droppings raining down from above ("disinterest" and "unavailability"). Also, the participant commented that the boat is out to sea with no land in sight. This exemplifies his feeling that he is in the middle of his graduate school process. Luckily, his pile of fuel is large!



Mentorship :: Trash Barge. Navigating past obstacles such and QE (qualifying exam) and comps (exams), looking to catch the illusive three-eyed dissertation fish, the goodship "Co-Sponsorship"is loaded down with goods: "personal attention", "support", "engaged", "coauthor" and "direction." The mentee and mentor sit together in the pilot house and stay protected from the clouds of "bad ideas."

The concept maps gave attendees to chance to reflect on the aspects of mentorship that they appreciate and/or avoid. It also illustrated the dynamic nature of mentorships where winds, currents, and predators representing bad mentorship threaten to capsize boats but where good mentorships help mentees stay afloat.

We then explored mentorship scenarios with the following 4 scenarios developed from Johnson and Huwe 2002 (for full citation see below);

1. You are mentoring several people, two or more of which do not get along. How do you handle the situation? Under what circumstances involving this situation would dissolve a mentorship? How would you do it?
2. After working closely with your mentee for several weeks you suspect that your mentee is attracted to you. You realize it is unethical and against University rules to start a relationship with your mentee. How do you handle the situation?
3. You are frustrated because you feel neglected by your mentor. However you are unsure what the cause of your mentor's neglect is. How do you assess whether your mentor is just busy or has purposely neglected you? How do you rectify the situation?
4. You are believe in formal relationships between mentors and mentees. However you are mentoring a person of a different culture who address you in a very informal way. How does this make you feel? How do you handle this situation? How would you feel if the situation were reversed and you were informal while your mentee was formal? How would you handle this situation if you were the mentee?

The attendees were asked to discuss these scenarios from both the mentor and mentee's perspective in small groups, then to develop skits to demonstrate the scenarios. After each skit we had a short discussion, with the longest discussion involving how to deal with mentees that don't get along. It was brought up that sometimes a mentee's environment becomes hostile because bad mentors fail to intervene in a timely matter or ever at all. At which point it was noted that mentees also have the power to dissolve mentorships and should do so if they are not receiving what they want or need from the relationship. In the end for the mentee it becomes a matter of weighing the time it would take to finish up if one stayed vs. left the mentorship.

Lastly, we gave a handout with prompts for thinking about how to write a mentorship contract. A mentorship contract lays out all the expectations a member of the mentorship has for the relationship and provides a framework from which to discuss what both members of the relationship hope to gain. The questions in the handout were:

STARTING YOUR MENTORSHIP CONTRACT

WHAT CAN MENTEE/S EXPECT FROM YOU?

1. How much time you are willing to commit to your mentee/s?

2. Are you willing to write letters of recommendation?

3. Are you willing to help with writing in general? If so, will you look at outlines, partially completed drafts, completed drafts only?

4. Will you offer personal guidance? Can your student rely on you for personal as well as academic advise? Will you advise on career advancement, grantmanship, publishing, teaching, enhancing professional visibility, networking with other scientists and practitioners, overcoming barriers to career success?

5. Timely comments

6. Weekly/monthly/quarterly meetings?

7. Respect your mentee's time as much as you respect your own.

8. Make only positive or neutral comments about your mentee to others.

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT OF YOUR MENTEE/S?

1. Timely revisions?

2. Timeliness in general?

3. Be open to constructive criticism?

4. Listen to what you have to say?

5. Seriously consider the advice given to you by your mentor, even if your immediate reaction is not positive.

6. Make only positive or neutral comments about your mentor to others.

Johnson and Huwe. 2002. Toward a typology of mentorship dysfunction in graduate school. Psychotherapy: Theory/Research/Practice/Training 39(1). 44-55.

Workshop #6: Burst Your Academic Bubble

It's not uncommon to hear people remark "Yes Virginia, there is life outside the university!' Undergrads often sound relieved to hear this. Even more often, PhD students just sound surprised. At the final Creating Community workshop, the group discussed the challenges, rewards & strategies of reaching out to, as well as drawing in, communities into our lives and classrooms.

The learning goals for the workshop were:
1. To explore your community connections.
2. Consider the costs and benefits of reaching out to these communities.
3. Consider how these interactions affect your teaching.


We explored ways we could contribute to outside communities through our research, teaching and non-academic service. And we talked about how we could enrich ourselves and our classrooms by starting to break down the barriers between town (that is, non-academic communities) and gown. We began with participants constructing a concept map of all the communities they currently interact with (circles connected with solid arrows) and communities they would like to interact with but are not able to (squares with dashed arrows).

Some of the noted advantages to conducting outreach (in whatever capacity or form one is most comfortable with) were discussed. It became apparent that interacting with a variety of communities has professional advantages (for future employment or collaboration), has rejuvenating properties (the road to a graduate degree is long, but planting trees offers immediate satisfaction!) and helps us be better communicators (explaining our research to others outside of academia).

Some of the disadvantages we discussed include the amount of time it takes to find communities and projects to get involved in. Also, the emphasis of our graduate school career falls squarely on our ability to make meaningful intellectual contributions to our fields. This means that outreach might be viewed by our mentors as a waste of time or indulgent.

We did have a great discussion -- the last one of the year and for this workshop series! But it's not over, and we know we left the room with more questions than answers.


Are any of the readers of this blog involved in communities outside the university campus? What are these communities? Has your involvement helped enrich your teaching, research, or general state of being? Has your involvement posed challenges to these? And the ubiquitous questions everyone asks: how do you find the time?

One thing we know is, now that it's summer and you have the time to read this blog... surely you have time to contribute! Let us know, whether you attended the workshop series or not!

Workshop 2: Developing a Teaching Persona

The second workshop in the Collaborative Connections workshop series was on developing an effective 'teaching persona.' Sharada led the workshop off by going through the goals of the workshop, which are listed below.

We began by stressing how the way in which you present yourself to your students can help you achieve your learning goals. We hoped that participants would leave motivated to think about how they could align their teaching persona with their student learning goals.

We then had a discussion about what a teaching persona is. We defined it as the way in which someone presents oneself and the how one is perceived by their students. We also stressed that your identity in the classroom can draw from, but doesn't need to be identical to, your actual personality.

In order to illustrate how different presentation styles can be utilized for different learning goals, Sarah D gave an example of a freshman seminar she hopes to teach on "The Amazing World of Ants." The main goal of this seminar would be to awaken students to the fascinating behavior, ecology, and life history of ants and make them excited about these animals, rather than afraid of them. In order to do that, she would be best served by being enthusiastic and exciting when presenting information. Sarah A gave a contrasting example of a class she has taught in Gender Studies on sexual assault. It would behoove her to assume a more serious tone in a class of this sort and place an emphasis on making people feel comfortable enough to discuss such serious issues.

Richard concluded the workshop by going through a S.W.O.T. analysis with the group. The idea of this exercise is to think of your strengths as an individual (and teacher). Then you list your weaknesses. These are meant to be inherent, internal qualities that help you or hold you back. Then you think about the external forces that you feel threatened by and the external forces that you perceive as opportunities. The last part of this exercise it to think about how you can take your perceived weaknesses and make them strengths and, likewise, how you can take the things that threaten you and make them opportunities to improve.

Workshop #4 Review: Advancing Community in the Classroom

On May 13th, Cassandra, Sarah D., Travis, and I facilitated the fourth workshop in the Collaborative Connections series, titled Advancing Community in the Classroom. You may have seen the immediate follow-up post which explored a few online tools and linked to some other resources that were briefly mentioned in the workshop. This post is a more general review of the whole workshop.

Today in our workshop “Advancing Community in the Classroom,” I spoke briefly about ways to introduce collaboration and build community outside the classroom. In this follow-up post, I’d like to gather a variety of online resources together in one (hopefully) convenient place. This post can also serve as a place we can continue our discussions and share ideas we might have thought of after the workshop was over.

Workshop #1 Active Inclusivity: Benefit from Diversity in the Classroom

On Monday April 19th we held the first the of six workshops in the "Collaborative Connections" workshop series. Here is a condensed version of what we did.

Message to participants:

In this first workshop we will develop a mindset for all of our future interactions in a effective collaborative community. Instead of discussing diversity as something we should know about in order not to offend people, we will instead focus on why how we as an academic community benefit and thrive from diversity.

In the first part of the workshop we will identify how we as individuals contribute to the diversity in this room, and in other academic settings and discuss how this can affect us as learners. In the second part we will create techniques to use in the classroom to make the learning environment more accessible to others.

We have identified the following learning goals for this workshop:

Since today we are going to be talking about topics that are sometimes

emotionally charged, we thought it would be a good idea to establish some community agreements concerning how we communicate with each other in the classroom.

(Last three agreements were contributed by participants)

Next we are going to do an activity that is intended to generate discussion about diversity. We are going to ask you a few questions, but you don't need to answer them if you don't feel comfortable doing so. As we ask the questions, feel free to look around the room and see ow others are responding.

As you answer I will count and write down a number for each category. Please raise your hand if you....

identify as female,

identify as male,

identify as African American,

identify as Asian,

identify as Hispanic,

identify as white,

are an international student.

Now everyone turn to your neighbor and discuss what just happened, and if it evoked an emotion, how did it make you feel?

Themes that came up:

• many don't like being put in categories
• many felt the categories not represent their personal identity (categories were missing)
• the categories were unclear, ethnicity, nationality, and cultural identity are different, and this list does not acount for that
• it was uncomfortable to be placed into a category
• it was uncomfortable watching to see what categories each identified with

Here is how the University talks about diversity:

From the UCD Student Affairs Research site:

What types of diversity are missing? What are all the different ways people can identify that might change their perceptions?

Students then wrote a bunch of different ways we can be diverse. Instead of talking about specific labels (ex: queer, straight, bisexual, gay...) we instead talked about avenues of diversity (ex: sexual orientation). We are sure there are more, but in the 10 minutes we gave this is the extensive list we and the participants came up with. We had them come up and write them on the board. Here they are in no particular order:

health, primary language, family’s educational backgroud, major, level of sports participation, military service, personality, family position, region of origin, sex, coping style, gender, aspirations, relationship status, learning style, reproductive status, age, educational status, major/minor, hometown/place of origin, Familial college history, reason you are in school, perspectives, political orientation, ethnicity, experience, motivation, beliefs, orals, background, class, race, religion, ability, self-expression style, educational heritage, sexual orientation, minority experience

Now we are going to create a diversity web. We are going to circle each word on the board that represents a strong part of our identity, and link them together if they are related. For instance, my gender (female) is a strong part of my identity, and this influences my perspectives. Because my gender sets me apart in my major, I feel I have different motivations, and reasons for being in school than my peers. Circling and linking these items provides a visual representation for how different types of diverse avenues intersect and overlap.

Here is what our board looked like after many participants represented how they contribute to diversity.

So why does this all matter anyway? It seems like we all contribute to diversity in some way, why should we examine all the ways in which students in your classroom can be diverse? There are a lot of reasons, but one way we can quantify it is by looking at student prospected retention.

The three items in red are directly related to community, which you can facilitate in your classroom by being inclusive. But it's not only important to be inclusive because students will be more likely to feel comfortable and therefore remain in school, there are some really easy ways your classroom can benefit from diversity.

How is diversity in the classroom beneficial?

Participant generated responses:

• Students can learn from different experiences & perspectives
• It makes class more interesting to hear diverse opinions
• By recognizing diversity, you can make learning more widely accessible
• Students are exposed to different ways of thinking (both philosophical, and with problem solving)
• This makes the classroom more robust
• Students bring complementary knowledge to the table
• It can encourage debate and inspire change
• It makes students more well rounded to be exposed to different perspectives
• Students are exposed to different problem solving approaches

Next we will talk a little more explicitly about how diversity effects our classrooms. We will split into 4 groups, and each group will have one of the five terms: Teach, Learn, Research, Communicate, or Collaborate.

In your groups you will discuss how diversity in the classroom and on campus affects your group's term.

Finally we will apply what we have learned in our groups by turning them into a skit. Each group will use some of the ideas generated in their small groups concerning their term, (Teach, Learn, Research, Communicate, or Collaborate) and connect it to a positive classroom benefit.

Skits are difficult to recount, but the main themes were students benefitting from different learning styles, and students not being able to participate without being part of a community.

We will now pass out a hand out that offers a number of strategies you can use to promote inclusion in your classroom.

HANDOUT:

These ideas are intended to help you work effectively with the broad range of students enrolled in your classes. They are based on current research and on teaching practices of faculty.

• Become aware of any biases or stereotypes you may have absorbed. For example, some faculty and TAs on occasion collectively call undergraduates 'unmotivated,' or even 'uneducated.'
• Treat each student as an individual. Try not to project your experiences with, feelings about, or expectations of an entire group onto any one student. For example, some TAs occasionally have trouble with lying or cheating students, but this does not mean it should be assumed most would do this if given the opportunity.
• Monitor the climate in your classroom. Ask students to let you know if you inadvertently offend them. If your class is small, consider opening up a dialogue with each student individually (either via email or short 5 or 10 minute office hour appointments) so you may know a little more about your students. Conduct a mid quarter evaluation to let your students weigh in about the classroom environment. Consider adding questions such as these to your course evaluations:· Does the instructor treat students equally and evenhandedly?· How comfortable do you feel participating in this class? What makes it easy or difficult for you?· Do you have suggestions for encouraging open and candid discussion in class?
• Recognize the complexity of diversity. Avoid making assumptions about students based on only one of their groups characteristics and neglecting the complexities in their lives and experiences.

