Supporting Graduate Student Teachers Remotely

April 21, 2020
man wearing headphones looking at laptop

How do I move students to breakout rooms in my Zoom classroom? What activities can I do online to foster engagement? What can we do to help students feel included, cared for, and motivated to learn during a global crisis, when we also have to manage the disruption to our own lives?

Bok Center staff identified these and many other questions as we quickly mobilized to help graduate students prepare to teach remotely. In developing the most timely and impactful programming for TFs during the transition to online instruction, we were guided by our core values of learning, practice, reflection, and community. The outcome of our planning was a series of sessions in which TFs were invited to ask questions, practice, share, and explore remote teaching technologies together.

Between March 18 and April 10, we offered 24 online workshops, including Zoom skills sessions on everything from breakout rooms to annotation, TF roundtables on maintaining motivation (both as a teacher and for students), and Community Check-Ins for international scholars. We welcomed over 50 TFs to these sessions.

The ability to provide support and community for graduate student teachers has sustained us through these challenging times, especially as we have heard from many graduate students that the feeling was mutual. We appreciate the feedback and thoughtful comments we’ve received:

  • The opportunity to practice skills in our breakout groups and then debrief that practice with session participants [and] Bok Center staff was really valuable.

  • The workshops offered extremely helpful and insightful advice, coupled with thoughtful suggestions about how to teach online.

  • Thanks, everyone, for the work you're doing and the support you're offering to others.

Now that we have all had a few weeks of experience teaching remotely, and we try to adjust to this virtual landscape, new questions are arising. We invite you to visit our Teaching Remotely pages to explore our growing compilation of resources. To discuss any specific questions, you can sign up for a consultation to meet one-on-one.

Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash