Romance Languages & Literatures
2022–2023
Lisa Kostur & Giulia Pellizzato
We designed a new tool for supporting PhD students in their teaching training and professors in their teaching work: a Mentorship Alliance. In the framework of a customizable agreement of mutual accountability, a PhD student and a professor will work together (intra- or inter-departmentally) towards innovating a course, its assignments and its assessment strategies, practicing engaging teaching and discussion leading, while being in dialogue as mentor/mentee and reflective practitioners. We piloted this strategy with RomLang 230, thanks to the proto-mentorship alliance we built with Maria Luisa Parra and Virginie Greene. We co-organized events for the RLL Engagement Series, we organized a panel on teaching and the job market, and we organized social events for TFs and TAs to foster a strong and interconnected community among new teachers in the Department.
2021–2022
Juan Arias & Luca Politi
We inaugurated the monthly newsletter “RLL in the Classroom,” featuring instructors and their reflections on pedagogy, events of interest, and relevant Bok Center resources. In RomLang 210, we assisted with the training of the new teachers in RLL through demo lessons and class observations and consultations. We organized two panels on teaching and the job market, and one for the rising G3s about to start teaching. Monthly social events around the Cambridge area provided the occasion to reconnect as a teaching community.
2020–2021
Emily Epperson & Luca Politi
For new TFs, we modeled successful teaching practices and consulted with them on recordings of their classes. For experienced TFs, we convened a panel of alumni to speak about the job market. We also offered events for all TAs and TFs: a reading group discussing the practical side of virtual teaching, and listening hours (“Getting ReaLL with Emily and Luca”) for instructors to chat about challenges of virtual instruction. We also helped organize a talk series about social justice in language pedagogy.
2019–2020
Xiomara Feliberty-Casiano & Matthew Rodriguez
Second language pedagogy theory in practice guided our work this year. In our pedagogy course sequence, we prioritized building a strong community while supporting instructors with observations, recordings, and consultations. We supported the transition to remote teaching with weekly meetings to share online teaching strategies. We shared sample lessons adapted to online teaching with the Language Center. Finally, we helped instructors develop their reflective practice through a panel on teaching and the academic job market.