TAC Winter Workshop Series - Workshop 1: Student Participation

The first workshop of the TA Consultant's Winter Workshop Series was on student participation. If the whole workshop could be summed up into one sentence it would be;

There are many forms of student participation that include, but are not limited to, discussion.

As a group, members of this workshop defined and described student participation as:

• Being Active, Awake, Aware
• Learning something new
• Having value --> Contribute/take away information/ideas
• Being Physical and/or Mental engaged
• Experiential learning
• Cooperation/Communication
• Meeting class requirements
• Enjoyment
• Personal responsibility

What helps students to have open, honest participation though, is to have a safe, inclusive, and supportive environment. To illustrate this point of safe, inclusive environment promoting students to think, interact, and speak we ran an experiment early in the workshop. The two female facilitators of the workshop, Sarah Augusto and I, each choose separate sides of the room to focus on. We only called on and engaged with those halves. After 20 minutes of this, Richard asked the members who they felt more engaged and connected with. For the most part those that I engaged with picked me, and those Sarah engaged with picked her.

Some ways to create a safe environment included:

• Letting your expectations on participation be known early and clearly
• Use icebreakers to help your students familiarize themselves to each other and you and you to them.
• Look at and respond to all students.
• Value wrong answers as a teaching opportunity by exploring why it’s an incorrect answer or why students may believe it’s a correct answer.
• Explore a variety of answers before revealing a correct answer, even if the question has only one right answer.
• Ask more open questions that don’t have a right answer.
• More ways to create a safe environment will be discussed in following workshops, including the next workshop!

There is a tendency for us as instructors to gravitate towards discussion as participation (this will be further discussed in workshop 3). One of the activities we had in our workshop was for everyone write about a time they felt engaged and empowered in a class. What made them feel ownership? And, on the flip-side, what made them feel unengaged?

This writing activity is also known as a free-write. It’s a great tool because it gives everyone an equal chance to contribute to an idea, concept, or discussion question. And for discussion it gives those more quite or those students that take a bit longer to think of a response time to develop an answer. You can then read these responses privately, ask students to share with the whole class, or break up into groups to share thoughts.

Some myths of participation that came out during discussion were;

1) Quite students are not participating because they aren't interested
Fact - Some students are quiet because:
They are thinking/reflecting
Cultural differences may be in works
Shyness
Peer Thought Pressure

2) Lots of talking is good participation
Fact -
Quantity vs Quality should be taken into account
Who's talking - dominate speakers?
Goal of participation - increase student learning
Talking is just one of the ways of participation

For more discussion participation tools come to workshop 3

3) Discussion is the only form/best form of participation
Fact - Discussion is just one of the ways of participation or being engaged.
Others include:
Quick or free-write
Blog
Think-pair-share
Surveys
Quiet reflection

4) Prolonged silences are bad

Prolonged silence can be good because it can take the pressure off
you and put it on the students, which makes them respond.

It also gives reflective students time to process all their thoughts

It's often a good idea to inject pauses during talks or discussion so people can process their thoughts

5) All students should be expected to participate equally
Many think fairness is treating everyone equally
But if that's true you probably aren't reaching everyone
Because:
Cultural differences
Background
Socialization of the different genders
Affects how students interpret and/or react
(Treat people the way you want to be treated)

6) It’s the TAs responsibility to create a good discussion

No. its not only your responsibility. Its every person's responsibility. This can be achieved by setting the right tone from the beginning of the quarter.

The TA's goal is to create conditions that enable students of various learning styles and personalities to contribute. To achieve this, you will need to take extra steps to encourage quiet students to speak up and, occasionally, ask the more verbose students to hold back to give others a chance.

7) If the students aren’t responding/answering correctly it’s the students fault
Fact - Sometimes we, instructors, just aren't clear enough.
Can our instructions be interpreted another way?
Was the assignment/question too hard?
Was there a "Wrong Answer"?

If the answer to all these questions is "NO" and you are still mystified, ask the students why they answered the way they did. If you set the tone early, they will answer honestly.

Also try a Mid-Quarter-Interview - MQI - through the CETL with one of us TAC’s

Many participants of our workshop asked for more time to go over difficult situations. Some scenarios include difficult students - students that text, go off topic, are dominate, and/or rude. Because of time limitations we weren’t to discuss all of these situations. But stay tuned for workshop 3 when participants will get another chance to think about, act out, and discuss difficult situations.

Below are the slides and group answers from our workshop.