Communicating and Fostering Respect

• Be attentive to terminology. Terminology changes over time, and individuals within groups can disagree about preferred designations. Ask your students which terminology they prefer. For example, some students may prefer 'African American' whereas others may prefer 'black'. Some Asian Americans may prefer to be identified not by a continent, but by the nationality of their ancestors – 'Thai American', or 'Japanese American.' Learn about groups other than your own.
• Convey the same level of confidence in the abilities of all your students. Students who believe that they belong to a stigmatized group can result in underperfromance. “Stereotype threat” occurs when a student’s anxieties about confirming a negative stereotype can cause the student to perform poorly. Convey your clear conviction in each student’s intellectual potential.
• Be evenhanded in acknowledging students’ accomplishments. Praise students for good work, but avoid lavish displays that may make students uncomfortable (“why is s/he so surprised that I’m doing well?”) Note in some cultures being singled out for personal accomplishments is neither valued or appreciated.
• Be aware of possible misinterpretatioins of students’ nonverbal behaviors. Many behaviors vary across cultural groups.

Pedagogical Approaches

• Use inclusive language and examples. For example, use ‘parenting’ rather than ‘mothering’, ‘house of worship’ rather than ‘church’, ‘partner’ rather than ‘boyfriend’. Avoid comments that diminish students’ perspectives (“don’t be so sensitive”) or make assumptions about students’ lives (“when your parents were in college…”). Draw examples from a variety of cultural and social contexts.
• Learn to correctly pronounce students’ names.
• Look for opportunities to give personal attention and validation to students.
• Assign group work and collaborative learning activities. Group work can reduce prejudice and bias by giving students opportunities to interact with others from different backgrounds.

Course Content and Material

• Try to select texts and readings whose language is gender neutral and free of stereotypes. Aim for an inclusive curriculum. Try to structure your course so that students view concepts, themes, and events from diverse perspectives.· Assign texts and readings that reflect scholarship and research about previously underrepresented groups.· Discuss the contributions made to your field by historically underrepresented groups.· Describe how recent scholarship about gender, race, sexual identity, and class is changing your field of study.
• Do not assume that all students will recognize cultural, literary, or historical references familiar to you.
• Bring in guest lecturers.

Class Discussion

• Emphasize the importance of considering different approaches. Show students different viewpoints and encourage them to evaluate their own beliefs.
• Make it clear that you value all comments.
• Encourage all students to participate in class discussion. Try to prevent any one group of students from monopolizing the discussion. Solicit alternate viewpoints.
• Speak up if a student makes a distastefull remark-even jokingly. Students make take your silence as condoning the behavior.
• Do not treat students as spokespersons for their demographic group. Asking a student to speak for his/her entire group ignores the heterogeneity of viewpoints among members and reinforces the idea that every member is an authority on his/her group.

Assignments and Exams

• Be sensitive to students whose first language is not English.
• Help students form study teams. Peer support is an important factor in student persistence in school. By arranging for times and rooms where groups can meet you can encourage students to make friends beyone their personal networks.
• Give assignments and exams that recognize students’ diverse backgrounds and special interests.
• Use a variety of names in classroom examples and test questions.

END HANDOUT

Final thoughts: Please think about all we have discussed today and think of one change you are going to make in your classroom.

Homework:

}Reflect on what happened for you during this workshop

}Think about what ‘being inclusive’ means to you. Email a paragraph to tac@ucdavis.edu with the subject ‘being inclusive’

Also visit these difficult questions:

}If you treat everyone identically, are you favoring everyone?

}Is it possible to “level the playing field in the classroom”? What does this mean? Should you try?

Thanks for coming!

Collaborative Connections: Build a Community of Learners in the Classroom and Beyond

TA Consultants Spring Workshop Series

This is an overview of the entire 6 part spring workshop series "Collaborative Connections" for grad students and post-docs at UC Davis. In this series we are focusing on a model of community based on concentric circles. You as the educator, are at the middle, not because you as the TA are the most important part of the community, but instead because it perhaps makes the most sense to think of ourselves as a part of a larger community and how we interact in

that community. The next circle represents 'our students' both in and out of the classroom, for instance we can have interactions with individual students perhaps in a research lab setting. The next circle represents our 'classroom,' which is made up of many students who may interact with each other and with you the educator. Next we have the 'campus' community circle, which represents an interdisciplinary academic community. Finally we have the 'outside community' circle which indicates all individuals outside of campus (this can be parents, alumi, school children, politicians, or some combination of individuals you can have interactions with.)

