Led by:
Yasemin Kalender, Assistant Director, Science Pedagogy

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”...

Led by:
Pamela Pollock, Director of Professional Development

We may wonder or worry about how we’re doing as teachers-- but how do we know?! As scholars, we are always developing our research, but how do we think about learning and growing as a teacher? In this session, we will consider the nature of feedback as well as strategies for collecting it and using it to improve our practice. We will explore Stephen Brookfield’s lenses for reflective teaching-- 1) self, 2) students, 3) colleagues, and 4) scholarship-- to consider these questions and build...

Led by:
Adam Beaver, Director of Pedagogy

What is a scholar in your discipline actually doing when they are “reading"? How did you learn to perform all of the moves that an effective reader performs? How can you help your students learn to do the same? In this session we will break down what it really means to “read” across our scholarly disciplines. We’ll deconstruct our own disciplinary reading practices, and brainstorm how students new to a discipline can learn to become more skilled readers in it.  We’ll consider what novice reading looks...

Led by:
Eleanor Finnegan, Assistant Director, Faculty Programming

What are the goals of a course, and how does it fit into a discipline? What are the different components and how do they fit together? Done well, a good syllabus can be a road map, a contract, and a guide for both instructors and students. 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 look at sample syllabi to...