Why Become a TAC

Last week at the TAC weekly meeting we discussed what about being a TAC did we as members of the program appreciate most. Here's what we came up with.

• Supportive teaching environment
• Helping others and ourselves improve teaching
• Consultations - opening our minds to thinking in different ways
• Peer-to-peer environment - both during TAC meetings and in consultations
• Goal oriented - we have a mission, whether that be organizing the TA orientation, setting up workshops, or training for and implementing consulations
• Our participation helps us grow

We hope you consider applying to be a TAC for the Spring 2011-Winter 2012 quarter.

Winter Workshop Series starts this week!

Student Engagement: Mission Possible

Winter Workshop Series for Graduate Students

Thursdays, January 20 - February 24, 2010

3-5 pm

Room 1310 Surge III

This workshop series focuses on helping instructors engage and empower their students. Participants will explore different methods for creating positive, inclusive learning environments. You will be encouraged to step outside your teaching ‘comfort zone’ and experiment with different methods for improving student learning. The objective is to provide participants with new tools and strategies to implement in their classrooms. Individuals from all disciplines and backgrounds are encouraged to attend these workshops, and those who attend five of the six sessions will be awarded a certificate from the UC Davis Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL).

Register your interest and view descriptions for individual workshops at:

http://cetl.ucdavis.edu/winter-workshops-2011/.

All graduate students are welcome.

*****

Student Engagement: Mission Possible

January 20, 2011, 3:00-5:00 p.m.

Beyond 'Do You All Understand?': Language, Difference, and Learning in a Heterogeneous Classroom

January 27, 2011, 3:00-5:00 p.m.

Pump Up the Volume, Turn Up Their Minds! Improving Student Discussions

February 3, 2011, 3:00-5:00 p.m.

‘Everyone’s Here’ is Only the Beginning: Engaging Your Students Through Problem-based Learning

February 10, 2011, 3:00-5:00 p.m.

Tech Savvy Teaching: Using Technology to Achieve Teaching and Learning Goals

February 17, 2011, 3:00-5:00 p.m.

To Test or Not To Test? Strategies for Evaluating Student Learning

February 24, 2011, 3:00-5:00 p.m.

*****

This series is brought to you by the TA Consultants and the

Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.

Discussion + Participation: A Preview

The Teaching Consultants are preparing for a six-part workshop series about student participation. The first session will be on January 20th form 3-5pm in Surge III.

As we prepare for the workshop series, the TACs have spent some time discussing articles about student participation (citations below). What follows are some of our thoughts about participation. We hope that our workshop participants will be able to spend six weeks thinking carefully about how they define participation in the classroom, what barriers students encounter that may prevent them from participating, and testing various techniques and teaching strategies that might be useful in our classrooms. Here are our thoughts:

• Why do we want students to participate? To improve student learning. However, to know if learning has been achieved, Teach Assistants (TAs) have to be able to measure student learning.
• We, as TAs, judge our classrooms based on who we are, and it can be challenging to think outside of our own frame of reference.
• At times we are not the reason why students are silent, sometimes students are watching each other not just the TA and do not wish to look foolish in front of their peers.
• We must be careful to not generalize about all students if we only have access to a small sample size (one of the papers we discussed has a sample size of five).
• When a TA is considered the authority by students for cultural reasons it might take a long time for students to break away from their own backgrounds and participate in a dialogue where ideas are shared, rather than received.
• What is the difference between participation and discussion: participation is when a student is actively engaged in some way (doesn't have to be talking); discussion is the exchange of ideas, usually vocally.
• TAs should be encouraged to avoid complacency in the classroom.
• TAs should be encouraged to use multiple ways to assess if students are “getting it” and give students multiple venues in which they can express themselves.
• One way to assess participation and/or learning is to ask students to write a one page reflection on their own participation and comment on other “good” examples of participation.
• Establishing a respectful classroom is key for helping students feel comfortable in writing peer-reviews
• "This is not about me, this is your classroom!" This is a mantra TAs should consider adopting.
• "Participation is good for you!" Even if it makes a student uncomfortable, the act itself can be helpful.
• TAs should justify and explain why they are doing something, or asking something of their students.
• Create an environment where students will be comfortable and not penalized for saying "I don’t have anything to say"
• However, be prepared for strong personalities who will say what’s on their mind regardless of the consequences.
• Let people know they’re going to get called on. This takes away the complete element of surprise.
• Tell people everyone has to speak once during a class period day, even a wrong answer is useful, The TA doesn't necessarily know everything. And it's also fine for the TA to show vulnerability and say "I don't know."
• There is a lot of power in doing an example incorrectly and having student “correct” the TA.