This model is neither complete nor perfect, but rather it is a framework to think about how we as individuals serve a role in our community. We can use this model to better visualize our

interactions with community members in order to meet the goal of fostering Collaborative Connections.

Here are our learning goals for the entire workshop series:

Analyze teaching as a cyclical or iterative process (reflection is part of the teaching process, therefore we are never done learning how to teach)

Take responsibility for our teaching and what happens in our classrooms and community (We need to think about what is and isn’t happening in our classrooms in order to know what we want to change.)

Engage in the process of making learning accessible to everyone (this process is useful both in the community of this workshop, and in your experiences)

Look at a wide variety of tools, theories, and experiences (No tool works the same way for everyone, and each should choose those that work for them in their classroom and beyond)

Think about our students both as learners and as educators (Empower our students! They facilitate learning too!)

Leave with more ideas to try in the classroom and the confidence to try them (It can be intimidating to try new pedagogies, but we won’t know if they work for us unless we as individuals try.)

So that's the overview of the whole series! Below are listed descriptions of each individual workshop. Stay tuned for updates on each of the workshops as they happen!

Workshop #1:

Active Inclusivity: Benefit from Diversity in the Classroom

Monday, April 19, 2010

3 - 5 pm

Facilitators:

Cara Harwood, Geology graduate student and Teaching Assistant Consultant
Cassandra Paul, Physics graduate student and Teaching Assistant Consultant

Many of the techniques used in University classrooms were developed during a time when campuses were composed almost entirely of the same type of student. Today classrooms are much more diverse. Do you want to see how you can use the diversity that exists in your classroom to the mutual benefit of you and your students? The goal of this workshop is to construct a framework for understanding in what ways we are all different, how this difference affects us and our relationships, and how we can benefit from this difference. Participants will leave this workshop more aware of what being inclusive means, and how to frame their contribution to diversity. For more information, please contact the TA Consultants at tac@ucdavis.edu.

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Workshop #2:

Developing Your Teaching Persona

Monday, April 26, 2010

3 - 5 pm

Facilitators:

Sharada Balachandran-Orihuela, English graduate student and Teaching Assistant Consultant

Sarah Dalrymple, Population Biology graduate student and Teaching Assistant Consultant

Richard Osibanjo, Chemistry graduate student and Teaching Assistant Consultant

Sarah Augusto, Sociology graduate student and Teaching Assistant Consultant

Have you ever wondered how much and what aspects of your personality you should show to your students? Bringing your identity into the classroom has the potential to transform your students’ learning, their relationship to course material, as well as improve your evaluations. In this workshop expect to develop clearly articulated student learning goals, and then based on these goals determine your role in the classroom. For more information, please contact the TA Consultants at tac@ucdavis.edu.

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Workshop #3:

Building Community in the Classroom (classroom management, creating a good learning environment, setting a tone, what do you do, activities & strategies to encourage participation, extending the classroom)

Monday, May 3, 2010

3 - 5 pm

Facilitators:

Cara Harwood, Physics graduate student and Teaching Assistant Consultant

Richard Osibanjo, Chemistry graduate student and Teaching Assistant Consultant

Emily Evans, Education graduate student and Teaching Assistant Consultant

Are you interested in establishing a fun and dynamic community in your classroom? Developing a sense of community with your students can contribute to a positive learning environment and improve the effectiveness of your teaching. In this workshop we will establish a foundation for building your classroom community. Participants will develop strategies for managing your classroom environment, setting the desired classroom tone, and encouraging student participation both in and out of the classroom. For more information, please contact the TA Consultants at tac@ucdavis.edu.

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Workshop #4:

Advancing Community in the Classroom (interactive techniques, empowering students, collaboration between students, group dynamics)

Thursday, May 13, 2010

3 - 5 pm

Facilitators:

Sarah Dalrymple, Population Biology graduate student and Teaching Assistant Consultant

Travis Berge, Economics graduate student and Teaching Assistant Consultant

Cassandra Paul, Physics graduate student and Teaching Assistant Consultant

Jonathan Bragg, Microbiology graduate student and Teaching Assistant Consultant

Undergraduate students are used to an educational system where they are handed information they need to regurgitate back to the instructor. Would you like to break this cycle, and have your students take more of an active responsibility for learning? This challenge can be met by fostering community in the classroom in a way that empowers students to see themselves as active participants in their learning process. In this workshop participants will learn how to increase collaboration between students, and how to break down the hierarchy in the classroom, thus encouraging students to take more ownership of their education. For more information, please contact the TA Consultants at tac@ucdavis.edu.

