The Bok Center is proud to partner with GSAS on the Harvard Horizons program.  We support the students in their task of crafting 5-minute versions of their dissertation research, coaching them on storytelling, performance, and multimedia. Come learn from this year’s cohort as they present their work...

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Join the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning as we showcase projects and innovations across the Harvard teaching community.  Our community of students, scholars, and staff will be sharing what we have done and learned this year, through hands-on...

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Registration opens for the following Bok Seminars:

Communicating Science

How to Talk to Your Students: Communication in Context

Mentoring: How to Advise (and be Advised)

Foundations of Teaching in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Course Design: From Transparency to Transfer

Please visit the Bok Seminars page for descriptions and registration information.

Registration opens for the following Bok Seminars:

Linguistic Diveristy in the Classroom

Communicating With Clarity and Cohesion for International TFs

Please visit the Bok Seminars page for descriptions and registration information.

Read more about Registration Opens for Select Bok Seminars

What impact do race and gender have in the science classroom? In this workshop, designed by Physics graduate students for TFs in STEM disciplines, we interrogate the definitions of race and gender in the US to understand how these categories have shaped the scientific community. Informed by our critical analysis of these definitions, we discuss ways to cultivate supportive learning environments, and what we can do as teaching fellows to make science more equitable, both in the classroom and beyond.

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Read more about Making Science More Equitable: A Graduate Student Workshop on Race and Gender

In this workshop we will explore the relationship between stand up comedy and teaching, and how lessons and dynamics that occur in successful comedy routines could be relevant to the classroom. To be a good comedian, you have to be able to persuade your audience to let you show them a new perspective on things—to welcome a diverse crowd, to establish some shared premises, to think about questions which have never occurred to them before, to see the world as an outsider would, and to wonder why, exactly, we behave in the ways that we do. In some cases, these new perspectives may be simply...

Read more about Take My Course... Please! Lessons from Comedy for Teachers

What assumptions do you have about students in your class? How can identities related to race, gender, class, sexuality, ability, and more affect classroom dynamics?  This session will begin with the Bok Center’s Undergraduate Pedagogy Fellows presenting an introduction to the multiplicity of Harvard undergraduate identities through both narratives and statistics. The Fellows will also offer an introduction to how power and privilege manifest within the classroom in the forms of microaggressions and "hot moments", and explain how students often wish TFs would deal with and work to...

Read more about From Implicit to Explicit: Identity & Power Dynamics in the Classroom

Public speaking skills are in high demand, but what do we really mean when we say public speaking, and what does it mean to work on these skills? As teachers, many of the basic principles of good pedagogy are also the basic principles of good speaking: we have goals for our students, and we consider ways to communicate content effectively to help them understand and become engaged in the material. Similarly, once you understand the basics of public speaking, the only way to really build these skills is by practicing, getting feedback and reflecting on your practice. In this workshop you...

Read more about Teaching as Public Speaking

Growth mindset—the belief that your skills and intelligence are malleable and can be improved with hard work and practice—has been shown to be a vital aspect of learning. In this session, we will focus on developing a growth mindset for ourselves and for our students, and why both are important. It is often all too easy to think of ourselves as finished products with set skills, but this can hinder our attempts to be willing to learn new knowledge and skills. Fostering a “growth mindset” can motivate us- and our students- to focus on the process of learning, to embrace challenges as...

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Start your Winter Teaching Week morning before your first session by coming to have coffee with Bok Center staff. Ask your teaching questions and learn more about our resources!

Getting to know your students enhances your ability to create a successful learning environment, so what can you do to establish a relationship with your students, encourage them to ask questions, and create a positive atmosphere? Rapport, a harmonious relationship with others, is influenced by both culture and language, and this workshop is an opportunity for international TFs to discuss the challenges you anticipate when building rapport and to explore strategies to build rapport both with and amongst your students. Practice introducing yourself and using active listening techniques to...

Read more about Hitting it Off: Establishing Rapport as an International TF

As an experienced TF, how do you reflect on your teaching experience, and prepare job market materials that tell the story of the teacher you are and the teacher you want to become? Specifically, how can a syllabus function in this way? Most tenure-track job postings request a sample syllabus. How do you go about creating one? This workshop introduces a method of curriculum planning called backwards design. The idea is simple: you can’t start planning how you’re going to teach until you know what you want your students to learn. Together we’ll brainstorm learning goals for our...

Read more about From Reflection to Design: Creating a Syllabus from Scratch