This is only the beginning of what we hope is a lengthy and fruitful discussion about student participation. We hope that our workshop participants will share their own insights and opinions with us over the next six weeks. As always, feel free to leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comment section of every blog post!

Beverly D. Tatum and Race: A summary of her Mondavi event at UC Davis

On Dec 10th (2010), Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, the author of UC Davis’ campus community book, “Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?” (1997), spoke at the Mondavi Center. Dr. Tatum began by acknowledging change has occurred in race relations since her book was first published in 1997. But then noted that there is still difficulty in discussing race. Moreover, there appears to be greater incivility regarding the race conversation; we’ve moved from silence about race to hostility.

From Dr. Tatum’s perspective as a psychologist, we as a society feel a great deal of anxiety about race. She calmly explained that often, the human response to anxiety is fear. The way this fear is manifested is through flight or flight. In the case of anxiety about race, the human flight response is to “hunker down” and “tighten our circle” of those we consider us in the “us vs. them” scenarios. Our fight response is to lash out. However, Dr. Tatum pointed out, it is during those times of anxiety that we should work to expand our circle and create more inclusive relationships to dispel our anxiety.

Expanding our circles is, of course, is a difficult task, but can be eased by positive leadership. During the question-answer section of the event Dr. Tatum provided a strategy for individuals to become better allies to each other in the form of the 3 F’s – Felt, Found, Feel.

When someone says something to you that you consider discriminatory, it can often be difficult to speak up for fear of alienating yourself or offending a friend. Instead it may be easier to say something along the lines of, “I’ve felt that way before, but I found it not to be true (give example), and now I feel this way.” This gives you a chance to relate to the offender without placing blame or guilt. In cases when what a person has said is so outrageous that you cannot relate the 3 F’s can be modified to, “I know many people feel that way, I have found _____, and I feel this.” But it is important to speak up, because silence is equivalent to agreeing.

Unfortunately Dr. Tatum only spoke for 30 minutes with the question and answer section taking up the other half hour of the event. One question I’d like to explore, but didn’t get the chance to ask Dr. Tatum is, if our natural response to anxiety from the unknown is to hunker down and/or lash out, and that lashing out creates more anxiety, how do we as individuals break that cycle of anxiety? What are your thoughts?

Ask-A-TAC: What about blogging?

The TACs would like to encourage our readers to send in questions about teaching! We are happy to make suggestions and/or direct you to appropriate resources. Please send your questions to tac@ucdavis.edu. Whenever appropriate we will share our suggestions here, making sure you, dear TA, stay anonymous. We hope to make the "Ask-A-TAC" entry a regular event here at this blog.

Dear TAC,

I have a blog and it’s awesome! But how do I generate discussion and get my blog readers to ask and answer questions? Please help!

– Bogged-Down Blogging TA

Dear Bogged:

Good for you! Starting a blog as a busy graduate student is above and beyond the call of duty. It’s a tricky undertaking that requires some thoughtful planning, time and energy and the desire to experiment and see what happens. Let me ask you a few question: Do you read other people’s blogs? What do you like most about your favorite blogs? What motivates you to leave a comment on a blog?

As an avid blog reader myself, I find that I return to blogs and become a regular reader when a few criteria are met. First, the blog needs to frequently post new material. Depending on the type of blog this might mean a weekly post (which I very much look forward to), several times a week with “Theme Days” or, best of all, daily posts. This takes a lot of work! It might be a good idea to generate a list of topics and try to stay ahead of your posting schedule, that way new content is always being published.

Second, my favorite blogs have a consistent point of view. This means they cover the same type of content on a regular basis. This also means that they act as a clearing house for information about a given topic. The authors will link to, comment about, or discuss various articles or topics they find interesting and relevant to the central themes of the blog.

Finally, my favorite blogs mix it up! Contradictory to #2, I know. But it’s always interesting when a guest blogger shows up. It’s also fine if a blog takes a hiatus and comes back with fresh new ideas and posts.

But let me return to your original question: how do you generate discussion on a blog? To be honest, I don’t have the magic answer, but I do have some suggestions. First, your readers will want to feel like they know you (and your fellow blog authors). It’s really easy to lurk on a blog, but it takes some pluck to leave a comment, or ask a question. The point is: your readers need to feel safe!