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Workshop #5:

Setting Sail on the Mentorship

Monday, May 17, 2010

3 - 5 pm

Facilitators:

Sharada Balachandran-Orihuela, English graduate student and Teaching Assistant Consultant

Mara Evans, Ecology graduate student and Teaching Assistant Consultant

Ann Chang, Ecology graduate student and Teaching Assistant Consultant

Are you interested in developing one-to-one learning relationships with your students? Are you interested in developing your skills as a future faculty mentor? Join us for a discussion about the qualities that make for a successful mentor-mentee relationship. In this workshop you will develop your mentoring philosophy and explore the various resources available for emerging academic leaders. For more information, please contact the TA Consultants at tac@ucdavis.edu.

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Workshop #6:

Feel Good Beyond the Classroom!

Thursday, May 27, 2010

3 - 5 pm

Facilitators:

Mara Evans, Ecology graduate student and Teaching Assistant Consultant

Travis Berge, Economics graduate student and Teaching Assistant Consultant

Matthew Nesvet, Political Science graduate student and Teaching Assistant Consultant

Do you occasionally feel stifled by academia? Are you interested in working with the community beyond the classroom? Participate in the final workshop of the series Collaborative Connections to redefine what we think of as the classroom. Explore how academics can go beyond the classroom and nurture their enthusiasm for their discipline and teaching.

Reflecting on Your Teaching and Crafting a Philosophy

PERSONAL TEACHING IDEAS: QUICKWRITE

When you think about teaching and learning at the undergraduate level, what is important to you?

ELEMENTS OF A STATEMENT OF TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

All statements of teaching philosophy should include the following elements.
1. What is important to you about teaching and learning
Articulate what drives you to teach, what you are passionate about, your view of teaching, learning and education.

• Example: I embrace teaching as an opportunity to inspire and empower my students to take ownership over the learning process.
  

2. Your main objective(s) as a teacher
What are your goals for your students? What do you hope they take away from your class? Frame this in a way that is about student learning and how you support/encourage it, rather than simply what you do. Think about this, combined with what is important to you, as your theme for your whole statement.

• Example: It is my hope that my students become independent thinkers and develop sskills that they will take away beyond my classroom.
  

3. Description of how you teach
Describe how you implement your ideas and values about teaching and learning. What do you do in practice to met your main objective(s)? How do you facilitate your students meeting your goals? Include specific strategies and methods. Think about this as your evidence that you are carrying out your philosophy.

• Example: In my quest to develop independent thinkers, I strive to promote cros-cultrual awareness and appreciation. As a native of Argentina, I try to bring as much of my culture into the classroom as possible. For example...
  

4. How you evaluate yourself and your students
Think about how you can tell if your students are meeting your goals, rather than just about how you grade them. Also consider how you know your teaching strategies are working.

• Example: I give students timely feedback on their work so that they can incorporate suggestions, and so I have a sense of how individuals in my classroom are progressing through the semester.
  

5. Goals for future growth and how you will improve as a teacher

Demonstrate that you want to improve and how you will do that.

• Example: One of my goals as a teacher is to never take my teaching skills for granted. Each new group of students helps me learn how to better meet the needs of students in the future.
  

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING A GREAT STATEMENT OF TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

1. Paint a vivid picture of yourself as a teacher
The reader should be able to visualize what your classroom looks like and what you look like in it. Ask yourself, can your readers picture in their minds the learning environment you create for students?
2. Be specific
Weave in experience and give lots of examples. This helps give a picture of you as a teacher, and demonstrates that you actually believe in the things you say!
3. Make your statement memorable and unique
Talk about your talents, special interests, etc. to convey what's special about YOU. You want to set yourself apart from all of the other applicants.
4. Write concisely
Keep it to 1-2 double spaced pages!
5. Use present tense
This is the most common and easiest for your audience to read.
6. Use simple organizational structure
Concise paragraphs enhance readability!

COMMON PROBLEMS WHEN WRITING A STATEMENT OF TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

1. Negativity about teaching strategies

• Bad: Lecture is a terrible way to teach.
• Improved: Although lecture is useful for... I find that my students learn most effectively when...
  

2. Negativity about yourself (even if it is reflective)

• Bad: I really disliked my performance in class that quarter and was disappointed in my evaluation.
• Improved: I have learned how to negotiate the difficult task of balancing... and..., and over the past three years of teaching I have seen my students' performance improve in X, Y, and Z ways.
  

3. Know-it-all-iness

• Bad: There is 'no point' to powerpoint presentations. They are lengthy and boring to students.
• Improved: I find that my students become disinterested with lengthy powerpoint presentations, so instead I prefer to have a set of keywords on powerpoint display while simultaneously asking my students to...
  

