Date:
Location:
Eleanor Finnegan, Assistant Director, Faculty Programming, Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning
As a graduate student, you may be asked to teach a course outside of your primary area of expertise—whether in a department or program different from your own, or in the Program in General Education. This can be a daunting prospect, but effective teaching ultimately is not just (or even primarily) about mastering or communicating a specific body of content. It is about rendering transparent to students the rules of the disciplinary game(s) they are being asked to play. While they need to understand what they are reading or writing, students also need to understand how they are supposed to read, and why they are writing. What are the questions that “count” in this class? What kinds of data are considered evidence for the claims your students will have to make? What kinds of “moves” are valued here? In this session we will explore how you set priorities, make norms explicit, and frame the content you teach. You will come away with strategies to help you use what you know about academic inquiry to help students learn how to think as scholars.
This session is part of the Fall Teaching Conference, which is designed to prepare new and experienced graduate student teachers for their roles as Teaching Fellows in the FAS. Pre-registration is required. Learn more here.