Your readers also need to have content upon which to comment! Posting frequently provides them with content. However, posting “Reading Group” style questions at the end of your posts-- topics you would like to see discussed--will also generate discussion. It might even initiate conversation about other topics. When the conversations start, make yourself heard, and participate in the conversation in the comments section. Your readers will feel valued and acknowledged if the conversation is respectful, friendly and encouraging. And those lurking might be enticed to join in.

Your blog will serve as an amazing teaching and learning tool! If you want your students to traffic the site you can require a certain number of comments per term, and/or invite them to write guest posts. If you are attempting to reach a wider (global) audience you will need to build a sense of community with your readers through content and by generating a safe space to keep them coming back to learn more.

I hope these suggestions help. If any TAs reading this have their own tips we would all benefit if you left a comment. Tell us what's worked and what hasn't for you when it comes to teaching and blogging.

Keep us posted, Bogged, on how it turns out and good luck!

~ UC Davis TA Consultant

PS. If you’re still feeling stuck, check out these links:

Building relationships

For Science Bloggers

Establishing a Persona

Blog lurkers

And more about blog lurkers

Matthew Nesvet

Hi, TA's! My name's Matt. I'm a PhD student, California Humanities Scholar, HASTAC Scholar, and one of the 'awesome eight' graduate students chosen to be your teaching consultants this year. Teaching can be many things: the awesome second class citizen of the modern university; the reason why you spent six of your last summer hours in TA training workshops; a great reason to think broadly about your research and how you can make it meaningful to others ('other' [people] (adj.): those who, though they're not on your dissertation committee, do indeed, yes the rumors are true, exist); how you'll make a difference in your student's lives; your job; and possibly, hopefully, one of the most exciting, valuable activities you'll engage in while at university. I've both taught and TA'd many college classes, and love helping my students learn. I'm excited about working with you this year as you develop, reflect on, and improve upon your teaching practices. For those of you who want to stop by and talk about teaching, my office is in Kerr Hall (6th floor); you're welcome to visit whenever you have a few minutes. You can also send me an email and we can schedule a time to meet. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you in workshops and consultations throughout the year!

My name is Richard Osibanjo. Am a second year TA Consultant and a 3^rd year PhD student in Analytical Chemistry. My experience has a TA Consultant has being a blast. I teach General and Forensics Chemistry which is very exciting.

I believe everyone is a teacher and at one point or the other we all will have to teach something to someone or a group of people. Being a TA consultant, has really helped me develop my teaching skills, which are applicable not only in the classroom but to every facet of life.

My best memories being a TA consultant involve relating and meeting with diverse people, sharing their experiences and helping them become the best they can be in their teaching experience. I am influenced by the words of John Maxwell said “people don’t care how much you know till they know how much you care” Being a TA Consultant, provides an avenue for me, to really do what am passionate about, which is connecting with diverse people , getting to see through their eyes and speaking their language. This has gone a long way in making my classroom fun, inclusive and memorable. There is nothing so gratifying, as being able to help my students, in a 360 degree way in and out of the classroom.

Outside teaching, I enjoy meeting people, reading, writing, photography and am building my portfolio as a long distance runner

TAC: Sarah Dalrymple

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Population Biology Grad Group, and I study fire dynamics in Jeffrey pine forests in the Eastern Sierra. A bulk of my research also involves ants so I spend a lot of my time crouched down looking at the ground in forests. It's more fun that it sounds!

In my last 4 years at Davis I have TAed a variety of classes, including biology labs, a field course, and an art-science painting studio. I am incredibly enthusiastic about teaching and learning how to get students to engage more effectively with one another and with course material. This is my second year in the TA Consultant program and my first year serving as a TAC Co-Coordinator alongside Mara Evans. The current TA Consultants come from a range of disciplines and backgrounds, which often results in well-rounded and lively discussions about teaching and education in our weekly meetings.

As a TAC, I hope to pass along knowledge I have gleaned from my own experiences and from discussions with other TACs, whether during individual consultations or workshops. TAs often interact with students more than professors, and as a result, they have an opportunity to positively influence student learning. However, many of the departments on campus lack structured support for grad students interested in improving their teaching. This is why I am so excited to be a part of the TA Consultant team! My ultimate goal is help TAs improve their teaching and provide encouragement for those who otherwise lack the support to do so.

Emily Evans

This is my first year with the TAC program and I am really excited to be a part of this group. The opportunity to engage and research teaching and learning is the reason that I am here at UC Davis. The TAC group has been a great opportunity to meet and collaborate with others who share these interests.