4. Declarative and impersonal statements

• Bad: The only way to teach is to use class discussion.
• Improved: I believe that students learn best when they are actively engaged in discussion with one another, so I encourage peer discussion by...
  

5. Using overly technical terms

• Bad: I find transmissionist teaching is best for critical thinking.
• Improved: One of the most exciting projects I have participated in as a teacher was for Philosophy of Language, which I taught in the Spring of 2009. For this class, the students and I co-created a video explaining and, in some cases, acting out key terms in language philosophy. This project allowed the students to develop their understanding of the material by having to break down the complex terminology they learned in class for the 'lay man/woman.' It also gave students a sense of ownership over the material, and they were able to share this video via YouTube with friends and family members all over the world.
  

Teaching Careers Demystified Workshop

Early winter quarter, Travis Berge and I (Sarah Dalrymple) led a workshop that covered the major differences in teaching expectations and overall teaching environments among various academic institutions. Our goal was to help workshop participants articulate and focus their teaching interests and determine the appropriate way to prepare for careers at different types of schools. Participants read articles and informational interviews to glean information on the differences in teaching expectations and conditions among research institutions, comprehensive colleges, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges. We then discussed which type(s) of schools aligned with our own teaching interests and explored opportunities to gain additional teaching experience before going on the job market.

Conducting informational interviews with professionals in a position of interest can be a great way to gain a personal perspective on a particular job. For this workshop we followed the UCD Internship and Career Center model and got written feedback on a number of questions related to the teaching aspect of professors' jobs at a variety of institutions. These informational interviews, along with articles and handouts used in the workshop are available below:


ICC Informational Interviews

LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE RESOURCES

Liberal Arts College Faculty: Finding The Sweet Spot

LAC Teaching Load Survey

Liberal Arts College Informational Interview
1. What was your discipline in graduate school? 

Population Biology – plant/insect interactions

2. What was the highest degree you completed? Ph.D.

3. Where and when did you complete your degree? 
 UCD, 2006

4. Who is your current employer/academic institution? 

Denison University, OH (small liberal arts college)

5. Employer location? Granville, OH

6. Academic Department/Program? Biology

7. Current Position Title: 
 Asst. Prof.

8. When did you first start this position? Sept 2006

9. Is this a tenure-track position? Yes.

10. What is the balance of research, teaching and service at your institution?

Teaching is primary, probably 60-70%, research 20% or so, service 10%.

11. On average, how many classes do you teach per semester/ quarter?
It alternates, in my heavy load semester I teach 2 courses with 2 labs, in my light semester I teach 1 course and 1 lab.

12. How much departmental support do you receive as a teacher in your position?
A great deal, this is a teaching position so my colleagues are always visiting and giving me feedback. It is really the reason for the whole college.

13. What do you most like about your faculty position?

The department is very caring and supportive, I like everyone on the staff and we feel like a true team and I think we do a good job educating those students who come into our department.

14. What do you find most challenging about your position?

Finding enough time to do research; it is really hard to do at a small school, most of it has to be done in the summer, but it is hard to wait that long sometimes.

15. What advice would you give to a graduate student or postdoc seeking a similar position?

Get actual teaching experience – TAing by itself won’t do it anymore. If you can get a leave position for a year or semester that would be great – we want to see that people have full responsibility for a course – lecturing, giving and grading exams, doing the labs if possible.

16. Is there anything you wished you had done as a graduate student or postdoc to prepare for this position? 

I wish I had actually done a research postdoc before getting this job, it would have given me some time to write and finish some things up that may never see the light of day now.

17. Is there any other advice you would like to share?
I would make sure that you really like teaching for this kind of job as really, truly, most of your time is either teaching, providing support for students, serving on committees that deal with teaching somehow, or preparing for teaching. Your research program should be do-able at a small school with limited time and funds – it can be done, but it has to take some planning and perhaps tough choices about what habitats/organisms you want to work on.

COMMUNITY COLLEGE RESOURCES

MLA Info on Community College Teaching Careers

Science Teaching Careers at Community Colleges

The Community College Job Search

Community College Informational Interview 1
1. What was your discipline in graduate school? 
 Ecology

2. What was the highest degree you completed? PhD

3. Where and when did you complete your degree?
UC Davis Sept 2006

4. Who is your current employer/academic institution? 

American River College, Los Rios Community College District

5. Employer location? Sacramento, CA

6. Academic Department/Program? Biology

7. Current Position Title: 
 Assistant Professor of Biology

8. When did you first start this position? Fall 2008

9. Is this a tenure-track position? Yes

10. What is the balance of research, teaching and service at your institution?

At the community college the focus is entirely on teaching and service, with teaching the most heavily emphasized. There is virtually no institutional support for a research program.