I am currently in my 5^th (and hopefully final) year of a PhD program in education. I am in the science education emphasis specifically focused on environmental education. My dissertation research is an investigation of what youth learn about water and water systems through experiences in different formal and informal contexts, such as school, home, and outdoor fieldtrips. As part of my work, I coordinate a section of the science education and outreach program. In the winter quarter, students participate in a weekly seminar and discussion sessions. In the spring quarter, students apply what they learned in seminars to field work with different environmental science education programs. I particularly enjoy the interdisciplinary nature of this work and that is also what I enjoy about the TAC group; the chance to meet and work with people from different fields and interests.

I look forward to meeting many more TA’s in the coming quarters and working together to advance our practice as teachers and expand learning opportunities for students.

Building Community in the Classroom Wokshop

Building Community in the Classroom

On Monday, May 3rd, we held the third of six workshops in the "Collaborative Connections" workshop series. Here is a condensed version of what we did.

In this workshop we talked about how you (as the TA or instructor) can develop a sense of community in your classroom, and how this contributes to an effective learning environment for all of your students where they feel safe participating and learning from each other and from you.

We identified these learning goals for the workshop:

Understand components of successful and unsuccessful learning environments

Especially the role of community between teachers and students in these environments

Appreciate the diversity of factors that contribute to successful learning environments

Including factors related to learning activities and social and environmental activities

Reflect on and articulate the classroom community you want to create and the relationship you want to foster with your students

We tried to model classroom techniques that help facilitate an effective and collaborative learning community. We began the workshop with a 'group mingle', where participants talked to their 'classmates' to get to know each other and find out what they had in common and what was different.

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‘Group Mingle’ Activity

For four (or more) of the following statements circle the response that best describes you, and find someone in the room who is on the other end of the spectrum to initial the other response. You can only have each person on your sheet ONCE.

I prefer sitting at the front of class I prefer sitting at the back of class

I like working alone I like working in groups

In my free time I like reading fiction In my free time I like reading non-fiction

I am a night owl I am an early bird

(do my best work at night) (do my best work in the morning)

I generally speak up in class if I generally stay quiet in class

I have something to say and let others do the talking

I am older than most of my siblings I am younger than most of my siblings

In groups I tend to be a leader In groups I tend to be a follower

I am the most excited about this I am most excited about other

workshop workshops in this series

**This is one example of a way to get your students talking to each other at the beginning of class. Make the questions anything you like – for example, they can be personal, related to the class topics, or about how they typically prefer to learn. Activities like this can help set a tone for your class and help establish an environment where your students communicate with each other. Depending on the types of questions you ask, your students may meet other students that they have things in common with which can help establish collaboration outside of class.

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Successful and Unsuccessful Learning Environments: Reflecting on our Experiences as Learners

In order to think about how WE can create an effective learning environment, we reflected on the experiences that we had where we felt like we were successful learners, and unsuccessful learners, and defined successful and unsuccessful learning.

Participant folded their paper into four quadrants and brainstormed their thoughts about learning in each box.

#1 Your own definition of a learning success

#2 A personal example of a successful learning experience

#3 Your own definition of unsuccessful learning

#4 A personal example of an unsuccessful learning

**This activity generated a lively discussion about how we as instructors can contribute to successful learning environments.

Main ideas:

- Many different factors contribute to learning success. Many of these are related to the environment that the instructor can create in the classroom, and related to interactions between teacher and students.

- There are many things that we as teachers cannot control. For example, the physical space and set-up of the environment, and the experiences, perspectives, and motivation of our students coming into the class. By keeping in mind what these challenges are we can be better prepared to deal with them and create a successful learning environment.

Communicating with your students

After we spent some time reflecting on what makes a successful learning environment, participants applied their ideas to real classroom scenarios. These classroom scenarios included diverse physical and social environments (large lecture, lab, discussion) and different activities. For each of the following 'unsuccessful leanring environments' participants were asked how they would turn it into a successful learning environment:

Scenario #1: You are teaching a 7-10 pm lab and students have to stop all experiments and start cleaning up. the dispensary closes by 10pm and you as the intructor or TA would be held responsible for anything that happens after 10pm. you have a student who refusues to stop the experiment and tells his partner to do the same. You make an annocement 2 more times but you are just ignored The whole class is aware of this behaviour, what would you do to solve this situat

Scenario #2: You are the TA/instructor for a seminar of about 20 students in a small classroom with large tables and lots of chairs. Your discussion section meets on friday afternoon and most of your students appear tired and distracted. Every time you ask a question or solicit feedback from the group, it is always the same 2-3 students that respond. By mid-quarter, attendance has dropped and you had one section where only 1/2 of your students showed up.