11. On average, how many classes do you teach per semester/ quarter?
Three of four depending on whether there are labs or not.

12. How much departmental support do you receive as a teacher in your position?
There is great departmental support for teaching at the community college. But, there are not TAs or readers or much support in that sense. Essentially all the grading and scheduling and much of the prep work is done by the faculty member.

13. What do you most like about your faculty position?

I love the diversity of students you get to interact with in the community college. In a single classroom you will often have three generations of students together, from advanced high school students to grandparents returning to get a college degree. There is good support for new curriculum development as well. The other faculty members are talented and dedicated educators and very willing to help out new faculty.

14. What do you find most challenging about your position?

The teaching load can be quite overwhelming at first depending on how many preps you have. In the worst case scenario, you could be expected to teach three (or more) new classes all in your first semester. There are also a significant proportion of the students that lack basic skills in math, reading, writing and studying, and can make teaching challenging. In addition, because the community college has a fairly wide open door for student enrollment, there are occasional behavioral issues that students bring to the classroom that can be challenging to resolve.

15. What advice would you give to a graduate student or postdoc seeking a similar position?

Take advantage of any and all opportunities for teaching during graduate school. Teach a freshman seminar, lead a 290, apply to work as an adjunct at all of the local community college districts and CSUs. When applying for positions, the hiring committees want to see more than TA positions on your CV.

16. Is there anything you wished you had done as a graduate student or postdoc to prepare for this position? 

Not really, other than probably begin teaching earlier during graduate school. There are great opportunities to teach during graduate school, night classes and weekend classes etc, that I would suggest students interested in pursuing this path try to get hired to teach.

17. Is there any other advice you would like to share?
Before you have interviews for adjunct or full time positions at the community college or for teaching internship programs, talk to folks that are currently faculty to get a sense of what the interview process is like, because it is idiosyncratic. I would be happy to share my experiences with the interview process with any folks that have upcoming interviews.

Community College Informational Interview 2

1. What was your discipline in graduate school? Animal Behavior Graduate Group

2. What was the highest degree you completed? PhD

3. Where and when did you complete your degree? 
 UC Davis, 2003

4. Who is your current employer/academic institution? 

Sacramento City College, Los Rios Community College District

5. Employer location? Sacramento, CA

6. Academic Department/Program? Biology

7. Current Position Title: 
 Professor of Biology

8. When did you first start this position? August 2005

9. Is this a tenure-track position?
Yes, earned tenure in 2008 (a 4 year process that began in 2004 for me)

10. What is the balance of research, teaching and service at your institution?

100% teaching, but service to the department and college is expected.

11. On average, how many classes do you teach per semester/ quarter?
1-2 different preparations. Most semesters I teach 2 sections of a 5 unit animal biology course (each section has 3 hours lecture and 6 hours of lab per week).

12. How much departmental support do you receive as a teacher in your position?
Our department is full of incredibly supportive faculty and administrators. We are very supportive of our teachers who wish to implement new courses, and I believe that we work well with each other to meet each other’s needs as instructors, to compromise where necessary, etc.

13. What do you most like about your faculty position?

I truly love my position, so I can’t narrow it down to just one thing. I appreciate having colleagues who are excellent and rigorous teachers; I feel fortunate to get to teach, nearly exclusively thus far, the courses that I wish to teach; I enjoy having interesting, diverse, and generally well-prepared students.

14. What do you find most challenging about your position?

Funding always is tight, and we can’t always get the teaching technology or materials that we want, or not in a timely manner.

15. What advice would you give to a graduate student or postdoc seeking a similar position?

If you are interested in a teaching career (as opposed to research) in higher education, please consider the community colleges. We have many very high quality students, many of whom transfer to UCs (and from our research, in upper division classes often outperform their fellow UC-grown students), and you have the benefit of being in a supportive and close-knit community of colleagues while working for an institution in which your teaching skills and dedication to teaching are truly valued.

16. Is there anything you wished you had done as a graduate student or postdoc to prepare for this position? 

No.

17. Is there any other advice you would like to share?
Get as much teaching experience as possible while in graduate school. TAships are important, but whenever possible gain experience as the teacher of record. Teaching summer school is a good way to get this initial experience. Community colleges also look to hire tenure-track professors who already have experience teaching at community colleges (and therefore have a better understanding of community college students). If you are interested in this career path, try to get a foot in the door as part-time faculty.