Scenario #3: The TA/instructor is teaching a large class in a stadium-style lecture hall. The students are a mixture of majors and non-majors, with a large diversity in the amount of preparation for and interest in the course. The instructor would like to have an engaging and interactive class, but is struggling to get the students to engage and communicate with each other and with him/her during class, and with so many students, there's not a lot of time for one-on-one conversations/questions between instructor/student.

Successful learning environments in YOUR classroom

By this point in the workshop we had spent a lot of time thinking about all of the characteristics of an effective learning environment, and all of the factors that influence your classroom community. Then we asked participants to apply all of these ideas to a real life teaching situation for them.

Prompt:

Think about a class you have taught, that you will teach, or that you would be interested in teaching, and what your goals are for that class. Which characteristics of an effective learning environment are the most important for you to incorporate into your classroom community? What type of relationship do you want to have with your students? What tone do you want to strike with them?

After reflecting on our own classroom communities, participants wrote a mission statement to their students:

Write a letter to your students about the community that you want to create with them? Things to consider including: what should they expect from you? What expectations do you have for them? How will you try to create a community where everyone feels valued?

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Strategies for Creating a Community in Your Classroom

Value your students as individual learners that are part of the community. Students learn more when they feel valued as individual learners. Suggestions:

• Greet your students when they enter class.
• Make an effort to get to know your students.
• Start and end class on time. This acknowledges to your students that you value their time and their other commitments.
• Encourage questions.
• Give all students the opportunity to talk.
• Make time spent in class worthwhile.
• Acknowledge contributions .
• Gather information about the class and what they want to learn. (eg. student can fill out a KWL chart - what the Know, Want to know, and at the end of you class what they Learned)
• Consider asking them to write a letter of introduction.
• Give students opportunities to make comments and suggestions (eg. a comment box)

Encourage Participation. Create a classroom where students feel comfortable testing and sharing ideas. Suggestions:

• Get to know your students.
• Arrange seating to promote discussion.
• Use discussion techniques (eg. popcorn discussion, have students share work on individual writing exercise as a springboard to discussion)
• Encourage students to meet one another and provide opportunities (when possible) in class to facilitate group discussion and promote outside of class group work.
• Create opportunities for all students to talk during the first two weeks.
• Periodically divide students into small groups.
• Assign leadership roles to students.

Give timely and effective feedback. Giving feedback to your students is important for them to feel like you value their efforts and their learning, and that you are not just there to give them a grade. Suggestions:

• Give feedback as quickly as possible.
• Use praise judiciously - students can be particularly affected by specific positive comments.
• Try to cushion negative comments (eg. a criticism sandwich - try to bracket each constructive criticism with something positive about their work)
• Focus on the task, rather than on the learner.
• Provide guidance in manageable chunks.
• Give comments in writing.
• Emphasize learning rather than performance by acknowledging the role that mistakes play in the learning process.
• Avoid comparisons with other students.

Extending The Claaroom: One great attribute of effective communities is elimination of walls. The classroom is not necessarily confined to your assigned teaching space, you can extend it. Suggestions

• creating a chatroom for students for communication (participation)
• Students writing on note pads to account for participation
• Having a blog to keep the community alive
• Use of Social media Facebook, Youtube, Myspace
• Coffee bars and outdoor meeting points--- (limits)
• Wikis
• Having class projects that groow dependent that each person does their part
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TAC: Sarah Augusto

I’m a first year TAC and a doctoral candidate in sociology. My research areas are social movements, sex and gender, culture, and emotions. I have studied reproductive rights issues for much of my academic career and wrote my masters thesis on the pro-abortion rights and anti-abortion movements. I’m currently working on my dissertation, a study of the UC budget crisis and the movement to defend public education.

When I first came to grad school I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy teaching, but it turns out I absolutely adore it. I am passionate about education and about the subjects that I teach. My goal is to impart this enthusiasm and dedication to my students. While it is my responsibility to convey specific information and knowledge, my ultimate goal is to encourage students to be excited about their education and to seek out knowledge on their own. I want to help instill in them a lifelong love of learning that extends beyond the classroom and the university.

As a TAC, I am excited to be part of a community of educators who share my enthusiasm for teaching and to impart that enthusiasm to new TA’s. The TAC program offers a unique opportunity to improve my own skills and knowledge while helping others do the same. To me, this is what truly great education is all about – a collaborative environment where rigid barriers between students and teachers are broken down and we all learn from one another.